Stashing MORE Cache

I’m starting to wonder if my whole backyard will soon be made up of birdseed. Yesterday, a Red-breasted Nuthatch (one of my favorite birds–a real character) visited the feeder repeatedly for over an hour. Just like last week’s chickadee, he glided into the daylily bed after every visit. I knew he wasn’t caching seeds in the daylily scapes because the chickadee already filled them up quite nicely, thank you.

Not to worry, he found a new place to stash his treasure…in the top of my pound-in edging. I have some older raised beds made of landscape timbers and the wood is starting to rot. Until my husband has time to replace them, I’ve reinforced the timbers with pound-in edging so the soil won’t erode. Now where each piece of edging joins together, there’s a sunflower seed neatly tucked inside.

I’ve been feeding birds for almost two decades and I’ve never seen so much caching behavior before. Do the birds know something I don’t know? Will I be buried in 50 feet of snow this winter? I better start hiding chocolate around the house just in case.