Feeding The local Birds

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PeppermintPatty

🔷 💜 🔷
All year we feed the birds premium sunflower seeds along with store bought suet but when winter comes, I prefer making their suet.

I purchased grated beef suet from the grocery store and added:

Apple
Millet
Oats
Sunflower seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Black currents
Dried cranberry seeds
Hemp seeds
Niger seeds

I make 2 big balls and place one out at a time
The temps are going up to 14 celcuis but will soon drop.

Here’s one suet ball . The other is outside
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The birds love suet especially when it gets really cold.

We get -

Chickadees, sparrows, junkos, nuthatches, woodpeckers, rosebreasted and evening grosbeaks, morning doves, crows, blue jays, gold finches, chickadees, house and purple finches, cardinals ( not many ) red polls, cedar waxwings

Do you like feeding the birds?

Can you tell us a bit about it?
 

Pepper said:
Around here it's really mostly pigeons and I hate the mess they make. I have yelled at people for feeding those flying rats.
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When I lived in an apartment with a balcony in Toronto while putting myself through school, the pigeons were really messy. At the time I had a house trained rabbit. He had a big cage out on the balcony and I fed him alfalfa pellets which the pigeons loved. I left the balcony door open ( 4 inches ) so he could go out when he wanted. The pigeons decided that I must be feeding them too so came around daily.

Ooooooowwww!
Ooooooowwwww!
Oooooooowwwwwww!

All day long. And they make a huge mess. My huge apartment size window often needed cleaning. I love birds but those guys drove me nuts.

Flying rats 😂
 
birdy said:
I would feed the birds but after doing battle with mice in the attic, I don't put out bird feeders.
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I do not blame you. That’s why we stopped feeding the birds at our last house. We were attracting to many mice to our house.

Now we put our sunflower seeds in big plastic bins that require a special opener to open them. They’re raccoon unfriendly .. lol
 
PeppermintPatty said:
Do you like feeding the birds?

Can you tell us a bit about it?
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Love feeding the birds and critters

Many different birds up at our mountain home

I fell in love with the juncos up there



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And the nuthatches (the only bird that walks down the tree)

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Gary O' said:
Love feeding the birds and critters

Many different birds up at our mountain home

I fell in love with the juncos up there

Gary O' said:
we did too

Mr Bear made short work of that
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Haha. I’m glad we don’t get bears. We get lots of coyotes, deer, bobcats, and wolves but no bears. Whew! 😥 lol

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And the nuthatches (the only bird that walks down the tree)

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The junkos are so much fun. It’s nice to have ground feeders . They clean up a lot of mess hoping around on the ground and those nuthatches are so very cute.

Years ago I was in our backyard playing with our shepherd . The toy I had didn’t have a regular squeak. It had a nuthatch sound. This was spring. After playing for a while I noticed a nuthatch getting closer and closer who was squacking away at us. I soon realized that the squeaky toy I had sounded almost exactly like the nuthatch. This squeaky toy was in perfect pitch to the nuthatch.

I think this particular nuthatch was a bit peeved at us though.

Corn! Many birds aren’t fond of it but the ones who do like it, like it a lot including squirrels, blue jays, junkoes, chickadees, cow bird, wild turkeys. We used to feed a bunch of wild turkeys at the back of our property. It’s so cute seeing big huge birds digging at the ground for corn. They even like popcorn.

I really enjoy reading about you and your wildlife friends. It’s very endearing.
 
We feed squirrels and birds. The squirrels get a handful of walnuts tossed on our patio. My wife has a favorite that she sometimes feeds by hand. I tried it and the darn thing bit me! Crows go for an occasional nut, but they like breakfast cereal. We had a pair of crows that visited us every morning - apparently husband and wife. Eventually they started bringing Junior with them. (-8

Sparrows get seed in one of those tall tubular feeders hung on a wall. I refill it when empty, every three or four weeks. A couple of weeks ago we were parked on the side of a road overlooking a San Francisco beach. There were a couple of birds flying around. My wife grabbed a handful of cereal, threw it on the ground and we were inundated by a flock! Birds everywhere! Jumped in the car and fled.
 
Unfortunately we don’t have any squirrels 🐿️
We have chipmunks but they are hibernating
I like feeding the chipmunks & squirrels. They’re entertaining.

With crows and doves and stuff, they come in flocks and only at certain times of the year.
For a while we had 3 Ravens coming in the morning. Their metallic blue-black feathers are gorgeous to look at. They’re quite stoic looking.

Geese are well known for being aggressive.
They are usually in places where there’s water and food and often it’s human food that they want. Canadian geese are huge. They are the birds that took down that plane which landed on the Hudson River years ago. Just to go totally off topic. lol 😂
 
PeppermintPatty said:
Geese are well known for being aggressive.
They are usually in places where there’s water and food and often it’s human food that they want. Canadian geese are huge. They are the birds that took down that plane which landed on the Hudson River years ago. Just to go totally off topic. lol 😂
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We have a flock, a large one, of Canada geese that hangs out on the lawn of a local high school, eating grass. Sometimes you will see one goose in a flock with a long neck just standing around seemingly doing nothing. He is the Watch Gander, looking out for anything that might endanger the flock. Smart birds. (-8
 
For the last couple of days I’ve been seeing 2 juncos at our feeder. At first I noticed just one hoping around. Normally they are ground feeders and usually in a flock. I was happy to see the he/she wasn’t alone.

I wonder what happens when you see one or two split up?

My husband says maybe they were being @ssholes and the rest of the group kicked them out.

Anyway juncos are fairly timid small songbirds. They are brownish on the top with a white belly. They usually are in a small flock and normally ground feeders. Apparently they can adapt to eating off of feeders.

I love the birds
 
This morning I woke up to seeing a male goldfinch head first in the snow
I rushed out and picked him up to try and keep him warm. I wrapped a warm towel around him and he chirped twice and 10 minutes later died. It may have flown into the window. Some make it. He didn’t. 😥
 
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PeppermintPatty said:
This morning I woke up to seeing male goldfinch head first in the snow
I rushed out and picked him up to try and keep him warm. I wrapped a warm towel around him and he chirped twice and 10 minutes later died. It may have flown into the window. Some make it. He didn’t. 😥
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There are numerous translucent plastic images that can be applied to the inside surface of windows subject to bird strikes. We use them on glass patio doors. Seem helpful, but not perfect.
 
George1959 said:
You did care for him. This is what counts.
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You’re right. I shall reframe this.
I feed the birds to help them survive the cold. Some don’t make it for reasons which I can’t help.
ElCastor said:
There are numerous translucent plastic images that can be applied to the inside surface of windows subject to bird strikes. We use them on glass patio doors. Seem helpful, but not perfect.
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Yes, we have a bird decal on the window but we also have 3/4 house veranda. I think the flock of crows may have scared this one. I went to wash the window when I found him. There weren’t many birds out at the time which is unusual. An eagle 🦅 may have chased it. I don’t know. 🤷‍♀️ Poor thing. I feel bad.
 
My next door neighbor puts a lot of wild animal feed out which attracts all sorts of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, mice and probably a lot of other critters. While I am an animal lover (for the most part), sometimes this can be a nuisance. Birds fly over and make droppings in my driveway. I have to slalom around those piles when I walk out to get the mail. The mice get into my garage and have a picnic under my car - I find peanut shells on the garage floor and they also get into boxes I have stored in the garage, shred everything in them, then poop all over.
 

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