Winter Bird Feeding- What's On the Menu Today
8 years ago
I only feed the birds in the winter. After consulting with a naturalist I have been reassured that feeding the birds in my area during this time will help and not harm them. So today's menu (zero degrees) is black oil sunflower seeds, cracked corn, peanuts as well as two suet mixes. One for the suet feeders and one for under the pine ground feeding (with a mix of black oiled sunflower seeds, cracked corn and peanuts.). The mix in the Tupperware is beef lard, hulled sunflower seeds, peanuts, canary seed and millet. This I just toss under the pine tree with the other bird food. The suet feeder cake is beef suet, peanuts, cracked corn and meal worms.
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8 years agoRelated Discussions
happy november, what did you feed your loving cp today?
Comments (42)Finally had the chance today to do some more work on the pile containing the very old bucket of fish. It still smells rather horrid, but whether it's the fish, the rotting pumpkins or something else - who knows. In fact, much of the fish is rotting, with just the bones and fins evident. Anyway, today I added to the pile: --four paper grocery store bags of shredded or cut up paper napkins, plates, cups, torn up boxes that had contained teas, bandaids, and etc. + many many many many tissues and such. --the paper bags. --one very large plastic bag of Starbucks espresso grounds and two smallish silver Starbucks bags of coffee grounds, with filters. --about 12 pumpkins, squashes, and gourds, already rotting. --contents of compost bucket, mostly veg and fruit stuff, tea bags, coffee grounds from our French press, but also shrimp shells and the paper the shrimp came wrapped in. --coffee from a large bag of coffee in a cardboard box, can't recall which place it came from; this stuff's intended for parties and such --medium-sized bag of leaves, mostly maple, that someone conveniently left next to their garbage can. Naturally, I liberated it. :)...See MoreAnyone else feeding Anna Hummingbirds in winter?
Comments (11)I'm on the other side of the country and was under the impression that there weren't any around this area for winter but saw one Thursday. It visited every flower on a large Camellia shrub, then buzzed by my head, chittering, having a great time! I don't know them well enough to know what kind it was but it was definitely some kind of hummingbird. I reported the sighting to this site and received this reply: "It may come as a shock to you, but your hummingbird could easily be one of a dozen species that we now know live in Alabama in winter. We are fortunate to have in our banding/research studies, Mr. Fred Bassett of Montgomery who does a lot of research work in your part of the state. If you do not have a hummingbird feeder at your home, please hang a feeder now. Mix your sugar water solution 4 parts water to 1 part sugar if you will. With your permission, if the hummer starts coming to your feeder, he would like to come to your yard and try to capture, band/document and identify your uncommon wintering hummer. The most important people in our study of these tiny birds are folks like you who discover them in winter and then contact us."...See Morebirds galore today - feeding on seeds in the garden
Comments (5)My first thought was to say blackbirds, but I don't think there are any blackbirds, even immature ones, with very distinctive spots like that. Could they be starlings? Check out the link below. There's good info on the Identification and the Life History tabs. If it's either blackbirds or starlings, they're both nuisance birds. Will eat you out of house and home--and seed, and very "dirty" birds---a/k/a: poop all over the place! I haven't seen any starlings around here, but for the last couple weeks I've had a HUGE herd of brewer's blackbirds around. Couldn't keep 'em chased away no matter what I did! They'd fly up into the trees and sit up there laughing at me till I came back inside! Had to finally let the feeders "big birds" can access get empty and just stay that way! In the last couple days they seem to have disappeared again. The one possible problem I see with yours being a starling is that they have yellow beaks and in the pic it looks like yours has a black beak. Maybe that's just the pic! The "top" bird on the birdbath looks like a robin to me--right shape and has its head up like they do when they're drinking, but the pic is too dark to be sure of anything. Here's a link to the brewers blackbird so you can do some checking if/when they come back. These two pages also link to other "similar species." If you don't have a bird book--or two, Cornell All About Birds is a great site to look them up! http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brewers_Blackbird/id Hope this helps you, Skybird Here is a link that might be useful: European Starling - All About Birds...See MoreTiny bird feeding great big bird at feeder
Comments (9)I almost posted an observation along these lines several weeks ago. In a one-week span I noticed three separate cowbird chicks all being attended to by blue-grey gnatcatchers. There was always a single cb chick to each set of birds, and never any sign of additional BGGC chicks vying for the food. In that same time span I also noticed a CBchick being fed by a pair of indigo buntings. It's not hard to find them as they are very raucous and conspicuous. I am curious how the numbers and densities of birds most typically affected by CB predations are doing here because we have hordes of cowbirds, yet I always hear/see vireos and thrushes and others that are prime targets for parasitism. I check my nest boxes regularly and destroy any CB eggs in the hopes that at least my small wooded acreage can better sustain songbirds in a time of decline, but we live in farmland with any remaining wooded areas being highly fragmented. Flocks of winter 'blackbirds' are usually groupings of redwings, starlings, grackles and cowbirds fattened up on a steady and readily available farmland diet. I only wonder what our songbird demographics will do in the next few decades....See More
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ZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado