Bird stories are feathers in their caps

"People have taken them into their greenhouses and over-wintered them," said Massachusetts Audubon Society naturalist Chris Leahy. "One has returned to the same private greenhouse for several winters in a row. They may be pioneers extending their range."

People often have special relationships with wild birds that enrich their lives. While most birds don't require human hand-outs, said Leahy, "we know, for example, a certain number of Baltimore orioles don't go south for whatever reason, and could not survive the winter without feeders."

Linda Cocca, who runs the society's wildlife information line, found one of these last winter, huddled in a domed suction-cup feeder on her second-floor window in Watertown.

"He would use the feeder for shelter and would sit in it," she said. "I had sunflower hearts. He'd pick them up and drop them until he found one that was small, so I put them in my blender, to make them really small, and he guzzled them and made it through the winter. The last time I saw him was in May. Before that, I'd never seen an oriole in my yard, just at Mount Auburn Cemetery."

Hugh Wiberg, who writes a birding column for the Wilmington Town Crier, is well known for training wild birds to eat hulled sunflower seeds out of his hand. Author of the best-selling "Hand Feeding Backyard Birds" (Storey Books), he has trained chickadees (the easiest), tufted titmice, white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers.

Wiberg's readers annually report seeing 28-30 different birds in their backyards, including occasional turkeys, which were exterminated in Massachusetts before the Civil War but were reintroduced in the 1970s and now number almost 20,000 statewide.

"A couple of elderly women in Rockport called the police, because there were a pair of turkeys on their porch and they were afraid to go out," said Leahy. "There's nothing to fear. Just take a broom to them. But they can be intimidating because they're so large. A turkey cock stands 3 1/2 feet tall."

Massachusetts isn't the only state where gobblers have made a comeback. Barbara Ellis, author of "Taylor's Weekend Gardening Guides: Attracting Birds and Butterflies," thought it was neat when a few turkeys first appeared on her rural property in eastern Pennsylvania, but she took down most of her feeders a couple of years ago when the hungry winter flock swelled to 65. "That's just too many turkeys!"

Two new bird species from the mid-Atlantic states are the melodious Carolina wren and the handsome red-bellied woodpecker, which actually has a red crown and nape, not a red stomach. Both are attracted to suet, which you can buy from your local butcher, grocery meat department, or in preformed cakes where birdseed is sold. The best all-around seed for most birds is black oil sunflower seed, but each species has its particular tastes and habits.

For instance, Lincoln dentist Winty Harrington feeds bluebirds throughout the year with live mealworms ($36 plus shipping buys him 10,000 mealworms, a month's supply, from Grub Co., Box 15001, Hamilton, Ohio 45015; 800-222-3563). "I transfer them to a plastic washtub, then we sprinkle half a container of cornmeal in there and cut up some apples every day so they can consume moisture. I use a sieve each morning to separate some out and I call out, `Hey bluebirds! Come and get it!' They'll come right down. I put the mealworms inside a birdhouse where the bluebirds nest in the springtime so it's a place they are accustomed to, and where they have no competition from other birds. . . because all birds love mealworms!" Yum.

Harrington has built his home and office over a dammed-up waterway in the middle of his family's old farm. The walls are largely glass so his patients can watch the birds while in the dentist's chair. He also feeds ducks and geese.

"They come up and put their bills against the window," he said. "One day, my hygienist grabbed a Canada goose -- which you shouldn't do because they can put your eye out -- but she carried this one right into the office and it sat in her arms until she showed everybody. Then she took it back outside and it shook itself and started eating cracked corn again. We've also had snow geese, which are rare, and hooded mergansers."

What Harrington is famous for locally, however, is feeding vultures, another relatively new bird here.

"I collect road kill a couple of times a month, whenever I have my trailer," he said. "I don't want to throw a dead racoon into the car! I'll pick it up and put it in front of our office, and I'll let the vultures come. We've had as many as four at a time." It certainly distracts the patients during dental procedures.

While Harrington is an enthusiast, Doris and Ted Bardsley of Lincoln say they accidentally stumbled into a 20-year backyard relationship with a pair of red-shouldered hawks, and didn't even realize at first that it was unusual.

"It started because my husband's mother had cleaned out her freezer and had some meat she was throwing away, and he said he would put it out for the crows," recalled Doris. "So he put it in the yard and saw the crows were circling but that there was a hawk standing in the middle of it. It was a lone female. So he started cooking up ground turkey and chicken for her, but the neighbor's dog would eat some of it, and the neighbor didn't want that, so he built an 8-foot-tall feeding platform. When she would hear the garage door open each morning, you could see her perking up. He'd whistle and call her `Big Bird' and she'd come."

Several years later, the female hawk was joined by a male who also came to the feeding platform. They built a nest in a big oak nearby and raised a brood each year.

"A couple of the young ones came to the feeder, but not for long," said Doris. Since red-shouldered hawks prefer mice to birds, the local avian population cohabited peacefully with the hawk family.

"Someone told us these hawks don't live more than 12 years, but these were well fed, and you could tell they were the same ones because of the way they interacted with my husband," said Doris.

Last spring, the Bardsleys saw the female only once, and then she disappeared for good. The male built a nest by himself and continued to come to the feeder all season, then he, too, disappeared three months ago. Doris was philosophical about the end of the long relationship. Ted himself had suffered a heart attack in April and was finding the hawk feeding tiring to keep up.

"We miss them," she said. "But that's the way life is."