The bird buffet

There's a lot of birds here to eat these days.  Often I'm sure there are more than 100 birds here at once, although they are hard to count on the hop.  Much easier to count in a photo though.  So I did.  In the photo, there's  +/-134!!! (I counted twice).  And the photo is cropping out the outliers and the sentries and ones hacking seeds open in the trees and the ones hopping around on our porch and under the house.So this is how I go through six bags of seeds every winter.The regular swoop cycle is funny.  The birds are all on the ground, foraging, and someone sounds the alarm, and the birds all swoop up into the trees.  But not really all.  There are always a few that stay behind, unperturbed.I'm not leaving the buffet!  That'll be another false alarm.  Bob's twitchy today, I'm sure it's nothing again.  Then the birds all settle back down out of the trees again to toss seeds peacefully for a bit...  Then someone squawks at a wind gust and it happens all over again.