For the Birds, Part 2

This is what Lydia looked like for most of the morning. I couldn't drag her away from watching her beloved hawks. They were busy working on their nest, and she witnessed many of the pair's flights to and fro, bringing twigs and all to fashion a home for their young.

Red-tailed Hawk by Josiah via telescope.

Come feed the little birds,
Show them you care
And you'll be glad if you do
Their young ones are hungry
Their nests are so bare
All it takes is tuppence from you

The essentials: Black oil sunflower seed, water, empty suet wrapper.

Dawn wrote a wonderful informative post a couple of weeks ago about bird feeding basics. Feeding birds takes more than tuppence for sure, but it's worth every penny and it's such a simple way to foster a love of natural science.  I would heartily second Dawn's assessment, and studies show as well, that black oil sunflower seed is the best all-around food for backyard birds. We were in the habit of buying safflower seed as well, as squirrels and house sparrows were quite a nuisance at our previous house, and they won't eat safflower. But it is quite expensive compared to sunflower, and the birds seem to like sunflower as well. Lydia likes to fill the tube feeder with alternating layers of white safflower and black sunflower just because it looks pretty that way. Like Dawn, we stopped using thistle (nyjer) as the finches seem to prefer the sunflower or safflower. As it gets closer to March we will start putting out our hummingbird feeders and dishes of grape jelly for the catbirds, or Jellybirds as we call them. :-) Last summer we sighted an oriole a few times, so I would like to make some sort of oriole feeder this year as well.

We also provide suet for the woodpeckers. I just buy the least expensive cakes, as the woodpeckers don't seem to mind and it makes it easier to bear when the occasional flock of flying pigs starlings comes through and gobbles it all up in an instant. We regularly have Downy Woodpeckers, Hairy Woodpeckers (we call them Narnians as they look just like the Downies only larger, and the animals are larger than usual in Narnia, the talking ones that is), and Red-bellied Woodpeckers.

Pencil drawings by Lydia.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a most informative site with all sorts of information on attracting birds to your yard, choosing seed and feeder types, setting up nestboxes and much, much more. Their bird identification guide is really wonderful. Every so often we'll spot a new species that we are not familiar with, like the white throated sparrows that showed up during the snow the other day. We start with our field guide (National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds--E: Eastern Region - Revised Edition) of course, but it is not always clear what species we are seeing. The online site is handy because there are several pictures, such as a male and female and perhaps one of breeding plumage and a juvenile as well. You can also listen to the calls or songs of many birds to help with identification. If things are still tricky, I like to bring up close-ups of the possible species, and then looking at them side by side identification usually becomes crystal clear. You just can't do all that with a paper field guide.:-)

Our counts for the day:

European Starling - 20

Mourning Dove - 6

Dark-eyed Junco - 11

Ring-billed Gull - 1 (seen on the way to church)

American Crow - 11

Mockingbird - 1

Red-tailed Hawk - 2

Goldfinch - 1

Tufted Titmouse - 3

Chickadee - 1

House Finch - 19

White-Throated Sparrow - 1

Turkey Vulture - 1

Blue Jay - 1

Downy Woodpecker - 1

Hairy Woodpecker - 1

Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1

Red-winged Blackbird - 7

Eastern Bluebird - 2

Did your birds count? Who do you have at your feeders?