Why I Oughta...

In my recently-posted recap/scorecard of what I wanted to do in the yard this past year, I marked the item about getting back into wildlife feeding as a 'miss'.   The reality is that I really ONLY feed the birds and critters during the cold months.  That's something like November to March...usually.   A few years back, the kids and I applied to be a Certified Wildlife Habitat and part of that process is to ensure that your yard is providing - among other things - food.   During COVID, I was home everyday.  And so were kids.  That meant that we had the opportunity to feed the birds and squirrels every morning.  I fed the birds and the kids put cracked corn and various seeds on the perimeter of the fence for the critters to fuel up. I was able to feed the birds everyday because we had this really lovely clear, plastic fly-thru feeder that I bought back in 2018 .  That was a real breakthrough moment for me with birds.  Up until ...

It is getting back to being the bird feeding time of the year.  I take most of the warm weather months off and feed during the Winter when I don't have to deal (as much) with raccoons and skunks and other large critters.  That means that I'm getting our feeders out of the garage and hanging them up, but it also (this year) meant that I added a new feeder to our program. I found this relatively inexpensive ($4.99 at Home Depot) cage feeder that takes these Peanut Suet Nuggets ($2.96 per bag) that would add a different variety of food to our setup.  Below, you can see the cage feeder - with three perches - and the bag of Peanut Suet Nuggets. I didn't fill the whole feeder, but I think that the bag would fill a little bit MORE than the whole thing, but not that much more.  At $3 per bag, I'm interested in seeing how long this will last and how it performs against the weather; not to mention if it attracts some new visitors.  I normally put out a suet cake (hot pe...

Back in the Fall, the KotBT had a birthday and one of the gifts that we gave him was a window bird feeder.  The kind that use suction cups to attach to the window.  The one we have is this one from Amazon that they say is their #1 best seller in the category .  We have a variety feeders already - including a fly-through , a couple of suet cages , one of the smaller Squirrel Busters  and a squirrel 'big ole' cob' bungee feeder .  But, those are all set out in the yard a bit.  In a spot where we can see them and observe the critters/birds, but also far enough to have any critters not want to make a home close to our house/patio. These window feeders have been around forever and I've been skeptical of them.  I mean...birds get spooked by people.  And...from what I know, they don't love windows and the reflections off of them.  So, mounting a feeder on the window seems like a long shot in terms of getting any action on it. We talked about ...

We've had a SquirrelBuster Plus tube feeder for a number of years.  Nat bought it for me for my birthday sometime in the past five or six years.  And for the most part, I have loved the feeder.  With our current setup, I've mostly been using a small mix of seed including thistle seeds in this feeder because we've had larger, seed and nut-based mixes in our fly-through feeder .  The song birds seem to hanging out at the fly-through mostly.  The peckers and nut thatches spend their time on the suet cages.  And the little finches and sparrows and others seem to be using the tube feeder.    Here's a post from here on the blog showing an American Goldfinch perched on the feeder outside our kitchen windows.  It was working just fine back then.  But recently, I've noticed that the SquirrelBuster is emptying really rapidly.  In about a day.  And I'm assuming that a squirrel is getting to it and shaking.  For most of its life, ...

We have had a few new visitors to our feeders recently and they're all colored gold.  Or yellow.  They're American Goldfinches and you can see one of them in the photo above.  We have both - what I think are - males and females.  Males with a much more striking gold and the females with their winter plumage.  I snapped the photo above out of kitchen windows one morning recently.  And we knew what it was immediately.  But we went to the Field Guide anyway.  Here's the listing for the American Goldfinch below: The one you see above is at our squirrel-proof feeder that I've filled with thistle seed.  Let's call this one the fifth species that we've documented as part of our [ backyard bird visitor's log ] here on the blog. The other four from this Winter/Spring: Red-bellied woodpecker House Sparrow Male and Female Cardinals White-breasted Nuthatch

I'm giving the whole bell-shaped bird seed thing a go.  Back in early January, I posted about a "Christmas Bell" that the kids gave me for Christmas that featured fruit and nuts and billed itself as 'no melt', so there was some suet involved, I'd think.  As quickly as I put that seed bell up on on post, it was gone.  Taken by some critter.  Maybe a squirrel, but more likely...a racoon.   At least, that's where my brain is right now having seen a couple of big fatty raccoons in our yard on a couple of occasions lately.  Having come across a seed bell from Kaytee (that you can see below) on sale at Menards, coupled with the fact that I had previously bought the 'seed bell hanger', so I was willing to get right back on the saddle with another one of these. This time, however, I am prepared.  The old one was put up on a pole that had a baffle on 'top' of the bell.  Meaning...I was attempting to keep critters from kind of 'jumping...