9 posts tagged “birds”

I have a cat stalking my birdfeeders, damn it. He's a big fat calico who's hanging out underneath my single boxwood, waiting for the chance to pounce on the groundfeeding birds. I need to come up with a way to block him out of his little hidey-hole down there. This morning I chased him all the way down my side yard and into the alley, and yesterday I chased him out three times. My neighborhood, so close to downtown and very urban, is full of feral cats that have nothing better to do than crap on my lawn and wait to kill my songbirds. Aside from modifying the bottom of that shrub so he can't get in there, I'm going to start sending Basil out after him. If he can get his mouth on him, he'll kill him, which I will gladly allow.

On a different birdfeeding note, I had my first Carolina wren yesterday. Super cute busybodies with stick-up tails like chipmunks, wrens are. It perched on my porch railing and methodically scooped up safflower seeds from one end to another (incidentally, it's the reason I realized I had a cat problem...it suddenly swooped up into the tree while I watched. Birds have a very particular way of fleeing when a predator is present, so this little guy notified me of my problem. Thanks, wren!).

 

Urban birdies are obviously more daring than their country counterparts. My feeders have only been up two days now, and they are hopping! (no pun intended) When I lived in the country, it took the better part of a week for a variety of birds to discover newly-placed feeders. This morning I saw chickadees, the first goldfinch, mourning doves, rock doves and house sparrows. I've heard white-breasted nuthatches and downy woodpeckers but haven't seen any yet. I'm a little sad that I can't see the ground from my windows, which means that this winter, I'll miss out on watching cardinals, juncos and sparrows feed. If I stand in the doorway I can see them, though.

Yay for birds! :-)

The chickadees have found the feeders! Yahoo!

So far no one appears to be visiting the safflower feeder, the suet feeder or the thistle feeder, but they'll be here, all in due time. I was so tickled this morning to look out and see a round little chickadee removing one seed at a time and caching them in the tree branches. Now if he'll just tell all his birdie friends...

Update: as I hit "save" for this post, I looked up to a see a house sparrow nibbling at the feeder! Normally I wouldn't be happy to see a house sparrow, of all birds, but I'm thrilled to see they're finding the feeders!

I am SO excited; I have two birdfeeders up! More are on the way; I just realized that two of my old favorites are too worn to be useful, so I'm going to buy replacements this weekend. I just loaded up on seed this afternoon. Wahoo!

I started feeding birds over five years ago at the suggestion of my friend J. I had just moved into a new house and I was depressed and overwhelmed by all the work the house required, along with a couple new house disasters that included the basement flooding three weeks after I moved in. I remember driving on the highway, talking to J about how I wasn't enjoying this new house at all except for a pretty yellow bird that had been hanging out at my office window. She told me it was a goldfinch, and that I needed to go out and buy a finch feeder and I'd see lots more. She told me what kind of feeder to buy, what kind of seed, and where to buy all the supplies. I always tell her that information was the best gift she ever gave me!

Last winter, I didn't do much birdfeeding because of my divorce. I could barely take care of myself and my dogs, let alone the backyard birds. I did fill the feeders during the coldest part of the year and I scattered seed on snowstorm days, but I've really missed enjoying the birdy activity and feeling like I was doing my part to contribute to nature. I'm so glad to be back in action! I've only ever fed birds in the country, so the "urban birdfeeding experience" is going to be quite a change, I'm sure.

I started doing all sorts of reading on feeding birds, and also joined a wonderful citizen science project hosted by Cornell University, Project FeederWatch (Vox is being temperamental again...here's the link: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/index.html). I watch my feeders and simply count the number of birds, for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours over a two-day period every two weeks. It's very relaxing to sit down and tally birds, and also watch them chow down in the dead of winter.

I've seen some amazing birds in my yard since I started feeding, including a juvenile Northern Harrier, an Indigo Bunting, a pair of Eastern Towhees and a pair of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. The goldfinches and chickadees are cute, chatty little busybodies, and the flocks of cardinals in the winter brighten up the grayest of days. I never, ever get bored watching those feeders!

I'm proud to say that I've gotten my sister feeding birds, and she's shared the passion with her stepdaughter. My baby niece's nursery is decorated in birdies (which makes me a little sad, since I would someday love to do a birdy theme in my own daughter's nursery...). Sissy and I have shared many bird and squirrel stories over the years since I put up that first finch feeder.

If you want to put up a feeder, here are some tips:

• buy high-quality feeders made by companies like Duncraft, Droll Yankees or Audubon. Don't waste your money on the cheap feeders. They won't last. Spring for the good ones!
• if squirrels are raiding your feeders and eating you out of house and home, buy safflower seed. It has a bitter taste that squirrels don't like. You can also try feeding the squirrels, too.
• place your feeders where you can actually see them and where they're convenient to fill in the dead of winter. It's no fun to feed the birds if your feeders are so far from the windows that you can't enjoy the birdy activities and you don't want to refill them because they're too far away.
• don't wait until the snow flies to put up feeders. Birds start scoping out food sources in August, while the temps are still warm and food supply is plentiful. You'll get more birds at your feeders over the course of the winter if you start feeding in early autumn.   

Give it a try...I promise you'll love it!

The verdict is in: the birds in my yard today were not common peafowl escaped from a zoo, as I previously thought. They were guineas!! Waaaaah! And I ran them off! I found out after posting on my all-time favorite chicken message board...sigh...I managed to chase away domesticated poultry that probably escaped from someone else's yard.

No wonder they seemed so at home in my yard, and at home with my chickens. Too bad. Guineas are great tick eaters.

I've spent all day working in the yard. It felt heavenly! And what an absolutely bizarre day it's been...

First, I planted some seedlings in the front beds. I planted malva 'Zebrina' and aubrieta close to the door. The malvas will grow tall (3-4') and be covered in daisy-like white flowers with purple veins. The aubrieta is a low-growing ground cover that's covered in bright pink flowers in spring; it probably won't bloom until next year since it's a perennial.

 

 

While I was busy planting these seedlings, Patrick noticed turkey vultures in the cornfield across the street. They were picking at something, so we grabbed the binoculars and discovered they were dining on a rabbit. Ick. Necessary creatures, but still...ick.

While we're watching the turkey vultures, we turn to our left, and standing in our driveway is a gigantic bird of some sort, like nothing we'd ever seen. At first, because it had pink wattles and a pink comb, we think it's a turkey vulture baby...but something about it looked like a game bird. Its shape and movement all looked game-birdy to me. 

I grabbed the camera and took a few pics while it was squawking up a storm, apparently unable to figure out how to get itself off the driveway for a good ten minutes or so. 

 

After a few minutes, our little friend finally ran rather than flew into our back yard and under the shelter of a spruce tree.

A few moments later, here comes another one! Now there are TWO! 

 

Our initial thought was that these two might be fledglings taking their first walk out of the nest, but they looked too mature. I ran into the house and grabbed a field guide, and discovered that the birds were common peafowl, an upland game bird...and probably escapees from a zoo! They've formed a feral population in southern Florida, according to the field guide, but aren't known anywhere else. I plan on sending their pics to Cornell's ornithology lab for confirmation and also so they can record their presence here.

 

While we're watching them stroll through our yard and reading about common peafowl, in swoops a hawk, looking for some easy lunch. I swear, it was like a freaking PBS special between the turkey vultures, the zoo escapees, and now the damn Cooper's hawk coming in to complete life's magical cycle right before our eyes. I saw the hawk before the peafowl did, and started running toward the birds. The hawk took off but didn't go far; I'm sure he (small, so likely a male) was waiting very close by.

Meanwhile, the peafowl kept veering a little too close to my vegetable beds, and they also seemed intrigued by the chickens (who did NOT like the new kids on the block, and proceeded to ogle and bug-AWK!!! at them when the peafowl came up to their run). I decided to chase the interlopers back toward the stream on our property...lest they be eaten by my dogs, eaten by the neighbor's Lab, or lest they devour my vegetable seedlings. They ran all the way back to the stream, squawking and screaming, and then Patrick called me to show me their nest...they were a mating pair! They'd created a nest directly next to our driveway, a deep cup shape behind a large shrub. I feel bad that we ran them off the nest, but my dogs most certainly would have killed them if we hadn't shooed them from the driveway area. They couldn't have been there more than a few days and there were no eggs in the nest.

After all the birdie hullabaloo, I went back to planting, working in a bed I've never done anything with. It's the one my office window looks out on, and we've just tried to keep it clear of weeds for the past four years. Now that I have thousands of seedlings waiting for new homes, I cleared a portion of that bed and put in some California poppies, mixed bachelor buttons, black bachelor buttons, and Jolly Jester French marigolds. My goal for this bed is a population of flowers that reseeds so they can bring themselves back every year. These are all self-sowing flowers. 

 

In case you couldn't tell, winter sowing has been a rousing success. I have a total of about 80 containers right now and will likely do 15-20 more, now that I have more containers (thanks to my friend Lori who casually raided her neighbors' recycling bins). The number of seedlings I have right now would have cost me thousands of dollars at a nursery, and that's no exaggeration considering that ten nursery plants usually costs about $50 here. Except for the occasional treat, I see no reason to ever buy nursery plants again...not when I can produce plants like this! 

Here's some of what I have yet to plant:

 

 

 

 

Happy spring, everyone!

I finally finished a miserable winter quarter and am on spring break. For this entire glorious week, I have to only go to work and not to school. I'm taking Thursday off and am getting a massage and going for tea. It's my one big spring break indulgence.

The seeds I've been starting throughout the entire month of March have begun to sprout and are growing. None of the perennials are up yet, but a handful of annuals are, as well as the lettuce and spinach. The lettuce will likely be ready to plant out this weekend! Take a look:

 

 

 

These containers have been real champs; we've been getting hard freezes at night still (27 or 28 degrees) and when I go out in the morning to check the containers, the soil is frozen solid. I have some Jolly Jester French marigolds that have sprouted, and I would have expected them to die off with the freezes we've been getting. But every time I check on them, the sprouts are frozen in the morning, thawed by mid-day, and then they've grown some more by the next morning! Winter sowing has been a lot of fun when it's still too cold to get outside.

I still have MANY more to sow, but unfortunately I'm out of milk jugs and pop bottles. Since we don't drink either of those, I've had to scrounge among family members and Freecycle. I'm desperate to get more containers. I think I'm now going to resort to using 16-oz. plastic cups left over from last summer, covered in plastic wrap. They'll be a nightmare to take care of once it warms up because they'll need to be watered constantly, but it's either that or skip out on many of my planned flowers. I don't want to do that! 

The plan for this weekend: get the lettuce into the garden, buy row covers, finish off the garden beds, and get my peas planted. Also need to rig up a trellis for the peas to climb. And get tomato cages made. It's been so cold that I just can't do much out in the yard. I have a laundry list of garden chores just waiting to be done.

But spring is almost here. It's trying, very hard, to break winter's hold. Signs that I've noticed in my yard:

Two male robins fighting over turf underneath the spruce tree this morning

Earthworms are teeming in the new vegetable beds--yeah!!

The daffodil shoots have been up for a couple weeks, but they're now forming bud heads. They'll be blooming in the next two weeks

Tulip shoots are up in the back yard

Crocuses and snowdrops are up and blooming

Some of my perennials are making an appearance. The sneezeweed and one of the coreopsis plants are sprouting, and the asters have just popped up too. My verbena bonariensis from last summer reseeded itself and I have two volunteers that need to be moved.

THINK SPRING!!

Finally...the dark-eyed juncos have made their way to my bird-feeders!

 

When you feed birds, it's always fun seeing the new summer visitors arrive and then the winter visitors come sputtering in. In spring, the chipping sparrows (tiny little birds with clay-colored caps on their heads) come, and in fall, it's the juncos. They're always pretty regular, although this year I think they're a little early; they're usually here the first week in November, flying down from the boreal forests of Canada where they've spent their summers (incidentally, please buy toilet paper made from recycled paper products; the boreal forest in Canada is being mowed down at an alarming rate to provide...yes...toilet paper). In the winter, I also get to see year-round residents who only visit the feeders in winter, when food is scarce: song sparrows, field sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, Eastern towhees, brown creepers. White-throated sparrows, fox sparrows and American tree sparrows also move in for the winter from places afar.

So I glanced out at my feeders a few minutes ago and there were two males, hanging around under the shepherd's hook and dining on fallen black-oil sunflower seeds. Hooray!

 

In the midst of my grief, I've been forced to slow way down. I sat down this morning with a cup of tea to watch my bird feeders, more for lack of knowing what else to do than for any other reason. Yesterday, in the middle of crying, I had noticed that a red-breasted nuthatch was clinging to one of the black oil sunflower feeders. I haven't seen one on our property since I started feeding birds three winters ago. Even though I was crying, this little guy brought an instant smile to my face...red-breasted nuthatches are darling! His visit to our house is a definite gift. I've been watching for one of these ever since I first saw them and I'm so glad they've returned.

So this morning I sat down with the dogs and watched out the window for just a few minutes, and I was comforted by the sight of a red-bellied woodpecker--I haven't seen him since last spring!--and even a blue jay. We don't get blue jays often, as they're very suspicious of any movement in the house and never stay long. The chipmunks were scrambling at the base of the tree, trying to scarf up every last kernel of corn and bit of seed into their fat cheeks. They get into little chipmunk wars, chasing one another away, defending their spot in the seed pile at the base of the tree. I wish I could get pictures of my visitor friends, but I don't have a great camera, and the windows through which I watch are louvered. My sister saw her first junco a few days ago, and she's only an hour due west of me, so I'm wondering when our first junco will appear.

Fall is here.