I <BAFFLE> NJ: Birding in an Age of Catastrophic Molt
- Charlie Biskupic
- Aug 20
- 7 min read
A big change for me this summer is that I now live my life strictly by the 5-7-9 rule… but before I can explain what that means, I feel compelled to make sense of how I even got myself into this beautiful mess.
Birding has led me to regularly utter bizarre combinations of words like “White-Breasted Nuthatch,” “Dark-Eyed Junco,” “Red-Bellied Woodpecker,” and “Don’t try to lift that package, I think it’s 35 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds.”
Against my better judgement, I just did the math and discovered I’ve bought 98.3 pounds of suet and bird seed since June 1st. Until recently, I would have been nervous to reveal that to my wife Tara in a public forum like this, but I saw the way she laughed at me when she caught me yelling at a mourning dove through my phone on Sunday, so I know she’s already accepted her fate as a semi-widow to my bird-brained fixation.
PROLOGUE TO AN OBSESSION
The current prevailing online wisdom is that millennials become bird obsessed when they hit their mid-thirties. I got my first taste of what was to come at 32. It was the height of the pandemic and we still lived in Queens, which was one of the places hit hardest by COVID.
I’d regularly go for long walks to take a break from the one bedroom apartment that served as our home, shared workspace, and the location of every meal and social interaction we had for months straight while the constant sound of ambulance sirens blared outside our window. At the end of one of those strolls a brightly colored bird with black wings landed right in front of me on 34th ave and bounced along as I walked for about 20 feet before flying away. Thanks to some googling and a younger sister who knows way more about nature than me, I discover it was a Scarlet Tanager.
Scarlet Tanagers are rarely spotted by humans who aren’t seeking them out because they tend to hang out in the upper canopy of mature forests. According to Wikipedia, they need about 25 acres of trees to breed, so I have no idea what brought that bird to the sidewalks of Astoria in May of 2020, but it was surprisingly exhilarating to make a new friend after months of isolation.
Two years later, during our first spring living in the suburbs, a copy of the “Birds of New Jersey Field Guide” caught my eye in a used bookshop and I’ve enjoyed carrying it in one of my cargo shorts pockets on most of my walks ever since.
But my feathered fascination really took flight when Tara and our daughter Margo gifted me a Birdfy Smart Bird Feeder for Christmas this year.
I finally got around to setting it up in early June and have quickly gone through three phases as a bird feeder landlord:
PHASE I: The Seed Saga Begins
As an excited young birder, I haphazardly picked a spot in my side yard to set up shop. I loved having my feeder hanging on a tree in my side yard overlooking my fire pit. The birds loved it too and because I had bought spicy anti-squirrel seed, I didn’t have to ever worry about rodents defiling my new favorite toy.
…Then a couple weeks in, rodents began defiling my new favorite toy. Squirrels started attacking the feeder from all direction, scaring away birds, and eating copious amounts of seeds (If you’re foolish enough to follow me in this addictive amusement, ignore the prevalent online advice to buy spicy seed to keep squirrels away. It’s needlessly expensive and squirrels are the Martin Riggs of the natural world: Reckless nihilists willing to eat anything — even lethal taste weapons — because they’re so desperate to feel something.)
My bird feeder came with a “squirrel alarm” and a speaker that allows you to yell at intruders through your phone, but both counter measures failed to elicit even a moments hesitation from my yard’s greedy gremlins. Clearly something more drastic needed to be done…
PHASE II: The Seed-Eaters Strike Back
Through extensive research consisting of a couple google searches and skims of Reddit I learned about the maxim that is now my life philosophy: The 5-7-9 Rule. Squirrels can jump straight up five feet, horizontally seven feet, and drop down safely from nine feet. If you want to have any hope of keeping your feeder rodent free, you have to abide by those rules. Whenever possible, I also keep myself within the boundaries of the 5-7-9 rule, so I can minimize my worry about a squirrel assassination attempt.
I was also baffled to learn that baffle can be a noun, as in “a device (such as a plate, wall, or screen) to deflect, check, or regulate flow or passage.”
Armed with this new knowledge, I bought a 95 inch pole that included a squirrel baffle, and initiated Phase II of my feeder set-up. Of course, I immediately ran into a Charlie baffle: my extreme lack of handiness. I somehow put together the baffle upside down so it curled up like a nun’s habit instead of the shiny dunce cap cone I needed to block the squirrels.
After beating the odds and fixing that issue, I picked an area of my front yard that adheres to the 5-7-9 rule. An added bonus is that it’s also right outside my dining room’s bay window, so I get to enjoy the birds on camera and live from my dinner table too.
And that’s where this story should end, but alas my bucolic yard turned into a hellscape when we went to Wisconsin for an extended visit. One morning I woke up to discover something had knocked my feeder to the ground and it now was open season on my seeds.
Squirrels had their way with my millet, deer devoured the cracked corn, a raccoon even showed up on camera and all I could do for days was watch in horror from 1,000 miles away more helpless than Mission Control in Apollo 13.
A friend and fellow bird lover gave me a small morsel of hope to cling onto when she saw my plight on Instagram. She recommended the Cadillac of baffles to me: Duncraft’s Two Piece Torpedo. Her feeders have stayed nuisance free in the five years since she got one, but she did warn me of one down side:
“Just be careful... Adding this may easily result in further bird feeding addiction.”
PHASE III: A New Hope for My Wallet
After setting up my new premium baffle, I settled into life as a confidently squirrel-free bird watcher and immediately got slapped with a new problem that sent me into a tailspin: my feeder became too popular with the birds. I’d fill it first thing in the morning and often within an hour it’d be picked clean.
As fun as it was to watch the feeding frenzy, my bank account couldn’t handle that level of avian assault. So I again turned to the expertise of the internet and learned that buying a second feeder and placing it close, but not too close to the first would help calm down my customers. It also helps to put different seeds in each feeder set-up, so the various species can focus on what appeals to them most instead of all fighting for the same thing.
I did the only reasonable thing I could think of and bought another pole and two hanging feeders to place on it. I then bought bulk bags of specialized seeds for each set up and a special seed guard for my Birdfy feeder, so the birds have to work a little harder to get their food out.
As soon as I saw it all together out my window, only one word came to mind: Glorious. My only regret is that I went cheap on the second pole and got it too short, which led to one of my deer neighbors knocking over a hanging feeder the very first night it was in my yard.
I honestly deserved that hazing for trying to cut a corner on something so important, so I quickly bought a third pole and used parts from it to extend my hanging feeders much higher in the sky, and reader if you’ve made it this far, I’m happy to report it was all worth it because based on what I witnessed this week my feeders are now all deer proof …until a slightly taller deer comes sniffing around my yard.
(I’m also rolling the dice and holding off on buying a second expensive baffle for my hanging feeders until I see a squirrel actually try to scale the new pole.)
EPILOGUE
A detente has been negotiated in my yard. Including repeat customers, I get a couple hundred visits to my feeders each day, but it takes about 48 hours for the birds to empty the coffers. Some of the seed gets knocked to the ground where it can be enjoyed by the deer, chipmunks, and even the squirrels… and that’s totally cool with me!
The big news on our corner is that it’s molting season now, so we’re getting some pretty gnarly looking punk rockers on #TheBirdFeed as they lose their feathers and wait for their replacement plumage to grow.
Yesterday I spotted my first blue jay who had gone completely bald. The condition is called a catastrophic molt, which sounds dramatic, but just means losing all your feathers at once instead of the typical gradual shed. From what I’ve read, scientists aren’t sure what causes the phenomenon in some cardinals, blue jays, and other similar species, but I’m not one to judge. Haven’t we all had at least one catastrophic molt in our lives?
My Song of the Day: “Gild the Lily” by Billy Strings
The Book You Should Give To Every Burgeoning Bird Lover In Your Life: “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” by Amy Tan
I had a coworker swear by greasing the pole as a squirrel deterrent, however we took the baffle approach as well. This post is giving me the itch to up our feeder game!
A delightful, educational morning read!