Non Birding Bill and I headed out to my favorite birding spot–Mr. Neil’s yard for some hang out time and a bee check.  Since my travel schedule gets insane in spring Hans has taken over keeping the feeders full as he’s taking care of the yard.  He does a great job, but sometimes the nectar and oriole feeders empty too fast for him to keep up.  When I was walking around the feeders, a ruby-throated hummingbird flew up to my head, buzzed around then flew away.  I went to the nectar feeder (we use the HummZinger)–empty.  I made some nectar and less then a minute from stepping away a hummingbird flew down.  I love how hummingbirds figure out how to get our attention when a food source is depleted.  I’ve known hummingbirds to flutter in front of windows when a feeder is empty too.  Heck, Lorraine said they had a hummer in the house last week…maybe the feeder was empty then?

Mr. Neil’s cherry tree is bursting with cherries once again and unlike last year, NBB and I managed to get out and pick some cherries before the birds raided the tart fruit.  I noticed the orioles were going for the fruit and I refilled our grape jelly feeder.  Orioles tend to ignore the jelly feeder in June when bugs were out, but I figured if they were eating cherries, they would eat grape jelly.  I filled one cup with jelly and the other cup with cherries from the tree.  As soon as I put the feeder out, the oriole went from the cherries down to our feeder…and totally ignored the cherry dish and went right for the grape jelly.  The best part was that he flew off and a few moments later returned with a female.

She also chose the grape jelly over the cherries.  That’s fine, more cherries for us!  I was glad to see the orioles, I’ve been so preoccupied with surveys and work that I did not get a chance to really enjoy orioles at the feeder in May.  Incidentally, we took our portion of the cherries (still leaving an ample supply for the birds on the upper parts of the cherry tree) and made a tart cherry crumble.  Many people know Mr. Neil for his writing and general Neilness but he has mad skillz in the kitchen, I’ve learned some of my best cooking from him.

I love the crow who seems to be on cue giving periodic two caws for ambient noise. Love the little dome over the tray to keep the seeds dry and uncovered.
Happy Holidays to everyone–however you celebrate it.
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog throughout the year and a special thank you to everyone who sends to that read, “I’ve never really noticed birds before reading your blog, but…” and then you send me your bird story. That’s what makes sharing my bird stuff so fun.

That is an exceptionally good deal on sunflower. Birds like the goldfinch and house finch above love sunflower. If you are only going to offer one seed at your feeder–that’s the seed to offer. More birds eat that seed than another.

I responded to the group email that based on my experience working at a bird store that a retailer known as a “big box store” had deals on seed that were below dealer cost, it was a sure sign the seed was old. Many wild bird specialty stores insist on fresh product. When it comes to black oil sunflower, the specialty stores usually purchase seed from the most recent crop, it’s rarely more than a year old. Once the new crop comes in, the seed distributor must find someone else to purchase it and it’s generally sold to big box stores, grocery stores, hardware stores etc at a greatly reduced price.

Unlike Nyjer thistle which tends to only attract birds if it’s less than six months old, sunflowers will still be eaten by birds if it’s over a year old. After the first year, the nut meat begins to shrivel, so it’s not going to be as desirable to wild birds, but if you’re the only game in town, they’ll go for it. Also, all stores and seed distributors have a problem with insects. The most common ones are the Indian meal moth and the dust weevil. You can only do so much safe pesticide treatment around the bird seed. The bugs are no big deal to birds–it’s added protein in the feeder. But those insects are a pest to humans if they find their way into the home. Also, over time, an untreated infestation of the seed can affect the quality of the food as different insects tunnel through shells and eat the seed.

Check it out, even downy woodpeckers go for sunflower seeds. I warned the group in the email that there was probably a good reason the seed was so cheap and recommended they avoid buying it. Dennis brought up the point that it may be great seed from a bumper crop or this could be a loss leader situation–the store gets you inside for insanely cheap sunflower seed and then you end up purchasing several other items in the store. This wasn’t out of the question, CUB Foods had an insane turkey sale going on the weeks before Thanksgiving. They were selling turkeys below cost for .37 a pound in the hopes you would come in and buy all your other holiday accoutrements at regular price.

I suspected that this would not be the case–sunflower prices have steadily increased in the last five years because 1. Frito Lay switched to using sunflower oil for their chips leaving less sunflower available to be used as bird seed and 2. fewer farmers have been growing sunflowers because of the ethanol boom and all the subsidies available for corn (which crashed) also leading to fewer sunflowers available for bird seed.

And it gets even more expensive when you see birds eating sunflowers out of the shell like this photo above of a black-capped chicadee. These are great because they do not germinate or leave a hulled shell mess on the ground, but sunflowers out of the shell can be twice the price of regular in the shell black oil sunflowers.

I was surprised and delighted to see a follow up email from Dennis regarding the validity of my claims. Before he retired, he worked for the USDA Seed Research Laboratory in Madison, WI and put his skills to use in testing the advertised seed and if my warning was warranted.

He purchased some of the advertised sale sunflower seed against some old sunflower seed he had on hand. He measured a given volume of both seeds and compared weights. He repeated the test three times and discovered that the sale price seed weighed 12.8% less than even the old seed he had on hand. I would guess this seed is over two years old, but I do not know that for sure.

He then did a visual examination of both seeds. He wrote, “I noticed that the sale price seeds were generally a little smaller. I also observed about 1% of the sale price seeds had tiny holes drilled in them (pictured above), indicating insect damage. I did not observe any evidence of live insect infestation, frass or webbing. My guess is that the infestation occurred in the field, not in storage.” I did not find any damaged seeds in my samples of old seeds.”

Finally, he broke open several of the “drilled” seed and found the nut meats were damaged. He estimated that 30 – 40% of the kernel weight had been consumed before whatever insect larvae left the shell. Above is a photo of two seeds. The upper is a damaged kernel from the sale seed, the lower is a whole kernel from old seed.

He summed up his research that the seed on sale was no bargain! Thank you Dennis for taking the time to do the actual research! It’s cool to know that I have friends with handy skills!

So, beware when you see sunflower or any bird seed on sale at an unusually good price. Chances are it’s a sign that the seed is old or of little feeding value to the birds. Again, if you are the only person for miles feeding birds, they will take what they can get. But if you are in a neighborhood and several people feed birds and you feeder is ignored, find out where your neighbor who has birds gets their seed, chances are good that it’s fresher.

And now a few words from one of my site’s sponsors:

Hey! If you think that green feeder pictured in the photos is cool (I think it is, I have some and give them to friends) they are available at my OpenSky Store. The feeders above are part of the Woodlink line of feeders. There are also the covered tray feeder, the mesh feeder and the Clever Clean Feeders too that work for sunflower.

Remember that 20% of the profits of my store are donated to the ABA’s kids programs.

Let’s get some basics down about this seed first, on the off chance that someone reading this doesn’t know about the tiny seed for finches. Above is a picture of Nyjer also known as Niger and Thistle. Most of what you purchase for goldfinches at your local feed store comes from Singapore, Burma (I remember seeing that location frequently when I got in 50# bags at the bird store I managed), Ethiopia, and Myanmar. This is not a seed grown in North America. It is in no way related to the noxious weed thistle. It was originally called Niger but frequently got mispronounced as a racial slur. So many retailers referred to it as thistle. Since some got confused that it might be seeds of the noxious weed thistle, some cities tried to ban its sale. The Wild Bird Feeding Industry has pushed for the name to be changed to a phonetic spelling: Nyjer.

Confused yet? Basically at bird stores: Nyjer = Niger = Thistle, it is all the same seed. It’s that tiny seed you put out for finches, siskins and redpolls and it’s not grown in North America–one of the reasons it’s one of the more expensive seeds.

According to the Loegerings, attempts have been made to grow a type of Nyjer in North America. A Niger Growers Group was even formed. By 2002, a plant had been developed and seeds were produced…and no bird would touch it. The group contacted the Loegerings and asked them to figure out why birds wouldn’t eat the seeds. They set up 15 different feeding stations with the North American Nyjer in one feeder and Ethiopian Nyjer in the second. They measured the amount of seed put in the feeder, the amount the birds ate, the type of birds and the flock composition. The most common birds coming to the feeding stations were goldfinches and redpolls. Sure enough, if the birds had their choice, they ate the Ethiopian Nyjer more than the North American Nyjer.

Loegering wondered what was different. One of the first things that came to mind was that Ethiopian Nyjer is supposed to be heat treated to prevent it from germinating in North American soil (we all know how successful that is…not). So he got the directions for the exact process and heat treated the North American Nyjer and restarted the experiment. This time, the finches ate both types of Nyjer at the same rate. Now why would they prefer the heat treated seed? Does the heat remove the moisture to make the shell easier to crack? Does it make for a better tasting seed? Does it look different in the UV color spectrum? We don’t know.

Now, this does not mean you will be finding locally grown Nyjer anytime soon. The Nyjer Growers Group has since disbanded. Part of the reason is that there is no farm equipment available to separate the tiny seeds from the chaff. Nyjer is all hand harvested overseas, think about that when you are pouring it into your feeder–that is a hand harvested seed. Kind of makes you wonder about the age of the harvesters and if they are paid a fair wage for harvesting that bird seed. Between that and tariffs, you can understand why it’s an expensive feed to put out. The other reason was that when corn prices went crazy on all the ethanol speculation, many farmers gave up trying to grow bird food like Nyjer or sunflower (it’s costly since you have to protect from the very creatures it is being grown for) in favor of growing corn. They also gave up some of their CRP land, so birds got a raw deal from ethanol…no bird can live in a corn field.

And now a few words from one of my site’s sponsors:

Hey! While we’re talking Nyjer and finches, you might need one and some are available at the Birdchick’s OpenSky Store. One that is pictured quite a bit in my blog and used by thousands of finches is the Finch Flocker (a 36″ feeder). There’s also the Droll Yankee Clever Clean Series for finches too.

Remember that 20% of the profits of my store are donated to the ABA’s kids programs.

• 1 cup melted lard or beef suet
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 2 cups quick oats
• 2 cups yellow cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• half cup sunflower hearts (unsalted)
• half cup crushed pecans (unsalted)
• half cup peanuts (unsalted)

Melt lard and peanut butter together on a low burner. Take off heat, and add remaining ingredients. Spread on a cookie sheet, and allow to cool in the refrigerator until the mixture is just hard enough to cut into pieces. Store in freezer bags and use as needed.

This is a great suet dough to spread into suet logs, spread on the sides of trees, use in the suet sandwich, a tray feeder or offer on a deck rail and dish like Julie does.

Okay, so hopefully you’ve gotten the identification of Sparrow down pat. If not, there’s no hope for you, and you’re destined to lead a lonely, sheltered life, fearing the companionship of your fellow man. Which, ironically, makes you a perfect candidate to be a bird watcher. But I kid the birders.

Let us now move briskly on to the other type of bird you just saw, the Crow. In contrast to the Sparrow, which is vile, corrupt mockery of all that is righteous in the world but which is extremely popular—the Internet Explorer 6 of birds, if you will—the Crow is, in fact, a fairly awesome bird which people hate. People hate Crows so much you’d think they horked in the back of their car, or had a reality show.

This is not an unreasonable reaction. Crows have several things working against them, the first being is that while Crows are cool, they know it. Crows don’t walk, they strut, making sure that you notice them without acting like they’re making sure you notice them. I don’t think that anyone would disagree that Crows have what Vice-Principals the world over would describe as “an attitude problem,” before adding “Mister” with a very significant period at the end, because Crows are basically the teenagers of the bird world. You’ll often find them hanging around behind feeders, sneaking a smoke. Chase them off and they’ll simply fly off—slooooowly—to the nearest tree, glaring at you without looking like they’re glaring at you. You can almost hear them mutter “bogus,” and “whut-evah, grand-dad.”

Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Watch me go. Zoom.

I can hear my wife cringing from across town as I write this, because she can’t stand anthropomorphization of animals. But it doesn’t really apply to Crows, because I feel they are so very human, which is, again, part of the reason why people don’t like them. They’re cooperative, family-based, and part of the reason they’ve been so successful is that they’ve adapted to humanity, eating the roadkill (created by us) and garbage (likewise).

So, it can be easy to hate on Crows, but nonetheless I urge you take another look at them: I honestly really like them. Crows can be a lot of fun to watch, provided they don’t know you’re watching them: they play pass-the-stick and have this weird cartwheeling game they play in the park in the winter. And winter is the best time to watch crows, because that’s when they lose some of their smugness and are, like the rest of us, just trying to get from A to B. Their strut becomes a trudge as they try to make their way through the snow, and they’ll hang in the trees, wrapped in their feathers like trench coats. They hang out at my bus stop, probaby waiting for the cross-town to take them to the U. campus, where they are no-doubt studying Russian Formalism and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. And as we stand there, both freezing our butts off, they’ll shake off the snow with a shudder as if to say “this weather is b.s.”

Yes, yes it is.

Sharon tells me that the Crows we have around our house are notoriously hard to take pictures of (again, like teenagers), so your best bet is try try and snap a picture with a motion-sensitive camera like the  Wingscapes Birdcam. Both items are available at the Birdchick’s OpenSky Store, and 20% of the profits are donated to the ABA’s kids programs.

As an added bonus, if you enter the coupon code Sharon1009, you’ll get an additional 10% off your OpenSky order.

Birdwatching: hobby for the insane?

Surprisingly, no! Even those who are merely married to a birder can learn to appreciate our fine feathered friends, albeit against your will. In an effort to help the non-birding spouse, I’ll be collecting my thoughts on birds here on the Birdchick Blog. Think of it as a field guide, except it’s a) free and b) useful.

I like birds. My nickname is Non Birding Bill not because I hate birds, but because I don’t go birdwatching (also because my wife knows a lot of Bills, and saying “My Husband” was too complicated, apparently). In fact, everybody likes birds, and knowing a few bird facts can be a nice ice breaker with people who are completely out of the loop, birding wise (i.e., sane).

The first thing you need to know is that in the city, every bird you see is a House Sparrow. Unless it’s a duck, of course. But otherwise, it’s a sparrow. They’re the small brown birds that you see bee bopping around when you’re outside. And I mean everywhere: the reason you need to learn how to ID a sparrow is that any time you see a bird, it’s a sparrow. In fact the likelihood of a bird being a sparrow is directly proportional to your certaintly that it is not a sparrow. Think you’ve got a Chestnut-sided Warbler in your yard? It’s a sparrow. Unusual hummingbird at your feeder? Sparrow. Small farm animals being carried off in the night? Sparrow.

Look into the face of a killer.

Sparrows are the hydrogen molecule of birds; they’re so common they make a handy point of reference, and every other bird can be expressed in terms of how much like or unlike a sparrow it is. So, if youre going to watch a bird, you need to know the sparrow.

What else do you need to know about sparrows? For starters, they’re complete bastards. Totally, completely evil birds. They don’t bother people because in addition to being evil, they’re smart, and have figured out that the key to surviving is not bothering people. So they bebop around, acting all cute and harmless and “oh look at me, I’m stealing a breadcrumb! I’m so naughty!” And then they fly off, find a bluebird sitting on a nest, and kill her by pecking her to death while she’s on her eggs. Seriously.

House Sparrows were introduced to America (“Hello, nice to meet you.”) by a dude who wanted every bird in Shakespeare to be present in America, which is just another reason to hate Shakespeare in my wife’s book. The odd thing is that while they’re over here commiting more murders than the franchises of CSI and Law and Order put together, House Sparrows are on the decline in Europe.

That, in a nutshell, is everything I know, and therefore, everything your non-birding spouse, needs to know about the evil, evil House Sparrow, who’s preferred seed mix is the blood of the innocent.

The above feeder is a Seed Saver Domed Feeder, and the picture was taken with a Wingscapes Birdcam. Both items are available at the Birdchick’s OpenSky Store, and 20% of the profits are donated to the ABA’s kids programs.

As an added bonus, if you enter the coupon code Sharon1009, you’ll get an additional 10% off your OpenSky order.

A snippet of birds visiting the green mesh feeder made with the Wingscapes Cam.  This was more of a test to see if I could teach myself how to make an animated gif. How many bird species can you identify?

Now another question: do I post the P&S and JoCo trampoline photos?

One of the interesting birds what this white-breasted nuthatch who was missing two claws on one foot. Many birds would be able to survive this just fine–but nuthatches use those toes constantly to go down trees. She was a hatch year bird (hatched this summer) so it will be interesting to see if she sticks around and survives awhile–will she ever be a recapture?

Speaking of recaptures, we had a really exciting one! We had a female goldfinch come into the nets with a band. Roger read off the number and Mark asked, “Can you read that again?”

Roger obliged and Mark said, “Huh, not our band number.”

We had this happen once before and let me tell you–getting a foreign recapture once is like winning a million bucks in the lottery. Getting that twice, is–well it’s just a big fat HOLY COW! Now, the last time this happened, it was a female goldfinch who had been banded four years earlier in Illinois (over 450 miles away). Now, here is where this recapture gets really freaky–we trapped this second bird in the same net as the other recapture and we caught her in the fall too. If this bird ends up being from Illinois too–what kind of crazy reverse goldfinch movement is going on? I have turned in the goldfinch’s band number to the Bird Banding Lab…now I have to wait to hear from the original bander.

We had a special guest around the banding. If you are hip to the Internet Geek Music scene, you might recognize the bearded fellow releasing a nuthatch above–it’s Jonathan Coulton. If you are new to him might I suggest his listening primer and check out the top four songs. Skullcrusher Mountain is a favorite of mine (although I do find myself humming Tom Cruise Crazy quite a bit).

Also around were Paul and Storm of the comedic musical duo…Paul and Storm. If you listen to Bob and Tom, you might be familiar with some of their songs and their alternate band name of the BarryTones (they use the power of barbershop to do things like a rap medley). Check out the songs Count to Ten, Your Town, or The Captain’s Wife’s Lament.

They recorded a podcast in Mr. Neil’s sauna and Non Birding Bill and I got to participate. It’s about a half hour long and there are a few four letter words flung around so not the safest for work. Also, some in the podcast are more tipsy than other. The boys tell some funny drunk stories and towards the end, you get a peak into the dynamic of my marriage to NBB. And, Mom, if you are reading this…skip to minute 18:00.

What a cool company!  I never had the chance to go to any kind of bird convention or one specifically for kids.  I would love it if the shop gets enough sales to provide a full scholarship to some aspiring kid birder!  So, if you have any birding needs, check out my OpenSky Store and know that all the things in there are products that I love and that you can see in my photos in my blog and that 20% of the profits are going to help fun young birder programs!  I’m so excited about this and happy that the blog can help kids in some sort of way.

To help celebrate, OpenSky is offering discount codes for five products and you’ll be able to get the discount code by attending Birds and Beers this Thursday. Wingscapes BirdCam, EZ lift hanger, Aspects Hummzinger Mini, Finch Flocker, Green Mesh Feeder.

As always, Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders to get together and talk some birds.  Anyone from the hardcore lister to the backyard birder to someone who has heard about birding and wants to find out what it’s about is invited to attend.  If you have a bird blog–come and tell us about it!  If you are a field trip leader–come and share your upcoming trips!  Have a cool research project–we’d love to learn about what you are doing!  Have a Christmas Bird Count in need of some volunteers–come ask us!  It’s low key and fun–many new birders to the area have found some great birding partners.