A whole week of just chickadees and then bam, a rose-breasted grosbeak showed up

Last Tuesday I was starting to think my feeder was cursed. For like 5 days straight it was only house sparrows and a couple of chickadees, nothing else. I even cleaned the feeder and swapped the seed mix, still nothing. Then Saturday morning I saw this chunky bird with a red triangle on its chest just sitting on the nyjer sock, never seen one here in 3 years. Has anyone else had a dry spell that broke out of nowhere, or did I just get lucky with migration timing?

1 comments

1 Comment

noahmartin1d ago

3 years of feeding here and Ive had the exact opposite takeaway. My dry spells usually mean something is off with the birds, not the feeder. Last October I went 9 days with just juncos and a single blue jay, turns out a sharp shinned hawk was working the block and everything else went quiet. You cleaned the feeder and swapped seed, but did you check if the nyjer was stale or if the sock was crusted over? That grosbeak mightve just been passing through, but I bet your real problem was something you couldve spotted on day 2, not luck.