Do You Feed Birds?

[gote]

Thank you Mark,
I will tell my wife who is the photographer. She was uncertain. it looked unusually large but that could be the unusual view from above.

In Kungälv on the Swedish west coast I have seen peregrines nesting on a factory building as were it a cliff.

Göte

[cohan]

i work in the cafe in a supermarket, in the town of rocky mountain house (just at the edge of foothills biome) and yesterday an announcement came over the speakers:
"To the owner of a black Ford Ranger: there's a raven eating your groceries in the back of the truck"

these huge black birds, sometimes, it seems, as big as a  medium sized dog, are common around here, and in town..often checking out the open backs of trucks to see if they can find anything--of course usually the groceries are not left out there...lol

[Maggi Young]

That's the trouble with pick-up trucks ........ ravens..... raccoons, bears..... anybody can eat your cornflakes!

[cohan]

That's the trouble with pick-up trucks ........ ravens..... raccoons, bears..... anybody can eat your cornflakes!

indeed--i feel much safer with a minivan such as we have--or at least a covered box for a pick-up truck...lol--even in a big city, where there might be less problem with wildlife, the local humans just might help themselves to anything left unattended...

[Lori S.]

Yes, they tell you that nyger is heat-treated to prevent it germinating, but we had a load of it sprout one time!  Unfortunately, our season is so short that none of it was able to bloom, so it was quite underwhelming anyway...
From where I work downtown, I see the odd peregrine falcon cruising around and putting a scare into the pigeons... I've been tempted to keep some binocs around, but I fear it may not go over well to be seen gazing out the window too often.... 

[Rodger Whitlock]

Do you feed the birds can come to your garden in the winter months? What do you use? Peanuts, sunflower hearts, fat balls, niger ...?

Lumps of rendered beef fat hanging from strings. The little fat-eaters (bushtits, chickadees) have no trouble landing and feeding, but larger, greedier birds like crows and Steller's jays can't reach the food, nor can rats or mice.

Sugar syrup in special feeders to keep the winter-resident population of Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna) alive until spring.

Had to give up feeding seed years ago because the inevitable spillage attracted rats.

[cohan]

Yes, they tell you that nyger is heat-treated to prevent it germinating, but we had a load of it sprout one time!  Unfortunately, our season is so short that none of it was able to bloom, so it was quite underwhelming anyway...
From where I work downtown, I see the odd peregrine falcon cruising around and putting a scare into the pigeons... I've been tempted to keep some binocs around, but I fear it may not go over well to be seen gazing out the window too often.... 

hi lori! i was interested in your input on the Cyclamen kuznetovii (sp?) thread over in bulbs....

supposedly the big thing with nyjer is that it potentially carries dodder,  so its sterilised... i have meant to try germinating some, perhaps it would have to be started indoors to get maturity; i THINK  i read sites about its potential as a prairie crop, but i'd have to go back and look now, that was last year i was researching, and never found a retail source; i had meant to try germination tests on it...i never did see any sprouts outside, but perhaps they didnt carry it as far as the sunflowers, and it didnt reach any open enough soil..
i also wanted to try growing safflower for the birds, and actually have heard they love echinacea seedheads..

the brids replant the black oil sunflower seeds everywhere! i even found a seedling back in the bush, on the edge of a wet area! of course that came to nothing, as do most, but there was a little patch near the house that reached flowering and seed--i just left it there and the birds harvested it; i think, overall, it needs a longer season as well, and would probably benefit from an early start indoors;

[Lori S.]

We've never had birds show any interest in safflower here...  Black oil sunflower is universally popular, though, as is nyger.
It was great fun camping and birding in Rio-Bentsen State Park in Texas many years ago (no camping there any longer - much changed)... the local birds, which included such wonders as green jays and chacalacas would eat everything from bananas (the chacalacas) to breakfast cereal.  The only thing they wouldn't eat was processed cheese slices... very sensible of them.  (If birds couldn't recognize it as food, I had to wonder why we were eating it! 
From the cheap bird seed we'd buy to toss out, whatever the birds didn't eat, an amazing variety of ants would haul away...

[Maggi Young]

Lumps of rendered beef fat hanging from strings. The little fat-eaters (bushtits, chickadees) have no trouble landing and feeding, but larger, greedier birds like crows and Steller's jays can't reach the food, nor can rats or mice.

 Ah, Rodger, if only you could have seen "our" mice climbing like  acrobats out along the stems to slide down the string to eat their fill.... then having a hard time to climb back up again because their paws were  oily from the fat and so the string, or wire became  like a greasy pole. Sometimes they would get fed up of the effort, or is they were surprised, they would just then throw themselves off to the ground. Give themselves a shake and carry on with their mousey business!

That was some years ago, the mice we have now, though, do not seem so acrobatic or adventurous.

[Maggi Young]

If birds couldn't recognize it as food, I had to wonder why we were eating it!   

Lori, that might be a good hint vis a vis the processed cheese, but our garden birds will not eat rice in any form.... and surely one thousand million Chinese cannot be wrong? 

[Carol Shaw]

The starlings have discovered the cage with 4 fat balls and are having a field day! Ah well they deserve the right to eat too. I also bought one of those huge fat balls shaped like a fir cone and hung in the weeping flowering cherry - the birds think that is great as they can just sit on the branches and feed. We decided against any form of sunflower seed this year due to the mess, between the fat balls and the peanuts we seem to have kept all our local birds happy.

[Lesley Cox]

Our birds won't eat rice either but our larger dog likes to snuffle in the grass and get every grain if I throw out some left-over cooked.

[Carol Shaw]

Our birds won't eat rice either but our larger dog likes to snuffle in the grass and get every grain if I throw out some left-over cooked.

Our birds will eat thrown out rice and any, wet, food left in the cats bowls after 24 hours... that is if they can beat daughter cat to it! Having ignored in her bowl she will happily eat of the ground outside    Both she and mummy cat prefer to drink out of the pond than from their water dish or, even better, a shallow container where David has been plunging plants into water after repotting, come to think of it they even prefer to drink from a puddle on the patio than from their bowl 

[Lesley Cox]

Dogs too, like water other than their clean, fresh every day bowlful. Our springer spaniel really likes the contents of an old bucket which gets drips from the garage roof. It is green, slimy and full of dust, dead leaves etc but Cain drinks their daily. He and new Teddy also drink from puddles, and from the hollows of a few bricks in a paved area.

[cohan]

our cats are the same--always trying to climb into the rain barrel(can be funny when its not full, and they are trying to balance on the edge..), and filling up my rain or melted snow water for indoor plants with cat spit too...lol