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Bird Feeding in Southwest Illinois
Posted by Merrill Ottwein
on Monday, 23 January 2012
in Winter Fun
Merrill Ottwein
Keeper of forgotten lore...
Manager, Esprit de corps!
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Posted by Merrill Ottwein 
Merrill Ottwein
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Bird Feeding in Southwest Illinois
Of course, this is a subject so huge that we can't begin to be the end-all commentary. So we've chosen to list some of the principles that we've learned or heard of...and we hope to hear from you, too about your tweaks on the subject. First, we believe this is wonderful winter fun, and we (Gracie and Merrill Ottwein) have fed birds in the winter, forever. Because we always search for the rural in our home settings, and loving water, it's a natural. Currently, we live directly on a small lake with the other side still overgrown with vegetation....a great fringe for birds of many kinds, as well as other critters. But it does bring problems, too, defined a bit later here.
We feed only in winter primarily because we use the deck for other things in the summer. (But one of our daughters feeds year round, and she is rewarded with species that we don't see, primarily migratory birds that simply aren't here in winter. Common on her feeders in the summer are indigo buntings, goldfinch, flicker woodpeckers, cedar waxwings, baltimore orioles, bluebirds, warblers that remain unidentified but very colorful, and an occasional rose-breasted grosbeak.)
And we do offer food for hummingbirds and goldfinch all year round....sugar water for the former, and niger (thistle) seed for the latter, both just outside windows so we can see them "close up." Both are obviously just stunning, the goldfinch summer color so brilliantly yellow.
And we're constantly experimenting and learning; here are just a few wrinkles:
1) We aim at cardinals, all kinds of sparrows, nuthatches, juncos, titmice, goldfinch, chickadees, rosy finch, blue jays, the usual....plus whatever we can get from more exotics. The bait we use is traditionally available bulk bird foot, centering around black oil sunflower and white millet. (On the farm, years ago, we used weed seed cleaned from soybeans kept for seed and it was a wonderful smorgasbord for small birds. Nobody keeps their own soybean seed anymore and selling weed seed is illegal, so that's the end of that.)
2) Buying bird food can get expensive, too, so we try to watch that. Important: we add cracked corn (not whole) to the standard offering because it's dirt cheap, and it seems all species will get into it to some degree...and anything they eat from the cheap plate will save on the more expensive stuff. Blackbirds, grackels, starlings and cowbirds, and many sparrows will eat a lot of this, as will squirrels. It seems by the way that these "black birds" in general show up only when the ground is covered with snow; then the deck becomes black with them. Cowbirds are often mis-identified, but they are very common...and some blackbirds are of the red-winged variety, making them lots more attractive. Grackels have a strange forboding beauty...up close the iridescent feathers are fascinatingly beautiful, their eyes almost evil.
The bigger the sack, (of bird food,) the better the price, and farm-oriented suppliers seem to be lowest. We then keep 4 metal garbage cans, with lids to store it in a closet off our porch. Metal because otherwise the squirrels are in it and wasting it all over everything. The mixtures commonly available usually contain white millet, red millet and black oil sunflower seed; birds greatly prefer white millet and with ample available, will go around the larger-seeded red.We add sunflower hearts to our offering, bought in bulk. It does seem that because there is no waste, they're not that much more expensive than unhulled, but they save a lot of cleanup. We would probably feed more but we can't tell if these "hearts" are black oil, or the more common striped sunflower seeds....so we limit it, feeding a lot of unhulled black oil sunflower seeds, too. (Black oil seems preferred in general, and it contains more "oil" (duh!) deemed beneficial to birds especially in winter.)Finally, we do add suet, but unless it gets cold for several days, it's not real popular fare. It does attract some woodpeckers. When a spell of cold weather hits, it gets a lot of attention by a lot of other varieties...starlings love it.We also keep a niger feeder but don't have much winter action.
3) After a lot of experimentation, we nowadays feed from two large hanging containers, hanging from trees above our deck. One contains a commercial mix, the other a mix of sunflower hearts and black oil seeds. The feeders are wasteful, in that a lot of food falls out....and when over our deck, it falls to the deck. Then, because many birds still prefer to feed "on the ground", those are actively picking that up, especially sparrows and lots of cardinals...up to 40 at a time, in fact!
Currently, we also have a lawn table covered for offering cracked corn. We generally offer it separately so that we can see who's eating it...or not. So it's not in a feeder as such.
4) We like sparrows a lot, but we work hard at making species identifications....and it's tough. But we commonly have song sparrows, house sparrows, chipping sparrows, field sparrows and an occasional fox sparrow from the locals. And white throated and white crowned sparrows from the migrants (those that winter here, but nest far north of us. We probably wouldn't even know that except for the next subject here.
We feed only in winter primarily because we use the deck for other things in the summer. (But one of our daughters feeds year round, and she is rewarded with species that we don't see, primarily migratory birds that simply aren't here in winter. Common on her feeders in the summer are indigo buntings, goldfinch, flicker woodpeckers, cedar waxwings, baltimore orioles, bluebirds, warblers that remain unidentified but very colorful, and an occasional rose-breasted grosbeak.)
And we do offer food for hummingbirds and goldfinch all year round....sugar water for the former, and niger (thistle) seed for the latter, both just outside windows so we can see them "close up." Both are obviously just stunning, the goldfinch summer color so brilliantly yellow.
And we're constantly experimenting and learning; here are just a few wrinkles:
1) We aim at cardinals, all kinds of sparrows, nuthatches, juncos, titmice, goldfinch, chickadees, rosy finch, blue jays, the usual....plus whatever we can get from more exotics. The bait we use is traditionally available bulk bird foot, centering around black oil sunflower and white millet. (On the farm, years ago, we used weed seed cleaned from soybeans kept for seed and it was a wonderful smorgasbord for small birds. Nobody keeps their own soybean seed anymore and selling weed seed is illegal, so that's the end of that.)
2) Buying bird food can get expensive, too, so we try to watch that. Important: we add cracked corn (not whole) to the standard offering because it's dirt cheap, and it seems all species will get into it to some degree...and anything they eat from the cheap plate will save on the more expensive stuff. Blackbirds, grackels, starlings and cowbirds, and many sparrows will eat a lot of this, as will squirrels. It seems by the way that these "black birds" in general show up only when the ground is covered with snow; then the deck becomes black with them. Cowbirds are often mis-identified, but they are very common...and some blackbirds are of the red-winged variety, making them lots more attractive. Grackels have a strange forboding beauty...up close the iridescent feathers are fascinatingly beautiful, their eyes almost evil.
The bigger the sack, (of bird food,) the better the price, and farm-oriented suppliers seem to be lowest. We then keep 4 metal garbage cans, with lids to store it in a closet off our porch. Metal because otherwise the squirrels are in it and wasting it all over everything. The mixtures commonly available usually contain white millet, red millet and black oil sunflower seed; birds greatly prefer white millet and with ample available, will go around the larger-seeded red.We add sunflower hearts to our offering, bought in bulk. It does seem that because there is no waste, they're not that much more expensive than unhulled, but they save a lot of cleanup. We would probably feed more but we can't tell if these "hearts" are black oil, or the more common striped sunflower seeds....so we limit it, feeding a lot of unhulled black oil sunflower seeds, too. (Black oil seems preferred in general, and it contains more "oil" (duh!) deemed beneficial to birds especially in winter.)Finally, we do add suet, but unless it gets cold for several days, it's not real popular fare. It does attract some woodpeckers. When a spell of cold weather hits, it gets a lot of attention by a lot of other varieties...starlings love it.We also keep a niger feeder but don't have much winter action.
3) After a lot of experimentation, we nowadays feed from two large hanging containers, hanging from trees above our deck. One contains a commercial mix, the other a mix of sunflower hearts and black oil seeds. The feeders are wasteful, in that a lot of food falls out....and when over our deck, it falls to the deck. Then, because many birds still prefer to feed "on the ground", those are actively picking that up, especially sparrows and lots of cardinals...up to 40 at a time, in fact!
Currently, we also have a lawn table covered for offering cracked corn. We generally offer it separately so that we can see who's eating it...or not. So it's not in a feeder as such.
4) We like sparrows a lot, but we work hard at making species identifications....and it's tough. But we commonly have song sparrows, house sparrows, chipping sparrows, field sparrows and an occasional fox sparrow from the locals. And white throated and white crowned sparrows from the migrants (those that winter here, but nest far north of us. We probably wouldn't even know that except for the next subject here.
5. This is one of the best of our innovations: We have window boxes on our little cottage-on-the-lake, where we enjoy impatiens in summer as much from the inside as we do from the out. And we rig 4 of them to become bird feeders in the winter, so we have birds feeding just inches away from us. (If we keep it darker inside, they can't even see us well.)
The visual detail on every single species is incredible, but one species that winter here, especially so. The white crowned sparrow summers in Canada and winters here....with bold white stripes on its head, easily seen. But it also has bright yellow spots on each cheek that you simply don't see other than on our window sills. Obviously, this is a cardinal on a window feeder...my sparrow pictures misfiled somewhere. (And a shelf you might rig outside a window would do as well as window boxes, obviously, but it's a very neat aspect of bird feeding...as well as squirrel feeding. Both drive the cats nuts!)
The visual detail on every single species is incredible, but one species that winter here, especially so. The white crowned sparrow summers in Canada and winters here....with bold white stripes on its head, easily seen. But it also has bright yellow spots on each cheek that you simply don't see other than on our window sills. Obviously, this is a cardinal on a window feeder...my sparrow pictures misfiled somewhere. (And a shelf you might rig outside a window would do as well as window boxes, obviously, but it's a very neat aspect of bird feeding...as well as squirrel feeding. Both drive the cats nuts!)
6. In our recent HomeActions newsletter, we talked of this uncommon bird, a sparrow, in fact, that we have mixed into our patrons. This bird was introduced into St. Louis in the late 1800s and has never gotten more than 50 miles from the point of introduction, and so is present in our two main counties here but in no other parts of America. It is The European Tree Sparrow. The picture here shows the distinctive dark spots in a white field on each cheek. The picture was taken locally, on a home showing along Dunlap Lake in Edwardsville, in fact, from a client's camera, (a lovely home he didn't buy.) It's almost as if they were posing with their differentiation prominent.This picture also shows them on a niger feeder, and that's not the case at our home....in fact, we don't see many, if any goldfinch either in the winter, so one niger feeder lasts us all winter. Of course, goldfinch are harder to identify also because the males lose their bright color in winter.
7. This winter, as usual, (and living on the lake, so that 180 degrees of our geography is wild and water,) we sometimes get .... hawks! White-tailed hawks, I think....but big ones. Not daily, or even weekly, but once in a while, they'll swoop into the feeder because they like....you guessed it...the birds, giving a whole new meaning to the word "Bird Feeder"! They are beautiful, but deadly, and they scare the bejabbers out of the other birds. They leave it a very quiet scene. Once in a while, the deck will be absolutely void of birds in the morning rush hour. Frequently, we'll then see a hawk sitting in a tree across the lake, and we've come to believe one is in the neighborhood somehow, shutting down the cafeteria.
8. Stuff we don't like to feed: squirrels, ducks, geese and now, deer, too, who have found this bonanza of grain. It's a rare night that they don't find us nowadays and mill around on soft ground. Last year, they also trimmed our foundation plants to basic...but fortunately they re-grew in the spring.
And on a lake, geese and ducks are constantly looking for handouts, and telling their buddies all about it all over the midwest if they do. It's counter-intuitive, but we try to avoid encouraging them, but the more brazen geese sometimes get onto the deck, and of course, really mess it up with "goose pearls" as Gracie calls them. Y'all know all about the fact that Canadian Geese have developed a sub-species that does not migrate. Now year-round residents, they are a real pest. But they are beautiful, especially in flight, especially going away. But one really funny sight is to see a flock land on ice, where they wildly pedal backwards, alternating their feet, in an attempt to stop. We usually have, by the way, one pair of mallards and one pair of geese nest in the vicinity every summer. The younger population of humans around seldom let them hatch, somehow, but the youngsters are very cute. Geese mate for life, so we always have the same pair, and they nest in the same place, and usually have the same disappointing results..
Outwitting squirrels is a subject in itself, and I'm running out of time here...so one way or another, I'll be back. I can only promise that the tale will be one of near-despair, and the lessons learned are more in the order of controlling damage and admitting defeat to a superior intelligence!
9) There are many idiosyncrasies by species, but these two stand out:
a) Chickadees are gentle birds that don't mind working around you, and when feeding, will take one morsel at a time from a feeder or a deck and retire to a tree limb either to eat it or shell it, (in the case of black oil sunflower seed), only then returning for another bite.
b) Blue jays eat whole black oil sunflower seeds....voraciously gobbling a dozen or so at a time, and swallowing them. So do they have the capability of digesting them, or do they spit them up in some lonesome place that we don't see? But they still like them.
10) That's one question unresolved. But there are two more physiological questions I still want answered:
a) First, how do birds taste? They're looking at seeds, mostly, that have hulls and at least to us, are tasteless. But they know the difference obviously. How?
b) In the case of goldfinch, the males change color in the winter, from their bright yellow summer garb, into a dull, greenish featheration that looks much like the female's summer color. So when that happens, do the same feathers actually change color and become greenish (or yellow in the spring,) or do they molt the one color and grow another?
c) The subject of molting is another filled with some wonder. For instance the primary wing feathers in all birds are lost in pairs, so that the wings remain matched even in their effect on flight. That's wonderment! d) As is the subject of general digestion. Birds also have a chicken-like set of digestive organs, so including a crop. The crop is where the digestion of hard food begins in birds, but without enzymes...yet. Water and gravel (or sand) that's also ingested but stays in the crop as a grinding element, prepare harder food for the digestive process below. Is the crop somehow involved with the blue jay question?
So to those intrepid souls that get this far, we would love to have you comment with your experiences. This is a blog and there's a place for your response below. As you sign them, so will they be shown, (full name, first name, initials, or none of the above.) We do hope to hear from you...I frankly hope to learn some stuff. Merrill
Original author: Merrill
Eagle (and Pelican) Watching:
Posted by Merrill Ottwein
on Monday, 23 January 2012
in Winter Fun
Merrill Ottwein
Keeper of forgotten lore...
Manager, Esprit de corps!
User is currently offline