I don’t know if that title is correct, but the birds in my yard have eaten almost nothing from my bird feeder this winter. They were thick in the summer. I would have thought that in frigid winter when worms are deep in the earth and plants are not putting out seeds, they would need some supplement to their diet. I provided that with a suet feeder. But they weren’t interested. It is the same stuff they ate last summer, but no.

I read somewhere that in really freezing weather, like we had last week, they would enjoy some plain cooked oatmeal or cooked rice. We’ve had single digit temperatures, and the suet feeder hung unused. So, I cooked some oatmeal—one bowl for me and one for them. I let it cool and put it on a disposable pie pan and sat the container outside underneath the suet feeder. It didn’t take long for them to find it! I had birds all over the place. It looked like an Alfred Hitchcock film in my backyard. Obviously, I couldn’t get a good picture of the giant flocks swooping down, but this is a small sampling of the birds I’ve fed in the last week. And when the oatmeal was gone, they once more ate the suet.

The temperatures have come up and I don’t feed the birds oatmeal every morning, but they are once more eating the suet cakes they ate last summer. Maybe they just needed a change.

But I must agree, I am thankful for warm oatmeal on a chilly morning. It makes me feel all toasty inside. It’s hard to blame the birds. And something different in the diet is a welcome change.

So, stay warm and try something new. What are you reading, writing, crafting this week?