Third suet cake this month

It’s official. I’ve got the weirdest birds. Normally I go through a suet cake about every six months or so, but I just put out my fourth this summer, and I kind of expect it to be gone in about four days. I’d say that I’ve got a raccoon visiting at night, except I’ve been watching it disappear during the day, right outside my office window, and it’s birds, and very few of them are woodpeckers and nuthatches. No, it’s a bunch of house sparrows and one very determined robin.

Yep, a robin. A robin has learned how to cling to the vertical surface of the suet cage and hang there, stuffing his face. He taught the baby house finches earlier this summer, and now they are teaching the second nest, so you can imagine when they get going that it is noisy for about five minutes, and then they are gone.

The birds I put the suet up for, mainly nuthatches, downies, and the wrens (who are doing noisily good) still get in there, but when the robin is around, he scares every one off. Interestingly enough, he’s very dark colored. I’m wondering if it’s the suet.