It's for the birds!

[thistlechaser]

I never would have thought I'd be interested in birds. I had a parakeet as a kid and liked it, but I never thought wild birds would be something that could entertain me, hold my interest, make me smile, and make me learn.

On a whim, a couple months ago I bought a birdfeeder. If I had known how expensive the whole thing would be, I might have thought twice about it. $20-ish for the feeder seemed fine, and I bought a cheap bag of seed for $10 or so. Then came the mess. Then came the squirrels.

Oh the squirrels...

To deal with the mess, I bought a fittingly-named thing called a seed catcher ($30). Picture a trampoline with a lip suspended under the feeder by six wires. The squirrels loved it. Easy reach of the feeder and all the fallen seed right there for them. Eventually they kept tipping it over and it became pointless, the mess was just as bad without it. (I live in an apartment and strongly worried that the neighbors might complain and I'd have to take it down, so I try to keep things as clean as possible.)

So I took the seed catcher off, but changed the type of seed. (Hulled sunflower seeds.) It's a whole lot more expensive, but at least without the seed catcher, the squirrels have a harder time getting to it, and there are no hulls or wasted 'filler' seed to make a mess.

I bought a squirrel baffle (another $30), but I haven't put it up yet. I've spent nearly $50 on seed so far, but at least that should slow down and there should be no more "hardware" I need to buy.

Anyway! The birds! For all the first weeks, I had "just" house finches coming. Very small little birds, the females are plain brown and the males have red heads/chests:

They may be common everyday birds, but they're so friendly and chatter endlessly, and it's so interesting to watch them interact. Females seem dominant in their species (unless it's something that changes by season). They move in groups, but squabble endlessly with each other. There are four perches on the feeder, but two birds always try to control the whole thing -- I'd suspect one would hold it if it could, but it's too far around.

Then in the last week new species have started coming. First is the oddly named dark-eyed junco:

I think all birds have dark eyes. :P This is a subspecies of the dark-eyed junco, found from Northern CA to Alaska. It's enough different than the other juncos that it might become a stand-alone species.

And just today an American Goldfinch came:

It was even brighter than in that picture! I tried to take a picture of it, but doing it through the window screen never works.

And if all that weren't entertainment enough, there are the squirrels. Problems? Yeah, but I really do enjoy watching them as well.

And the cherry on top? Ellie New Cat is getting plenty of exercise and entertainment/torture. With only a window screen between here and all these birds and squirrels, I don't think her life is boring anymore.

Helpful hint for kitty owners: If you're worried about your cat scratching the screens, especially in an apartment, put a baby gate in the window! I have a big apartment window, so I can use a normal baby gate. I just put it in the window track and close the window an inch or so to hold it in place. Rarely she tries to climb the gate, but never do cat claws touch the screens anymore.

Edit: I forgot to mention the mourning doves! Beautiful birds, such pretty calls they make. They've been coming nearly as long as the finches, though they eat the dropped seed on the ground instead of directly from the feeder. They always seem to travel in pairs, and while I can see the gender differences in the pairs, I'm not sure which is which. If you've never heard one before, you can find a recording here. Sounds what I think an owl must sound like. It's hollower and more haunting than in the recording.

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Check out my amiga, long-time birdwatcher and photographer, on Face Book (I bet you have an FB account, though I do not!). Ooops edited because I forgot to include her name: Noreen Doyle.

She's an Egytptologist who is currently moved from Maine to AZ, Tempe, at the university. She's long been, like all bird feeders, fighting squirrels and the rong birds -- and then had to take hers down, her wonderful humming bird attractors -- due to the mess the other birds were making down below for her apartment building.

But they are wonderful to watch. I spent doing dishes long hours watching the birds -- and the squirrels and the cats! -- from my kitchen window in the 18th century house that came with our research-writing fellowship in C'Town (Washington College) on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I miss this. (Among the many other things I miss about living in C'town -- though, o, did I miss NYC while there too!)

Love, C.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who doesn't use Facebook. It's always nice to run into someone else who doesn't. She sounds really interesting though! Do you know if she tried a seed catcher? I'm lucky, since the apartment building is only one story, I have no downstairs neighbors to complain.

Sounds like the perfect way to pass the time while doing dishes!

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

You're an fb refusnik too?! As you say it's seldom one encounters our kind. :)

Nature is better than tv. That's why cats sit in windows, right? :)

Love, C.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep! Amusingly, my mother keeps trying to push me into joining FB, but I've dug my heels in.

And agreed!

[resonant.livejournal.com]

I think I'll try this!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I strongly recommend it! It's so peaceful and relaxing. I can't explain it, but it makes me so happy watching them interact.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I love bird-watching, too. Our house backs to a small woods so we get to see lots of different types. We get frequent visits from cardinals, blue jays, and crows, but we also get woodpeckers, and last night we saw an owl!

Goldfinches are adorable. They squeak! But you should be careful, because thistles are one of their favorite foods. ;p

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Haha yes! The first line I read about them was something like "They gather in large flocks in bushes to eat thistle". I'M NEVER ENTERING BUSHES AGAIN!

And yay! So cool that you're seeing larger birds! I haven't seen a blue jay in this area, but we had tons of them back east. I had one larger grey bird come yesterday, but not jay/cardinal sized. Other than the mourning doves, everything that visits is finch sized.

I'd love to see an owl and a woodpecker! I get to see tons of crows, since they raid garbages. :/ Eat lunch in a fast food parking lot and you can watch them pull bags out of the trash cans (the kind with flaps!), and open them on the ground and go through the wrappers.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I'd heard owls back there before, but I'd never seen one until the other night. Had I not seen it moving, I'm not sure I would have actually spotted it. It blended into the trees really well. I kept trying to point it out to grysar and he couldn't see it, and even though I knew where it was, when I moved to a different position I couldn't find it. But when I sat back down, there it was again. Pretty amazing.

I see hawks hanging out on the lampposts sometimes on my way to work. And one actually chased a dove into my office window!

Crows are clever, and they're also kind of amusing because they don't walk, they strut.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes! I love how crows strut. There's been a hawk that hunts along one of the roads I take to work for a couple years now, I often see him/her sitting on a lamp post watching the road below. I assume it eats roadkill? Or maybe when cars scare up a rabbit or something.

[loup_noir]

We got our first feeder in the nineties and have had one ever since. It hung outside the office, and it attracted finches, titmice, California towhees, and sparrows. That was so much fun we added a hummingbird feeder.

Speed ahead to now. The hummingbirds own us. We buy sugar by the 100lbs. The darn quail are everywhere outside (okay, they're cute, but man those things can eat!). The siskins and the goldfinches (lesser and American both) insist on niger thistle seed. The seed bring in Stellar's and scrub jays, whitecrowed and goldcrowned sparrows, fox sparrows, song sparrows, spotted towhees (no Californian out here), and the occasional woodpecker. I'm not as keen on the doves and pigeons that swing by or the various egrets and herons and kingfishers. Bird TV is so much fun to watch!

Best of luck to you on keeping the squirrels out of your feeder. Our dog was the best deterrent.

If you hang a basket under your eaves, you'll probably get mourning doves nesting there.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I think a hummingbird feeder will be the next thing I add. I'm afraid of attracting ants, but so long as it's hanging instead of connected to the building, I think it'll be okay. Hmm. Google tells me I should be as worried about bees and wasps as ants. We do have a lot of those here. Will have to research this more!

I'd love to hang a basket for the mourning doves, but since I'm in an apartment, I don't want to put it up and maybe have to take it down at some point when it might be in use.

Wow, you get some big birds! I'm okay with anything up to jay-sized. If an egret shows up at my apartment door, I'm going to worry a bit. ;)

I was thinking about you while writing this post. When you had posted about going out bird spotting/counting, I hadn't understood the draw at all. Now I do!

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

Our hummingbird feeder started attracting wasps. They drove the birds away, so we ended up taking the feeder down. It is too bad...I really liked having the hummingbirds visit on the back porch.

I don't know the names of most of the birds that hang out in my area. I should read up on that more.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

After reading more about hummingbird feeders, I decided against one. You need to clean them every 3-4 days (otherwise they could grow a mold that will kill the birds), and even the wasp-proof ones aren't. A little too much work for me. :/

It's fun looking them up and then reading about them! Some of them are pretty amazing, like the black-eyed junko one comes down from Alaska! Such a long trip for a tiny bird!

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Ants are a problem, as Noreen found, particularly living in the Southwest, realm of ants and all their diversity. I forget what she did to keep them from her feeders, and then, from there demanding residence in her apartment as well. But she handled it handily, no doubt from her long experience in the field and with the old family manse in Maine, which gets invaded regularly by the outdoors.

Love, C.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I decided to skip the hummingbird feeder. Apparently sugar water grows a mold that's very fatal to them, so you need to clean them out every 3-4 days. I know me, I'm way too lazy to keep up with that kind of cleaning schedule for a birdfeeder...