Sunday, February 8, 2009

Birds for breakfast.

About 6 weeks ago, I took delivery of a nice bird feeder from Amazon.com. Surprisingly, none of the local merchants had the model type I wanted. This thing is about 24" tall and features 3 different seed tubes, each about the diameter of a Campbell's soup can. I had my house keeper install it on a metal poll built for that purpose (from Lowe's) about 5 feet from my dining room window. For the first week, it got no action that I saw. Then, just after New Years, I looked out of my kitchen bay window and saw that my neighbors across the street had placed their natural Christmas tree - a five foot blue spruce - out on the curb. I had my house keeper retrieve it and stake it upright about three feet from the feeder. Moreover, I had her sprinkle seeds all into the foliage of the tree. Bam - the very next morning, there were birds feeding in the tree. Within a couple of days, they had caught on to the feeder itself. At first, I had the blinds just barely open. Over a few days, I opened them just a little more each day to habituate the birds to my presence at the dining room table. Now, I have the blinds pulled up half way. The birds tend to ignore me, so long as I move very slowly. Here's the list of birds that frequent my feeder so far. Mourning doves - about 12 to 20, morning and evening. They feed off of the ground below the feeder. There is always plenty for the ground feeders, compliments of a pair of voracious red-bellied woodpeckers who frequent the feeder all day long. Apparently, the act of pecking away bark to get at beetles and grubs is so hard wired that they will invariably stick their long beaks into the seed holes and vigorously kick out several seeds onto the ground for every one they take. Occasionally, they will actually eat the small, round seeds at the feeder. But more often, they grab a black sunflower seed in their beaks, then fly off to the nearby pulp pine border (about 6 feet behind my back fence) and wedge the seeds into the bark of various trees for later consumption. Right now, there is a flock of some small member of the finch family that looks like a compact model of a house sparrow. Having found this steady source of food, they have delayed their farther southward migration and fattened up for a couple of weeks now. There is a pair of cardinals every day. Blue jays show up several times daily - usually four at one time. Boat-tailed grackles occasionally swoop in and run all the other birds off. Of course, when the neighborhood murder of 6 crows pop over the fence, the grackles bug out too. I once saw an eastern blue bird perched atop the pole. They don't eat seeds. I think he was intrigued by the holes in the tubes. I went out after that and bought a nice cedar blue bird house ($10.00 at Lowe's) and attached it to the fence at the other end of the yard. No tenants so far. Now and then, a pair of red-winged black birds show up. I had robins one day, but they continued on south the next day. I don't think they were after the seeds so much as looking for worms and insects in the grass. I came home one afternoon and found the bird feeder absolutely mobbed by a flight of migrating cow birds. They are about the size of a red-winged black bird. The female is a uniform, mousy brown. The male has that same brown on his head, but his body is black with shimmering blue-black wing feathers. There must have been 50 of them. They virtually cleaned out the feeder then flew on farther south. Strangely, I have not seen any of the several other varieties of finches that migrate through here. At any rate, I enjoy watching them up close. It's really quite inexpensive to maintain a good bird feeder. Try it - you'll like it.

16 comments:

Pollyanna said...

Jay:

What a nice description of your "bird feeding" friends...it makes me want to run out and buy a bird feeder!

Jay Moreno said...

Thanks. So much for my critics who say I'm for the birds. Yes, and what of it!?

Pollyanna said...

Jay

Many intelligent and great people have been "for the birds"...to include my Grandfather who was a prominent San Francisco attorney and a real estate broker in Beverly Hills, California. My Mother who is now 86 years old, tells about surviving the depression while living in Beverly Hills. They had a beautiful home but no money as there was none to pay for attorney work and real estate went bust. My Grandfather survived through bartering for his services...so they had many beutiful "things" but no cash to speak of. He also tried to think of inexpensive entertainment for the family. He was a "bird lover" and built a screen room off the detached garage in the backyard. Grandpa Hendrickson hung the familie's discarded Christmas tree from the ceiling of the screened room to creat a place for birds to perch...the screened area became a delightful bird aviary for his beloved doves. For my Mother and Auntie Helen, he built a backyard minature golf course using old tuna fish cans buried in the earth as the holes. Finally, Grandpa was forced to move his downtown Real Estate office to the families formal dining room where Mom and Auntie Helen took on the responsibility of office assistants. Their home was positioned on a corner lot on Swall Drive where he conducted what little business there was during these meager times. When Grandpa made a sale and a little money came in, the entire family was treated to a five course meal and a night at the theatre with chocolate sodas afterwards (all costing around a $1.00 each in those days) in order to keep spirits high. The family spent their evenings learning and reciting poetry in the living room instead of listening to the radio...no television of course! Along with an interest in birds my Grandfather also had a extensive sea shell collection which Mom said he finally sold to put some groceries on the table. They survived the depression but all emerged as "bird lovers" :)

Have a good week Jay!

Jay Moreno said...

Thank you - and thanks for the story.

Jay Moreno said...

By the way, I just got back from buying more bird seed at Lowe's. A 20lb bag of mixed seed and a 20lb bag of black sunflower seeds came to $18.00 and change. That will last quite a while and feed hundreds of birds.

Anonymous said...

St Marys Resident, that was a lovely story! And Jay, as far as attracting other finches to your feeder have you purchased a seed blend specifically for finches? We have - it has a mixture of thistle seed and other small seeds - and the Goldens flock to it every day once they discovered it was there. Lowes has a nice mix and there's hardly any waste. Oh, and you can get a gigantic bag of sunflower seeds from Walmart for a lot cheaper than what Lowes offers, but stay away from the mixed seed blends; they are loaded with those round reddish-brown seed that the seed companies use as filler and no bird seems to like. You may have to pay a little more for special blends, but there won't be all the waste to clean up under the feeder - even the squirrels seem to hate it!

Please keep us all posted on your bird happenings - it's a nice distraction from all the typical drama occuring in these parts! :)

Jay Moreno said...

I find that the doves seem to eat that reddish brown round seed you mentioned. My feeder has these little plastic ball-and-turret type covers that you can flip down over the holes. They have narrow slits in them designed especially for thistle seeds. Problem is, I've not seen any other types of finches at all so far. They would eat some of the type seeds I have in there, but they just have not shown up. We used to get lots of them at my parents house on Talahi Island in Savannah. Maybe they just have'nt shown up yet, but I doubt it. More likely they have already passed south of us.

Oh, by the way, when I went out to unload those bags of seeds, I realized that I misspoke earlier. Those were actually two, ten pound bags of seeds. I guees that with my nerve damage and subsequent loss of muscle, they feel like 20 lbs used to feel. A ten pound bag is still a lot of bird seed, though.

Anonymous said...

I was never a "bird watcher" though they always interested me, especially ones with beautiful colors. When my husband became ill and we were both confined to the house for days on end, I was looking for something to help with the boredom and a friend gave me a hummingbird feeder that I placed outside the bedroom window so that my husband and I could watch them feed. Then it became so interesting to me that I bought 3 iron poles and feeders and placed them outside the windows so that we could watch the many different type birds that came through our yard all year. I bought a bird book so that I could identify them and started a journal lising the times of year the birds would come through and feed at our feeders. Even though my husband is no longer here to enjoy the birds, I still keep up with the species that visit and continue to keep my journal updated. I have since added a bird bath to the area. It is always exciting when a new species arrives that I have never seen before. It's ok to be "for the birds" Jay. They are beautiful and interesting creatures.

Jay Moreno said...

Yeah, I'm going to get an Audubon bird book. We had one when I was a kid, so I already know virtually all of the native birds and a good many of the migratory ones.

Thanks for the reminder about the hummingbird feeders. I think I'll get one AND plant trumpet vine against my back fence. We had a huge growth of trumpet vine on a trellis outside our screened porch when I was a kid. Humming birds love it.

Anonymous said...

While looking for unique learning activities for my home daycare children, I ran across an easy craft that has rewards the birds and the watchers like I never imagined!

Take a pine-cone, smear some creamy peanut butter on the pine-cone and then roll it in some extra seeds. Use fishing line and a small hook to hang from tree limbs, just under eaves hanging low enough to be seen from windows, or anywhere else you'd like to enjoy seeing birds from inside your home. Reuse same pine-cones once depleted, or use new ones!

This makes great treats for all the birds.Once I hung mine, I had birds everywhere! I also noticed that when I supplemented them with my feeders, the birds would return to where the pinecones were looking for their "treats".
Little do they know, we are the ones getting the treat!
The birds will dance around the peanut butter pine-cones for longer periods of time than at the feeders trying to get every smear of peanut butter.

Happy bird feeding!!

Jay Moreno said...

Very interesting. The way my luck runs, I would probably attract an escaped elephant before birds though.

Pollyanna said...

Jay:

It has been my observation that you get more comments from your readers when you display your "softer side"...bird watching...recipes...household tips and the like :)

Jay Moreno said...

By the way, has anyone made my Killer Black Bean Chili yet?

Pollyanna said...

Got the ingredients to your "killer black bean chili" on my grocery list for this week...my husband is having a total shoulder replacement surgery tomorrow and his retired brother is flying in from Arizona on Saturday to help him get through rehab...I thought he would enjoy a bowl of chili!

Anonymous said...

Jay,
This was a very good read. I enjoyed it. You should write more stories like it. I think that if you lived in a less populated area, you would enjoy watching deer wander into your yard once you put up a feeder for them. I have a few myself and I enjoy watching the deer and the racoons come in to get their fill. I have spotted a black bear once or twice. They don't usually stay in the area for too long as they tend to wander for miles but eventually come back. Then, of course, the wild ferrel hogs are a pain. I'll be the first to admit that I have hung my .308 out of the back window of my house that is above the back porch and let him experience the feel of hot lead and then go out and collect them and eventually butcher them and toss them in the freezer. Those are disasterious beasts and will tear a back yard up if you let them. Anyway, try doing this more. I feel you will find yourself to be less antagonized by your normal critics. Have a good one!

Jay Moreno said...

Glad you enjoyed it.

Speaking of wild hogs, there was some really wild wild hoh news on Drudge yesterday.

It seems that all wild hogs in Germany have
some level of radioactivity from Chernobyl.

Wild hog meat is a delicacy which hunters are allowed to sell.

However, the problem is so bad that German law requires all hogs to be checked for radiation levels before sale or consumption. If I recall correctly, about 30 % of the carcassses exceed the legal limti and have to be destroyed.

It might be easier to mandate night hunting and forbid harvesting the ones that glow in the dark!