You can learn a lot about wildlife while sitting still and smoking a cigar in your back yard. I suppose you could learn just as much without smoking the cigar, but I need every excuse I can get to puff on a good stogie. I don’t inhale, by the way. Anyway, on one of the very few recent afternoons that it was comfortable enough to sit outside, I lit up and watched my birds as they … [Read more...]

  All the robins in North American were in my yard this week. Maybe not all of them, but a bunch. Yet, the week before there were none. What’s the deal? The bird folks say that the American Robin’s spring migration generally follows a line formed by 36-degree average temperatures, and that makes sense because in winter robins need to either eat fruit or to have soft dirt and wet … [Read more...]

  I had a recent inquiry as to my thoughts on dried meal worms for feeding birds. My thoughts are that my bluebirds won’t touch them, therefore I don’t buy them. But it’s possible I have not been doing it correctly. Meal worms are the larvae of a black beetle. Most birds relish a live mealie – full of protein. Dried mealworms are simply the result of freeze-drying or heat-drying real … [Read more...]

  There are basically two ways to attract birds to your yard – food and water. Of the two, water maybe more important – especially during a dry summer when neighborhood water is scarce, and in winter, when water sources are often frozen. Birds can live for a while without food, but they need water every day. For several years, we have maintained a couple of  de-iced bird baths, one in the … [Read more...]

  My two suet feeders have been getting more and more attention since the weather got cold. They were quite popular this week with a few inches of snow on the ground and nothing much to eat except for my feeders and the seeds I scattered. I saw nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, red bellied woodpeckers, sparrows, chickadees, titmice and wrens squeezing in and out of the suet cages. Suet is … [Read more...]

  My backyard birds have me well trained, especially my blue jays. Right after Thanksgiving, I had bought a big bag of seed with lots of peanuts and fruit. Each morning, I would see the jays fly in right after I scattered seeds.  When I ran out of that seed, I bought a 40-pound bag at Sam’s Club, the Supreme Mix, the best buy on the market. But this blend has only a few nuts – it’s mostly … [Read more...]

  Whenever we amass any stale bread or crackers, we save it, put it beside the door and I take it out for the birds. I try to break the pieces as best I can so the small birds can peck away, but the primary partakers are my three crows. They fly by most every morning to see if there any extra morsels. Crows like the larger pieces of bread, but they don’t eat them whole. Rather, they fly … [Read more...]

  Often, when I go to the back of yard to scatter seed, any birds there will dart off to the shrubs and branches, returning only when I leave. The other day, I noticed a small flock of birds actually flying my way when I opened the seed can. It was my small flock of song sparrows. They flew to within about 10 feet, beneath the forsythia branches, and waited because they have come to know … [Read more...]

  For the first time in recent memory, I have two pairs of bluebirds in my yard. They seemingly get along fine – now. But come spring and nesting time, the feathers will fly. One of the pairs – I think the birds that raised a brood in my yard last summer – inspects the bluebird house on the fence every single day. The male will fly to the hole, peek in, occasionally go inside and turn … [Read more...]