Show Me Your Feeders Pt. 4

When the wp's have chicks they will also take mealy worms for their little ones.

Pell - Great suggestions! Thanks so much! :-) :-)

Becky, Please don't buy dry mealworms, the birds don't like them at all. Stick with the live ones.

That must be why the birdseed I bought with freeze dried mealies isn't as big a hit as I thought it would be with the Robins, and Mockingbirds. Darn it! I need to make a trip to WB center, for the wiggley mealies and cherries! LOL!

Becky, I have a variety of woodpeckers and also nuthatch that enjoy the blocks of suet for them. Nut and Berry block seems to be a big hit today. Also the peanut butter blocks are good. I buy mine at a Rural King store. WB will have them I am sure. Here is a link about homemade suets

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/684269/

Hi blue, I was really shocked when mine did not touch the pb suet; I thought it was going to be a big hit but even the darn starlings didn't bother with it. I guess everyone has different results. The seed, insect, and almond were all favorite flavors here. I hang 2 feeders with the plain beef suet from the trees also.

Becky, you said...

LOL Debin! That's one crafty little acrobat!!

Yeah Becky we have 3 guides between Ben and me. Then there is the online, ask and google.. Another thing, just like with Butterflies, ya check the range of the particular species too. For the most part that helps a lot, except with migratories which will come through here in Spring and Fall. So it;s nice to have some great IDers like we have here on DG for the harder ones... I wish I could tell ya where to get the dried cherries in your neck of the woods.. I wouldn't try the ones from the jar, unless they were drained and dried pretty well.
o/

The most important thing is to pay attention to the details. Streaked breast, or not, eye ring or not , light eyebrow or dark. These are just examples but they really make the difference.

Thanks to everyone for the pointers on how to start learning Bird Names and characteristics. So many birds, so little time. :-)

DebinSC - Love your determined little squirrel! They are such a hoot to watch! Gotta give them credit for their determination.

I will be checking out some of the Bird ID books listed in the other thread. Look out library! Here I come!!!

I've decided that I will just stick with the peanuts for now to attract the Blue Jays and let them call all the other birds to the feeders.

I can't wait for the time change and the days to get longer. Right now it is still dark and quiet when I get up and leave for work in the mornings. By the time I get home, it's getting dark again. I feel like I live in a cave or something. I want to get more photos of whatever birds come to the feeder, but it may be only weekends when I can do that. :-(

Sounds like your getting the hang of this stuff, lol.
Look out weekend,..Birds get ready for your closeups!

With you on the having to leave just as it gets light enough and home just before dark Becky. But weekends are great. Look forward to lots of pics this weekend!

Today was sunny! Previously .... four days of damp dreary weather until today. I went out and "stirred up" the seeds in the flat feeder and the female Bunting, female Cardinal, and squirrels showed up! (I now have 2 squirrels that are coming around.) I was just getting ready to put my camera up for the day and my eye caught sight of something that flew over to the feeder. The sun was going down and it was shaded at the feeder, but I cropped the photo to better see what it was ..... And GUESS WHAT???? It was the male Painted Bunting!!! WOWEE! He is really colorful!!! Quite a handsome gent! This photo isn't very good because it was shaded and I don't have a really good zoom lens, but you can SEE him! Love the blue head! First time I have ever seen one that close. Looks like a parrot that escaped from someone's home. LOL!

Good one Becky! You sound so much like me. For a year I had one fuzzy dim pic of the one PB that I had ever seen at my feeders. But he did eventually come back this year (well, maybe not the same one), and hung around for a couple of days. ..and I got a little closer shot (below). So - keep watchin. I bet you'll get a close-up soon. :)
I plan to be a Bunting stalker myself this weekend! ;>

Deb
PS/They are shy. This one in my yard seems to like the ground feeder, near the azaleas where he can hide.

Congratulations Becky!! I know we are going to see a lot more variety from your yard as time goes on.

Becky, the most Painted Bunting males I have seen at one time is 2, but I have seen several females. This is the second year mine came back for the winter, so yours will probably return next year also. Thanks to all who commented on my pics.

This message was edited Feb 6, 2007 7:46 PM

Gardenpom: You definitely rule when it comes to PB pics! You give me something to aspire to! :) Post more any time, please. I love 'em.
Deb(inSC)

Thanks, here's one more.

thank u.
:)

I dug up a few more Painted Bunting shots from my folders. Here's the first. Two females with a male Cardinal.

Male Painted Bunting.

Male Painted Bunting with a Dove.

Oh awesome ... DebinSC and gardenpom! It's good to see the male up-close. I haven't seen him that clear and close yet. The female is at the feeder all the time. She'll sit there for the longest time eating. She's one of the birds I see every day at the feeder. But today was the first time I have seen the male at the feeder. And when I saw him, I wasn't sure what it was until I cropped and enlarged the photo. (Too dark and shady at that time of day for me to make him out from a distance.) I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at the cropped photo and saw this pretty bird! My neighbor said that they are here year round. And she's been feeding this pair for over a year. So I don't think they migrant from our area. So I do expect to get a few decent shots of him over time.

Thanks for posting your great photos! What a beautiful bird. Are they North American natives or were they imported from somewhere else?

Male Bunting.

I have only seen mine in the winters. I wish they would stay all year. The females are a lot braver than the males.

Congrats on the male PB Becky!! I love all the other photos too! I have only seen one and it was about 15 years ago!! Of course I didn't feed birds all the time and had no camera, but just let him come back now!! LOL!

Would ya lookie there, Becky, WOW indeedy! lad ya didn't have to resort to anything covert to get those beauties to your feeders..LOL
Delight in their maker and He will give you the desires of your heart!

I'm so tickled!

All you guys have been so encouraging too! TY gardenpom, Shiela, & Debin, hugs all around!


Deb

Great photos, everyone - and, Becky, it's pure delight to know you have birds (and critters) visiting you now . . . and such beautiful ones to boot!

Becky: according to my book, they're 'the most colorful native north American bird". And they are supposed to be year-round residents of mid FLA, winter in the southern third of the state!

I haven't seen "mine" in a few days now. He probably figured out he'd come north too early and turned around and went back south! Never saw a female either. She probably said, "Why did you make me come to this freezing cold place! ..and left him here." We should only have them in summer.

Gardenpom: Thank you again for posting the pics of them. The females are very pretty birds, too. They only pale in direct comparison to their mates. IMO.

Deb

This is my feeder "set-up" if you can call it that. :) I used to have them clustered in a couple of different spots, but moved them all to this same tree because it was the only place I could get close enough to take pics without scaring 'em. This is all but 2 of my feeders.

Two of the feeders are homemade. Not pretty, but they get the job done. The squirrels are very happy with everything being so accessible! LOL!

I think I'll get a nice big post set-up in spring.

Deb

My goodness, DebinSC! You have a LOT of feeders!!! I bet the birds just love your yard! :-)

One of the reasons I didn't want to have too many feeders is because of the growth going on UNDER the feeders. As in the photo attached. Not sure if these are Sunflower, safflower, or what??? growing on the ground under the feeders. I am using the no waste mix and I thought the seeds had been baked to prevent growing seedlings, but I guess not.

What do the rest of you do when this happens? Do you just let it grow? Do you pull it out? What????

Do ya think I over did it with the feeders?, not pretty, but functional.

When I can't manage to have the feeders in a spot that I can mulch under, I just pull those little volunteers as best I can.
Just a hazard of bird feeding. :) Not much grows under that peach tree where my feeders are because of so much shade so it works out pretty well.

I've often wondered if I should cultivate those sprouts and grow my own bird seed! :-D
Deb

DebinSC - LOL! That very thought occurred to me as well. I wouldn't mind Sunflowers! LOL!

I was just really shocked to see all the sprouts! I'm like .... uh oh! They came up so quickly!!! Eeekk!

Another question for y'all ....

Since the birds aren't eating up the all the seeds, I noticed that the seeds are getting damp and hopefully not moldy. I dumped all the seeds from the flat feeder into a plastic planter dish and set it in another area for the squirrels. Those seeds had been in the feeder for 3 weeks. I don't want the birds getting sick from damp, stale seeds.

How often to you change your seeds out if the birds don't eat it all up?????

I wish I could help but I've never had that problem.

Becky: When I fill the feeders, I'll generally dump out whatever's left at the bottom if it's damp at all. That's in winter. In summer, I do have a problem with the seed getting moldy looking at the bottom. I don't follow any regular schedule tho, I just change it when it looks like it needs it. I read somewhere once that it should be changed weekly, but I don't know if that's necessary. Maybe a more veteran birder will answer.
Deb(inSC)

Deb ~ too many feeders?? no way! I've got 3 suet feeders, 2 tube feeders, 2 hopper? type feeders and now, 2 of the hanging platform feeders, Walmart finally restocked them....plus I know I'm going to make at least 1 from a basket :-) Mine are all on shepherds hooks, within a pretty small area, but I was showing DH a pic of the setup that Beckygardener has and I may have him set a couple of 4 x 4 for me to use.

Becky ~ When I used mixed seed, I had a bunch of junk sprouting, probably millet or something. Now I have a lot of sunflower sprouts, I pull or mow over the ones under the feeders but usually leave a few of the volunteers that come up in the flower beds. Last year the birds started on them way before they dried and turned brown. I've never had to dump any feed in the winter and the only thing I've had to dump in the summer was thistle, it seems to get moldy pretty fast here when it's hot and damp.

This message was edited Feb 7, 2007 7:07 PM

Yes, thistle does go bad fast.

I put up this window feeder today and came home to this guy in it. I didn't even think about him climbing the screen. The squirrels are such a pain, even sometimes painfully cute lol.

I'm surprised those suction cups held him.

Thanks for showing this fly. I can cross a window feeder off my list.

Fly: Great pic though. Given enough time, a squirrel will get into any feeder (with very few exceptions.)

I have a love/hate relationships with the squirrels. I admire their ingenuity and (as my mother would've said) stick-to-it-iveness, and they are cute, but they probably run up my bird seed spending by about 1/3.

Deb