My birdfeeders have been thinly populated this year. I blame the bears.

Connecticut, my home state, is not alone in finding that bears increasingly intrude on humans. Too many of us enjoy picnicking in our back yards and are careless with scraps, or put garbage out in cans with loose lids. Our ursine neighbors, famous for sensitive schnozzes, may be initially cautious about snagging snacks near human habitation; but they gradually feel more at ease with us than we can safely reciprocate.

Local television news last year had video (captured on smartphone by a housewife peering through a barely-cracked door) of a bear that pushed open a kitchen door and pillaged cupboards. She reported being torn between fascination and fear as it managed clumsily to get the fridge open and munch happily until its appetite was sated.

Last spring, a neighbor a few blocks from me squeezed off video of a mama bear introducing two small cubs to the neighborhood. They played on the lawn furniture with juvenile exuberance while Mama reared up to knock down a seedfeeder tube and smash it open. She then abandoned the birdseed and took the kids home, apparently having belatedly remembered that bears love sunflower seed but not thistle or safflower.

So we all agreed not to put out birdfeeders until our furry friends had begun their hibernation.

How late might that be? Good question. The day may come when naturalists implant a few bears with electronic luggage tags and monitor them to observe when they stay in one place – but for now it’s mostly guesswork.

We at first thought it might be safe to resume nourishing our feathered flock after Halloween, well after first frost but also after the harvest of edibles in the wild had begun to entail more work. An usually warm autumn, however – a token of global warming – persuaded us to wait until a week after Thanksgiving, by which time nights had become decidedly nippy and one might be confident that all bears were happily curled up in extended torpor.

My feeders are festooned on poles just outside my den window, so when I sit at my computer my peripheral vision alerts me to visitors. Among those that overwinter here are woodpeckers, cardinals, finches, sparrows, nuthatches, titmice and chickadees, whom I welcome happily, as well homelier starlings, crows, ravens, and several dovecotes’ worth of damned pigeons.

Thanks again to global warming, a few more commuter species every year seem to realize that they can skip those long, tiring flights to equatorial climates and – with a little help from friends like me – manage New England winters.

A few winged residents stopped by my window in late September, the way some people stroll by restaurants and peer inside to size up the offerings. Finding no food and not needing water (because the summer had been not only warm but wet), they went their natural ways.

By December 1, when I put out a veritable feast of suet-and-seed cakes, most of our avians had perhaps found risk-taking neighbors with earlier offerings – or may even have revived their skill at foraging in the wild. I had a few visitors most winter days, but it was weeks before any birdfeeder need refilling.

Blame the bears.

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