Someone asked in the comments what the red-breasted nuthatch is eating in the feeder. This is a mesh feeder full of mixed nuts: peanuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, cashews, pistashios, and the odd filbert. Birds love this stuff. If you can mount your feeders in such a way that squirrels can’t get to them and you don’t have too many starlings, birds love this stuff. It’s fun to watch red-bellied woodpeckers fly off with the Brazil nuts and to watch titmice fly away with an almond and chip it apart.
The latest installment of I and the Bird is up at WildBird on the Fly. She has managed to work in her love of cars as a theme–quite creative!
I’m just looking over my schedule for early 2008 and it is action packed! One of my favorite emails that I’ve gotten all year was from Swarovski asking if I would mind if they sent me to Florida in January for a digiscoping workshop…hmmm, let me think about that–OKAY!!! Two days after I get back from that, I’m off to Atlanta for Bird Watch America to see the latest in bird items that could be showing up at a wild birds specialty store near you.
On January 20, 2008 I’m doing an All About Owls program for The Raptor Center using live owls and PowerPoint to talk about Minnesota’s diversity of owls. If you want to attend that, I would recommend signing up. Some years it does sell out and we’ve had to turn people away who just show up at the door.
On February 2, I’m co-leading a trip with Stan Tekiela to go to northern Minnesota to see hawk owls, pine grosbeaks, common redpolls, black-backed woodpeckers, or anything else being reported. Call 952-949-8479 to sign up.
Can’t wait to see you in Atlanta!
Sounds like a lot of cool stuff coming up–woo hoo!
I’ll be glad to help with your PowerPoint presentation, if you need assistance. (I create presentations at a major east coast advertising agency, so I know what I’m doing.)
Sharon – don’t forget to mention the Great Backyard Birdcount in February!
Boy you spoil your birds.-I thought I was bad with shelled sunflower and peanuts.-I’ll try anything to attract more birds though.
Definitely gotta rig up one of those mixed nut feeders. My birds would love that!
Your list of birding events in MN always makes me want to move there–but then I remember the sub-zero temps….
Love your blog! Great pictures, lots of info, definitely not geeky or boring! I would try the mixed nuts, but there are so many squirrels and house sparrows here in Indiana they would clean me out in no time!
What, no Birds and Beer schedule for 2008? Was the concept just a 2007 creation? I will be very sad if so… Don’t forget to keep the first weekend in May scheduled for our banding effort, oh best-selling authoress… Safe travels!