Birds have disappeared from our neighborhood (1 Viewer)

Good morning, I've been feeding birds for many years and we usually have a couple of dozen birds in our yard at any given time - plus a few freeloading squirrels. This summer raccoons started attacking our feeders so I left them empty for two or three months. I put them back up a couple of weeks ago, but I've only seen a couple of birds and one very skittish squirrel (they usually travel in a pack of 5 or 6). This morning, I realized I haven't even heard birds singing in the mornings lately.

Our neighbor started raising chickens this spring and lost entire flock to coyotes who attacked his coops. He's now let the two surviving roosters wander free range. There's a huge field behind our houses and none of our yards are fenced so the roosters are frequently scratching around our feeders. The roosters have claimed a couple of trees that catbirds used to nest in. I'm pretty sure the roosters are scaring off the squirrels, but could they be scaring off the songbirds as well?

Not sure about your situation, they might've all got scared away by the raccoons and coyotes? I do know right now we are right at the beginning of fall harvest, and theres tons of berries, seeds, nuts, fruits ready to eat. Birds will naturally flock to everything they can get in the wild, instead of our backyard buffets. I always take this time to clean all my feeders and give them a really good soaking. The feeding areas I give them a good cleaning as well.

Fear not, they will return when the natural sources run out. Usually they return to my backyard buffet when the cold fronts start rolling thru up north. I see this situation every fall around the end of August, first of September. They will come back eventually o

I didn't think about the raccoons and coyotes scaring them off. That could be it. We do have big fields nearby so maybe they are off visiting greener pastures. It's just so lonely without them! I think I'll get my yard and feeders cleaned up this weekend and try to have everything ready for their return.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer - you have eased my mind a bit.

Did you try to mount your feeders in a raccoon-safe way? I found this on the internet.

Wow! That’s quite the set up. I think that’s more than I can handle at this point. However, our raccoons have moved on to greener pastures. Two things happened in last week. The more aggressive rooster disappeared, and the birds started coming back. I think the other one is gone now, too. I feel bad about losing them - they were an interesting addition to our neighborhood - but I think they frightened the songbirds. I cleaned my feeders and set them back up plus a couple of new ones. I’m looking forward to a wide variety of birds this fall.
Thank you for taking the time to answer me!

We are having some cold fronts roll thru Texas, and I've noticed the past few days the birds are showing up again. I put out 2 new suet blocks yesterday and they were really going at it, and I actually put more seeds in the feeder!! :t: