Cropped, sharpened, composited.

Yesterday after work, during a break from the severe snowstorm dumping foot of snow in the valley, I watched the birds feeding in the backyard. There were Chickadees, House Finches, Lesser Goldfinches, Downy Woodpeckers ( a male and a female ) and a few Mourning Doves all feeding peacefully.

And then the Piranha Birds showed up - AKA - European Starlings. These guys came in like locusts and chaos broke out everywhere. All the peaceful birds flew up into the trees. The Starlings went nuts on the feeders - dumping all the seeds outs, ravishing the suet feeders, squabbling amongst each other and generally wreaking havoc.

I tossed another suet ball out the door and within minutes they were all over it. Every now and then I would tap the window and spook them off so the other birds could get a bit of a meal. The Starlings came right back and before long they were conditioned to my window tapping as a false threat. They only flew up about 3 feet then dropped like stones back to the feeding business. Looked like a sci-fi space movie when the artificial gravity device turns on and everything in the space ship drops instantly. They cleaned up the crumbs and left. The feeders were full that morning...now empty.