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Bird Watching
isherwood777

Woodpecker birdfood

10 years ago

A very nice person in New England is feeding Woodpecker bird food exclusively to prevent waste and to attract the most variety of birds to her feeders. I'm finding the best price per pound on the Drs. Foster & Smith website and there's a good one on Amazon. I'm interested in one without corn since I feed a corn mix on the ground. Have you any experience with woodpecker food?

Featured Answer
  • 10 years ago
    last modified: 10 years ago

    As for woodpecker to suet basket size ratio, the suet basket can be as big or as small as you like, as long as the bird has a place to cling and prop itself with its tail. For example, a small basket or cage attached to a 4x4 post will accommodate any size of woodpecker. I think the only time you might run into any problems is with hanging suet feeders, even then I don't think the bids would be too picky.

    I have to chime in on the tree issue as well.

    I live just a few miles east of the Dakota Hogback, the first "noticeable" geologic formation at the western edge of the Great Plains that forms the base of the Rocky Mountains. Historically, the land we inhabit in and around Denver was short grass prairie. Explorers to the region such as Stephen Long and Zebulon Pike lamented the monotony of the landscape, condemning the entire region as "sterile." Colonel Long notably commented on the virtual non existence of trees. Even the ubiquitous cottonwood, which now forms veritable forests along the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers here in Colorado, was a rare site in 1820 when Americans first came here from the east.

    Course, now you wouldn't know it. What was once considered a sea of grass is littered with trees. Along riparian corridors that in the past flooded so frequently that seedlings were simply washed away and artificial "urban forests" that have grown as fast as their city homes which gobble up the native landscape at an alarming rate.

    I can say that I am not a fan of trees, at least not where they don't belong. Sure eastern hardwood and Western coniferous forests are wonderful, and I spend lots of time in the latter in fact. But here on the prairie, I'll take fields of blue grama over blue spruce any day. Given the chance I would remove every last tree around my house, as sacrilegious as it may be, lol.

    Gorgeous pictures by the way! We have a resident great horned owl that shows up around the house, and at one of local reservoirs last week I came across three of them.

    I love the sparrows, too. there's so much variety, and if you take the time to appreciate them, they are a lot more than just "little brown jobbies." They come in an amazing variety of colors and patterns. We get a song and white crowned every once in a while, and a little more frequently a spotted towhee will show up. But the only sparrows I regularly see at the feeder is the juncos.

    Here's one of the song sparrows that I haven't seen in a while, very uncommon at the house, but very common everywhere else I go lol.


    And the white crowned sparrow that was here back in February. Again, I always see them when I go hiking, but very rare at my feeders.


    And the towhee that comes around when it snows (sometimes). At the State Park I worked at, these guys are everywhere, probably one of, if not the most, common bird. But, again, getting one at the feeders at the house is a rare treat.


    Okay, one last picture.... A vesper sparrow (I think) that was singing at me when I was looking for burrowing owls this past summer (found one of the owls, but it saw me and took off long before I was able to get a picture of it.)


    Wait... wasn't this supposed to be about woodpeckers?
    Well, here's "Harry" hanging out on my home-made peanut butter log, his favorite food. Sadly, I haven't seen him in over a week after he become a regular visitor for nearly a month, I hope nothing happened to the little guy. Anyways, recently, the downy's, chickadees, and bushtits have been really into the peanut butter as well.

    Robins also won't typically come to feeders, though, they might come for (live) meal worms and fruit. I was hiking up in the one canyons west of my house last week and in the gamble oak and juniper scrub there was gobs of them and Townsend's solitaires gorging themselves on the juniper berries. Course, we had almost total crop failure for everything but juniper this year with a late freeze followed by a cold spring, so there's not much else out there for the non-seed eaters.

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