Why I Oughta...

One evening recently when I came home, the kids excitedly came up to me and couldn't contain their excitement about finding something in the backyard.  It was this bird's nest.  They found it in the middle of the grass, so it seems like it fell out of a tree.  There weren't any signs of this being inhabited - no shells or parts of shells - so I'm not sure if it is from this season or just a remnant of another season that was used by a bird family.  I scooped it up with a shovel and put it on this little side table.  The Bird - our middle child - was the most interested in it and we talked about building a nesting box/platform out of wood that we can hang in the yard.  Maybe we can place this on there and see if someone would use it?  Or maybe just encourage another family to inhabit it next season?  Based on a quick Google search, we're assuming that this is a Robin's nest .  And this page makes it seem like 're-use' of a nest happens, so if we put

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

Since the beginning of this year, I've started to chronicle here on the blog some of our backyard bird visitors .  First, there was the red-bellied woodpecker .   Then, the House Sparrow .  And most recently, I snapped photos of both a male and female Cardinal .     Today, here's a few photos of a new visitor:  the White-breasted Nuthatch.  I found him hopping around the ground under one of our feeders on a recent morning.  He's very pretty with blues, blacks, greys and whites all over and a striking black streak across the top of his head.     As a reminder, I take these photos quickly, through screens in the windows on my phone zoomed all the way in.  So they're not great.  But, they're here to diary (for me) some of the visitors.  Here, below, is a different look at the same bird: As soon as I saw this guy, I, of course, grabbed my Field Guide to Illinois Birds and tried to figure out what he was.  After thumbing through a few pages, I came

As you guys know by now, we've become bird people .  We're now running four different feeders, a birdbath and even installed a water wiggler to attract the birds with moving water .  And while we have plans to install even more landscaping , trees and (gasp!) even a water feature , we have quite a bit of existing trees , shrubs and brush in our #newoldbackyard. We're pretty lucky to live on a mature and wooded lot with close proximity to a big pond ( Barth Pond ) and a creek that runs north from the pond behind some of our neighbor's houses.  That water source is a big factor in our neighborhood being able to attract and support wildlife.  Some of it is great!  Like birds and owls and hawks and rabbits and even foxes.  Some not so great?  Skunks and coyotes are also around.  Little Lizzie was skunked last fall and I'm sure it won't be the last time. Now listen...we're not camping people.  Or at least I'm not a camping person.  But, I do love cr

Two weeks ago, I posted about the new fly-through bird feeder that we added to our backyard birding setup and mentioned how we had not yet witnessed it being used (but...knew it was due to the bird poop on the squirrel baffle).   I've posted two visitors to our feeders here in the [ bird visitor log ] tag but they were on different feeders.  First was a red-bellied woodpecker on our suet feeder .  Then just last week, I posted a photo of a house sparrow on one of our hanging gravity feeders.  When we put up the fly-through feeder, I was hoping for Cardinals.  Guess what?  We had a few visitors!  While these photos aren't awesome because they're with my phone all zoomed in and through Winter windows with screens, I'm hoping you can make out what is happening. First...this beautiful red male cardinal.  If you look closely, you'll see he's on there with a House Sparrow chowing down. And like two minutes later, he took off and stood guard.  So his lady co

Back a few weeks ago, I posted a photo of a Red-Bellied Woodpecker that had visited us on our suet feeder as the first documented bird since I was gifted the Field Guide to Birds of Illinois by Nat and the kids for Christmas.  When I posted that, I also created a new tag here on the blog [ Bird Visitor Log ].  That's now a *thing* here on the blog.  And this, becomes the second entry. I snapped that photo above through the kitchen windows (and screens) of what I'm pretty sure is a House Sparrow perched on our feeder.  According to the Field Guide (which you can see below), this is the #1 bird to get to your feeders.  So, that fact coupled with the feathers/patterns/colors make think that we're checking the "House Sparrow" box. From the entry in the book:  "When you put up a new bird feeder, there's a very good chance that the first bird to attend with be a House Sparrow." Turns out, it was introduced to North America from Europe in the

 Over the weekend, I came across this clear plastic round fly-thru platform feeder at where else?  Menards of course..  It comes with a wide, deep platform for seed and a broad, clear plastic dome cover that shelters the seeds and what-have-you from the weather.  I paired it with a Stokes Select Bird Feeder Pole and a Northstates two-way squirrel baffle .  The feeder was a discontinued item and had no packaging on it, so it was a screamin' deal.   It was the last one and marked way down, so I, of course, glommed on to it. I've been thinking of adding a fly-thru feeder to our mix back there.  What's a fly-thru (or fly-through) bird feeder?  Well...they're exactly what you think:  a platform of some type with a roof over it.  That allows birds to fly through and land on the platform.  Instead of perching on the side/edge of a feeder, this one encourages a different behavior and (hopefully) different type of bird. The advantages of a fly-thru feeder, according to

Just a few days ago, I posted a photo of the Illinois Bird Field Guide that Nat gave me for Christmas and today I can share that is already paying dividends!  We had a visitor to our suet feeder that I was able to get that grainy photo you can see above.  There's a screen up in that window and I didn't want to get too close for fear of scaring him away, so you're going to have to deal with the Zapruder film-version of my woodpecker.   But..that's him up there.  I've posted about woodpeckers before here on the blog last summer when I showed our tailprop suet feeder back in Elmhurst here .  But for the first time, we're able to identify our visitor - which is very exciting!  (at least to me...) I snapped that photo before the bird flew off and then scurried over to my office to open up the field guide to figure out who it was.  As you can see in the photo above, he has a red head, right?  Welp...that would be a big tell!  He's NOT a red-headed

As you can kind of tell from some of the 'Christmas Haul' posts here on the blog, it was a birding-kind-of-holiday in our house.  I posted about the two kinds of suet ( simply and hot pepper ), the fruit and nut bell and just yesterday, I posted a photo of the water wiggler for our bird bath .  With all those treats to try to lure birds to our feeders and backyard, Nat was thoughtful enough to also get me this Field Guide to Birds of Illinois from the American Birding Association.  We've already put it to work by documenting some of the feathered friends who have come to our feeders.  I'll post some side-by-side photos and the descriptions of the birds from this book in the next few days. Here's a look at a spread in the book for a two woodpeckers. I really like that this is an Illinois-specific Field Guide because it narrows down the searching we have to do to identify the species that are visiting.

We've had the same birdbath for a number of years now - it is a heated one that we can put out all year long.  I posted in November about how we put it out for the winter after I found it when I was unpacking part of our basement.  But, as part of the birding-related Christmas gifts, the kids also gave me a Water Wiggler.  This isn't the first one of these I've had - I posted about our first Water Wiggler here back in 2013 - but based on that experience, I wanted another one.  For details on how/why it works, check out my old post here .    The biggest difference this time is that the bird bath is now directly adjacent to our feeder set-up.  In our old house, we hung a feeder where we could see the birds, but the bath was connected to the railing on our porch so it was easy to refill.  Those positions were in two different locations.  Now?  You can see that we've put the bath out just a few feet away from the feeders.  I think this isn't likely the final loca

Still going through some of the new birding-related supplies ( like this fruit and seed bell ) I was gifted this Christmas season and that includes today's post showing this other suet cake.  Like the hot pepper one that I posted last week , this one is from Wild Birds Unlimited.  The premise is the same:  make something that the birds will like (and need!) that the squirrels aren't interested in devouring down.  The hot pepper suet version takes a proactive approach:  adding something like red pepper that bothers the squirrels.  This one, takes the opposite approach:  strip everything else away but the rendered fat and the squirrels won't be that interested in it.  You can find this Simply Suet on the WBU site here .  I haven't gotten around to putting the hot pepper version out yet and that's because since about the first of the year, this Simply Suet cake has survived in our feeder.  Which....is a long time!  In fact, I found it on the ground one morning a

Yesterday, I posted the first of a few birding related Christmas presents that the kids gifted to me this Christmas and today comes the next in the line:  a Hot Pepper Suet.  Yeah!  Hot Pepper.  Turns out, birds don't have taste buds?  But squirrels do.  At least that's what this story on Sciencing.com has to say .  As I mentioned in the post about the Christmas bird bell yesterday , we have squirrels like everybody else.  And they go after everything they can, including our suet cage.   My hope here is to run a few squirrel-proof suets and hopefully *teach* the squirrels to buzz off?  They have short memories, I'm guessing, so who knows if it will work?!?

Right before New Year's, I mentioned that I got a new leaf blower for Christmas , but it wasn't all that I received.  Above, you see one of a few different birding-related gifts that the kids gave me.  This one is Mr. Bird's Fruit and Nut Christmas Bell.  From Duncraft's site , they can share with you all the little treats in this thing: Contains pecans, sunflower seed, safflower seed, sunflower chips, peanuts, cherries, cranberries, raisins, apple and papaya. It has proven popular with birds AND squirrels, but so far, the baffle has worked and most of this bell is still in place despite the squirrels having figured out it exists.   I'll post some of the other bird-related items (including some squirrel-proof ones!) in the next few days, but we've had some good luck this winter attracting some of our feathered friends to our feeders and bath that are stationed right outside of our kitchen windows.  The kids eat breakfast and get to take in the little visit

The kids and I recently upgraded our bird watching area with the introduction of our heated birdbath.  It is more like a re-introduction as we had this heated bath at our old house, but up until a week or so ago, it was just sitting in the basement.  We put it right next to a few of our feeders that you can see in the top part of this photo.  If you look closely, you can also see a very pretty cardinal right behind the pole on the right and a little bird - a finch of some sort, maybe? - on the feeder on the left.  We get a lot of yellow and black and brown little birds.  Finches, nuthatches, chickadees and pine siskins/  We also run a suet feeder right in this area, too so we're getting visits from woodpeckers despite us not having a tailprop version.   We're getting a lot of late fall/early winter action on these feeders and have, so far, stopped squirrels from owning all of them completely.  I still find a squirrel trying his best to get to these, but usually, the cage