Why I Oughta...

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 putting it in various pl

I've already added both the female and male Cardinal to the bird visitor log , but on a recent morning, I spotted quite a few Cardinals milling around.  Mix of males and females.  The photo above is using zoom, so it isn't perfectly clear, so I went ahead and circled the birds.  Eight of them.  And a squirrel (in the red box) munching on some Winter treats.  Way, way better than the normal lot of House Sparrows that we get at our feeders most of the Winter. 

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

 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

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