Iggy has been away from home for three long weeks, so our “squirrel seed” ran out this past Tuesday.

The seed bags were still buried under snow, so I resorted to re-stocking the squngee with dried corn cobs as quickly as the squirrels could strip the cobs. Sometimes that took two cobs a day, which I took from the three-foot corn bag in our mud room.

(What? Not everyone keeps an industrial-sized supply of corn cobs near their back door?)

I noticed something curious. The squirrels seemed to remove the niblets only to drop them on the ground. Once enough accumulated to attract sparrows, they came to feed on the niblets.

I took a closer look. It seems that the squirrels extract the essential goodness out of the corn, leaving the hull. The sparrows aren’t as picky about nutritional efficiency, so they suck up the squirrels’ leftovers.

Thus, two beasts are fed by one niblet.