Also...
I have only had time to get to the river twice so far this Spring. We have had several bouts of hard rains that make bird watching impossible. I don't think the shad run is quite over yet though, so I do hope to get back down there some this week.
Here is a photo from the one evening I had some luck!
Wild Rose: I just adore your photos -- so crisp and focused, with fabulous subjects!
Happy Birthday week, VA wild rose!!!
A robin has been trying very hard to build a nest right on top of the light right by( I mean RIGHT by) the back door. We keep trying to encourage it to build somewhere else where it won't be bothered by us.
Jan--
Robins usually build nests by doors and porches...they are very people friendly.
...the problem is that--most people, then want to leave them alone and
avoid that door for 6 weeks---which can be an inconvenience...
Cute if you have kids--thy can watch the birdies grow and the mommy bird feed them...
Kind of a "nature lesson"...
Hehehe, we knew we weren't going to NOT use that door, so.... Hopefuly it builds in the tree near the door like one of them has done before.
I was brushing my teeth this morning watching the robins out the window and I saw one get a giant worm out of the grass and eat it. Probably a nice meal. It should be good hunting for the robins the next few days with all the rain about.
YUM!!!!
Too bad they don't taste like the candy ones :)
How do you know Seq?
Lol...I've been tempted but never tried. That was just my imagination talking :)
Ha ha Sally, I was thinking the same thing...
Andrew Zimmern would eat it in a wink of the eye....maybe deep fried--crunchy??
He LOVES to eat bugs and weird things....
I have a semi-fantasy---I would travel with him and see how many of the weird foods
he eats I could, actually, stomach to try. I am not a person who would shun good food
no matter where it came from or what it was. However--I am not sure I could suck
out an eyeball...I would definitely eat brains and "balls' and kidneys...
Everything he is served--even in the deepest, most primitive cultures--looks yummy.
LOVE this show!!! G.
Haven't seen any hummers yet but I have 2 pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks. I have never seen them around here before and this week they have came into my sunflower feeder...How pretty they are.
We saw our first Blue Bird just the other day. Bright gold finch this morning. No hummers yet but I still didn't get the feeder up. I did buy a new thistle feeder this afternoon.
Geez Gita, would you eat the rotting fish that he ate? That episode was the worst. These people up in Alaska or wherever stored fish in the sand on the beach for several weeks until it started rotting. Super gross...
I read somewhere that Robins like to build nests as close as possible to houses because they think they'll have more protection from predators like hawks.
I haven't seen my goldfinches yet this year. I've had a finch feeder up for awhile but nothing eats the seed. The purple finches have been eating safflower and sunflower seeds.
Bluepoppy how marvelous and four of them!
Holly, these maps show sightings of Hummers all through our area as of last week.
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/Maps.html
No goldfinches here either yet. My purple finches have been eating the regular bird food mix.
I had a nice pair of robins building a nest in a neighbor's tree adjacent to the back yard. I saw them often looking for worms together in my garden beds, and carrying nesting material up to the tree. But I think one of the feral cats got one of them (I won't go into the details), and now there are no robins left in the yard. Very sad about this. :-(
I looked into the feral cat situation a bit more. There are 2 of them who frequent the yard and it turns out there are cat rescue people who live in a nearby street who support a small colony of them. They have the notched ears and everything. I spoke with one of them and now I have a phone number to call in case I see a *new* feral cat with unnotched ear, but there's really nothing that can be done about the existing ferals. So, I returned the trap I got from the TNR group, and I will reconcile myself to dealing with ferals while trying to enjoy some birds despite them. :-(
Have they spayed/neutered the ferals?
Hi Happy. Yes that is what the TNR (Trap Neuter Return) program does. So the cats continue as ferals (since they are not adoptable) but they are neutered. They notch the cat's ear as a signal that a particular feral has already been neutered. It also sounds like the people who work with the rescue groups caring for feral cat colonies keep some kind of tabs on the cats. So the 2 who hang out in my yard have 'names' and the group actually keeps some tabs on them--eg keeping track of them, providing medical care if needed, who is primarily responsible for feeding them etc
This message was edited Apr 30, 2014 11:08 AM
Here is a British birding site that gave me several good ideas for discouraging cats from practicing on bird feeder birds.
http://www.birding.uk.com/fact-file/17-gardens/136-protect-birds-from-cats
I liked this one and thought of gum balls! I think this would also work for where they like to hang out under a bush .
"Place spiny plants or clippings, such as holly, or an uncomfortable surface around the base of the feeding station to prevent cats sitting underneath it."
And these are new to me. too.
"Taut Wire
Taut wire or even string fitted 10-15 cm above the top of the fence makes it difficult for cats to balance on it.
"Plastic Spike Strips
Specially designed strips of plastic spikes, such as Prikka-Strip, on top of a fence, shed roof and nestbox roof prevent cats from walking on them.
Plastic Bottles
Place half-full plastic bottles in borders. This is an old gamekeeper's trick, the light reflection deters cats.
Old CDs
Use old CDs on threaded twine with knots in between to keep them apart. String these across flower beds or hang them from trees. The light reflections deter cats"
Notched ears means the cat has been spayed/neutered and released into an existing feral cat colony by a caretaker to stabilize that colony.
I have had goldfinches all winter and now they have put their spring coats on and are very yellow. Beautiful!!
Coleup -- those are fascinating tricks. I wonder if some might deter birds as well, but they are easy and worth a try. Our cat is an indoor cat, and luckily no outdoor cats have set up camp near our feeders, or we would be panicked.
This message was edited Apr 30, 2014 2:08 PM
Thanks Coleup I need to try some of these!
My cats are indoor as well Happy. I am sad that the birdies won't be able yo find a completely safe Haven in my yard due to the ferals
Catmint, I recently met the TNR team from my neighborhood.
In the past year, they've trapped 50 (!!!) cats. Some have been adopted, others were so sick they had to be euthanized, and now they're down to *just* 12.
Some of my neighbors are very much against TNR. They want a large cat population to combat the rats, mice, and squirrels.
This message was edited Apr 30, 2014 6:51 PM
wow, that is quite a reduction in population, SSG! Guess those 12 remaining cats will be pretty busy with all the rats and mice (and birds) to themselves! :-)
Maybe the TNR folks could put little blinders on the cats to keep them from looking up, so they'd only hunt for things on the ground. Of course, that wouldn't help ground feeding birds. Still, I like the image of purposeful cats with little blinders on.
LOL Happy.
No hummers here yet either, tho with this POURING rain, I sure hope they're holed up somewhere warm! My 60yr old lilac & my native honeysuckle are in bloom, along with a columbine & hanging geranium I bought, so - I'm ready. If it ever stops raining (Like that old song - "Hello mudda, hello fadda---")! I'm supposed to work the Orioles' doubleheader tomorrow - again, IF it stops raining. Fingers crossed.
My native honeysuckle has been at the "almost blooming" stage for awhile now. It's in half shade so it's waiting for the sun to come back out. Come on, sun!
Happy, we need a TNBR program -- trap, neuter, blinders on, then release!
Maybe the TNR folks could put little blinders on the cats to keep them from looking up, so they'd only hunt for things on the ground. Of course, that wouldn't help ground feeding birds. Still, I like the image of purposeful cats with little blinders on.
Haha I was thinking of cool cats with sunglasses loitering together on street corners
Carol: What do you do for the Orioles? Sounds like fun!
CatMint, the cats probably get the birds that are eating seeds that fall from your feeder onto the grass. Can you put some sort of mesh tray or netting directly under the feeder so that nothing falls to the ground?
I have some of the plastic spike strips that Coleup mentioned, and they work really well for me. The reason they work, though, is that cats were using a neighbor's 4' fence to reach the top of my 6' fence. I put the spike strips onto the 4' fence right where they landed, and they stopped jumping up there.
It's too bad they let the feral cats run free. Feral cats are wiping out entire bird colonies.
thanks, Muddy. I need to spend some time looking at all the suggestions in the article Coleup linked to. Someone else had suggested I could try 'cat stop' ultrasonic repellent around the feeder. Just some days the to-do list gets to feeling overly-long, and my time overly-short! :-b But I need to do it...
I built robin ledges painted them and put one on the front of the house, the other on the side of the barn. I had read they like occupied places. I placed them high enough to be protected by the eaves and have never even seen one roost there. I do know they nest all along the big junipers and in the almost 40 year old Norway out front. I believe a hole in the clouds just passed, we had a bright moment just a couple of minutes ago.
In the Circle of Life haven't feral cats been relegated to the niche formerly populated with Fox, Skunk, Snake, Wolf, Lynx. Hawk and Owl and others now mostly vanished and banished to disconnected remnants of minimally sustaining and sustainable habitats?
One observance I have is that birds around me have routines of feeding and prime times for visiting feeders, so I don't have to have my feeders 'open for business' 24/7. When I managed a feral cat colony I only fed birds in the depth of winter as an emergency food source and I monitored the cats so the birds were safe from their predation (The cats seemed OK with making as few forays out of their warm 'dens' on harsh days and were well fed by my journeys to them,!) Cats also had their preferred 'hunting' times that only overlapped with bird times for a short while, which again if I monitored the overlap times and discouraged any cat stalking at that time saw very few birds being part of the cats fare, though they did manage the rodent population quite well even without blinders! LOL
Both birds and cats are creatures of habit and make the rounds of food sources daily at optimum times for them. If cats have made it a habit to prey on birds at ones feeders there is much that we can change up to break up those 'rounds' and achieve a better balance within our own little backyards.
Rueing cats because they eat birds is the same as saying one hates birds because they eat bugs and caterpillars which become beloved butterflies!
I just finished up sterilizing the hummer feeder and making a qt. of nectar. I'll have to try and remember to keep an eye out. It shouldn't take long, as we place the feeder in the same location year to year.:-}
This message was edited May 1, 2014 11:11 AM
I'm was sitting in the conservatory, and kept hearing what sounded like a bird hitting the window. Not seeing anything nearby that would explain the sound, I got up and started tracking it. It WAS a bird, actually two birds - a pair of cardinals hitting the window in the dining room and the French doors in the adjacent living room. Strange, they are also twittering away. I wonder what they are doing? The only thing that I can think of is maybe they are trying to build a nest between some construction material leaning up against the wall on that side of the house.
