bruce-church (http://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Gaining on Mr. Squirrel While Enjoying the Birds":
Examples of gratuitous use of cardinal pictures on wild bird seed products:
Birdola Woodpecker Junior Seed Cake
has a Cardinal in the center, two black capped chickadees on the left, and a downy male woodpecker on the right (the male only has a red patch on the head):
http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3876130
Suet specifically for woodpeckers has a cardinal, gold finch, and maybe a woodpecker pictured in the background, but the third bird is too small in the picture to identify:
http://www.agway.com/catalog/bird/suet/woodpecker/06603808_feathered_friend_suet_woodpecker_2_5lb.html
Book on making bird food at home, and it only has a cardinal on the book cover:
http://www.a-home-for-wild-birds.com/homemade-wild-bird-food.html
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GJ - Mr. Squirrel humiliated me again. Not long ago, he stood on the squirrel-baffle and the bush to reach the seed, pumping the bar to feed sunflowers into his mouth. So I trimmed back the bush, to deny him a place for one leg.
Instead he stood with both feet on the baffle and fed himself.
He also hung down from the top of the bird-feeder, using the squirrel-prevent bar to pump seeds into his greedy mouth.
Meanwhile, I have been placing salted peanuts in the shell on the outside window sill. The fearless squirrels sit there and eat their peanuts, often watching us with no concern at all. I have tried scaring them away, but a squirrel will just do a startle move, getting ready to jump, without leaving the food. Once I opened the window and the squirrel on the feeder seemed to launch himself away as if a sling-shot propelled him.
My biggest reward lately has been a blue jay stopping by for peanuts. One day I was out of peanuts on the sill. The jay walked up and down on the sill, looking in, full of wrath that he was out of treats. In Midland I had one that bathed each morning and landed on the kitchen window sill, screaming at me, all wet, looking for his morning treat. When I opened the window, he flew to the maple and waited for the food, returning at once.
A $6 bag of salted peanuts in the shell has lasted me weeks and has about two weeks to go. The sunflower seeds are still being eaten, but it is nothing like the parade of cardinals we got after the heavy snows. They have paired off now. We see a male and a female around the feed from time to time.
