Male and Female Cardinal Pair Visit our Fly-Through Feeder

Two weeks ago, I posted about the new fly-through bird feeder that we added to our backyard birding setup and mentioned how we had not yet witnessed it being used (but...knew it was due to the bird poop on the squirrel baffle).   I've posted two visitors to our feeders here in the [bird visitor log] tag but they were on different feeders.  First was a red-bellied woodpecker on our suet feeder.  Then just last week, I posted a photo of a house sparrow on one of our hanging gravity feeders. 

When we put up the fly-through feeder, I was hoping for Cardinals.  Guess what?  We had a few visitors!  While these photos aren't awesome because they're with my phone all zoomed in and through Winter windows with screens, I'm hoping you can make out what is happening.

First...this beautiful red male cardinal.  If you look closely, you'll see he's on there with a House Sparrow chowing down.

And like two minutes later, he took off and stood guard.  So his lady could come in and eat.  She's a little harder to see, but her orange beak stands out.  The Sparrow is still there, too.

I took those photos earlier this month, but I've been seeing this pair pretty regularly now.  It is nice to see them take turns getting their feedbag on with our seeds/cracked corn/peanuts.  There have been a few other visitors that I haven't quite gotten photos of yet including at least one Bluejay and some other dark blue/grey little birds that I can't identify yet, but with my Field Guide to Illinois Birds handy, I bet I can narrow it down.

When Spring comes, I think we're going to have to move this feeder to a different location as it currently is right in the middle of the grass (to keep it away from perches that squirrels can use to climb aboard), but I want to keep it somewhere we can view it from the kitchen.