Mockingbird and friends

I love Northern Mockingbirds. I love their voices, with their wide repetoire of songs. I love their colors - gray, black and white, but so sharp and distinctive. And, I love their attitude - Me, Me, Me. Whether displaying over their territory or looking for food, mockers are very possessive. They don't like to share, and I enjoy their antics.

Here are some photos taken Friday thru the window at my office of my resident "work" mockingbird. (I also have a "home" mockingbird.)

Northern Mockingbird, hiding in plain sight

"If I can't see you, then you can't see me."

"I will deign to look at you now."

"Ah, peanuts. I enjoy peanuts.
These are all mine"

Hey, there! Mockingbirds don't eat seeds.

"We don't? Well, it is cold and icy and it has been all week.
I will eat whatever I care to."

"And you can't stop me."

"Mine. All mine."

"I will even perch on this tray and
eat from your tube feeder if I want to."

"Told you it was all mine."

Despite his best efforts, a few other birds made it to the feeders on Friday:

Song Sparrow

House FinchCarolina Chickadee

The Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, White-breasted Nuthatch and Tufted Titmouse refused to pose for pictures.

First Bird of 2009

After having my first bird of the year be a common species, like Song Sparrow (2007) or American Goldfinch (2008), I vowed to work a little harder at getting a more interesting First Bird for 2009. And here it is:

Great Horned Owl

No, not this owl. This is RAPTOR's GHO, from a program at the Cincinnati Nature Center last year. No, mine was a "heard only" bird, hoot-hoot-hooting at me at 7:15 am on Jan.1, in the Crooked Run Nature Preserve. (More on my New Year's Day birding adventure next post.)

And, for my sister, who complains that I only rave about first birds, the LAST bird of 2008 was a Red-bellied Woodpecker, who was watching me fill my bird feeders on New Year's Eve, and complaining that I was taking too long about it.

"The service at this diner is terrible.
Well, at least the food is good."
mmph, snarfle, gulp

Backyard Birds, Nov. 19

A new yard bird today! A juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker showed up on my apple tree, then tried out the suet block. By the time I gathered my scope and camera to document its arrival, it flew off. That made this morning a 3-woodpecker day, without even leaving my house. Sweet!

Today's yard list:

Mourning Dove 2
Red-bellied Woodpecker (M)
Downy Woodpecker (F)
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (juv.)
Blue Jay 5
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse 2
Eastern Bluebird (M)
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling (Damn! They found me!)
House Finch ~12
American Goldfinch ~10

I did manage to get pictures of my Yellow-rumped Warbler the other day. Enjoy!

Backyard Birds, Nov. 16

Thus begins a semi-regular series of posts on the birds in my backyard. Most of these, with a few obvious exceptions, are my bird feeder birds.

Not feeder birds:
Turkey Vulture 1
American Crow 5
E. starlings ~20 (flew through my air space)

Mourning Dove 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Blue Jay 7
Carolina Chickadee 2
Tufted Titmouse 1
Northern Cardinal 2
Song Sparrow 1
Field Sparrow 1
White-crowned Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Juncos 3
House Finches - at least 15
American Goldfinches - at least 10

Special birds:
Eastern Bluebird 4 (2M/2F)
Carolina Wren 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1

These last three species were on a suspended tray feeder which held Julie's suet dough mixture, some mealworms, and an orange half.

Total: 19 species

New Yard Bird

With a Yard List of 70 species, it is getting harder to get new yard birds to add to my list, but today, by chance, I bagged one. A Pine Warbler, in the caged metal feeder, indulging in a little Zick dough. Hoping to add a photo later in the day ...

My Spark Bird

For those of you who might not be familiar with all the birding ins and outs, a "spark bird" is the bird that got you into birding, that sparked your interest and got you hooked into this crazy hobby/sport/avocation.

For most people, it is something big and dramatic, like a Pileated Woodpecker or a Great Blue Heron. Or, it is something rare, mysterious, or unusual. For me, it was sparrows, often disparagingly called LBBs (Little Brown Birds) or LBJs (Little Brown Jobs.)

I mark my transition from "passive" birder (keeping the bird feeders filled and watching them from my window) to active birder to the year 1994. That winter, I decided to start sorting out all the LBBs into their respective species, instead of calling them all "some kind of sparrow."

Most people curse sparrows, as they are small, brown, and tend to hide in the tall grass when you want to see them, so identifying them can be tough. With a little bit of work, I began to sort out the LBBs in my yard. As it turned out, some of those sparrows were (House) Finches and (Carolina) Wrens, and were not sparrows at all.

The bird that grabbed me and made me want more was the White-crowned Sparrow. Look at this guy:

How could you not love a bird like this? Sharp black and white striped head, crisp clean shirt-front, pink bill, doesn't he look ready to go to a formal party? You can't tell it from this photo, but Zonotrichia leucophrys is larger than your average, everyday sparrow, too: 7" long as compared to 6.25" for the common Song Sparrow or 5.5" for the teeny Chipping Sparrow. That doesn't sound like a lot of difference, but you can really see it in a group of ground feeding LBBs.

Something else I love about the White-crowneds is the way they stop feeding and stand up "on their tippy-toes," making themselves very tall and thin. I think they must be searching for predators. It is a behavior I don't see in the other birds feeding around them.

For a while, I was very confused by birds like this:


Then, I started comparing them to the LBBs I knew. Clear breast, not streaky, pink bill, striped crown (ignore the colors for now) and the clincher - the same behavior of standing erect and looking all around. I finally figured this was some sort of color variation on White-crowned Sparrows, like the tan-striped versus white-striped varieties of White-throated Sparrows.

With a little research, I learned that first winter (immature) White-crowneds have a brown and tan striped pattern. Now, I see several at my feeders every winter, and have lovingly dubbed them "Brown-crowned Sparrows."

I only get White (and Brown)-crowned sparrows in the winter, so I almost never get to hear them sing. They are one of the first birds to return in late fall and one of the last to leave in spring. Like most sparrows, they love the suet dough.

"Brown-crowned Sparrow" diggin' the suet dough

Eyes bigger than the stomach.
A field mark for many birds, not just WCSP

In the spring of 1994, I took my first "warbler walk" and the sight and sound of those tiny jewels cemented my interest in birding, but that is a story for another post.

. . .

Word of the Day:

Coypu: The Coypu, Myocastor coypus, also called the nutria, is a large, semiaquatic rodent native to South America but recently introduced to other continents for fur production


*Thanks to the three ring circus of Bill of the Birds, Rondeau Ric, and Julie "Science Chimp" Zickefoose for the inspiration for day's WOTD.

Check Your Sunflower Seed

When you buy your black-oil sunflower seed from a reputable wild bird supply store, you are usually assured of getting a good quality product, clean and free of noxious weed seeds and other contaminants. Your small shop owner depends on your return business and your recommendations to bird-feeding friends to stay open, so s/he is careful when choosing what suppliers to buy from. I might see the occasional grain of corn or striped sunflower seed, but in general, I am very happy with the black-oil seeds I get from my local store.

Even the best manufacturers sometimes have a problem with their source for sunflower seeds, and weed seeds may slip into the mix. The thing I most hate to find in my sunflower is this:

The seeds of Field Bindweed, also called Wild Morning Glory.

As far as I can tell, nothing eats this seed, so it ends up in your yard, infesting your flower beds and getting tangled in your shrubs and bushes. I try to be alert and pluck out any bindweed seeds I find, as a preemptive strike.

Edit, 12/23, 6pm: OOPS!! Donald tells me I have mislabeled the white seeds. They are not bad bindweed seeds, they are plain old soybeans. I plead ignorance. Somebody once told me they were bindweed, and I believed them. Thanks for the correction!

Bird Feeding, part 5: Suet Dough

You may have heard me mention "suet dough" in previous posts. It's a term I learned last year from Julie Zickefoose's blog. She shared her recipe for a sure-fire homemade bird food, and I started making it. I have modified the name to "Zick's Famous Suet Dough," but it could also be called "Magic Suet Dough," as it attracts any kind of bird you could care to name. About the only things I haven't seen eating it are Mourning Doves and finches.

First, the recipe:

1 cup lard
1 cup peanut butter
2 cups quick oats
2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup white flour

Melt the lard and peanut butter. Add the oatmeal, cornmeal and flour. Allow to cool. Store at room temperature. Serve crumbled.


I double this recipe, and use the old lard tubs to store any leftovers.

I use several different types of feeders for suet dough. A flat tray or platform type feeder allows more species of birds access, but usually gets over-run with starlings.

This caged feeder was designed to hold two commercial suet cakes side-by-side,


but I stuff it full of suet dough for the little birds, like chickadees, titmice, and Downy Woodpeckers. They can get in through the large outer openings to feed on the goodies inside. Bluebirds will use this feeder, too.


I always put some in a small custard cup, garnished with mealworms, inside my bluebird feeder. This is a feeder with Plexiglas sides and 1.5 inch diameter holes in the short wooden ends, designed for cavity-nesting birds.
I am experimenting this year, placing this feeder closer to the house than in past.


Bluebirds and Carolina wrens use this feeder a lot. I had a young Downy Woodpecker in it last year. Twice, he got stuck and I had to help him out. I think he wised up after that.

Now, some of the birds I have photographed, enjoying Julie's suet dough:

"Chick-a-dee-dee-dee
All for me!"

Downy Woodpecker, immersed in his food.

"This is much better!"

immature White-crowned Sparrow

And, the species I originally wanted the suet dough recipe for:

Eastern Bluebird, female
"Hey! Who ate all the suet dough?
JULIE!"

Bird Feeding, part 4

Edit: Sorry, I haven't been in the blogging mood lately. I even forgot Toxicology Tuesday this week, a first! I had a post prepared, but it completely slipped my mind. You'll get that one next week. Here's an "ant" post on bird feeding that I have been sitting on for a while, to tide you over. I have a new feature to share with you tomorrow, and up-coming, a post on my latest hobby.

###

My primary birdseed is black oil sunflower. It is smaller and easier for the little birds to open than striped sunflower, and is high in oil. Fat is a very energy-dense nutrient, and essential to winter bird feeding.
You can use many styles of feeders for black oil - tube feeders, platform or hopper styles, you can even scatter it on the ground, but my favorite feeder is this Magnum feeder by Birds Choice. It holds five pounds of seed, so if I am going to be away for a long weekend, I don't worry about the feeders all running dry at the same time.


All types of little birds and woodpeckers can cling to the mesh of this feeder, and cardinals do occasionally perch on the wide seed catching tray. I used one of the original designs of this feeder, when it was two pie pans and some screening, but the newer model is superior in construction. Unfortunately, you can't take it apart, so scrubbing the inside is a little difficult.

Bird Feeding, part 3

Peanut feeders are an important part of my winter bird feeding protocol. There are two basic types, one with larger holes for dispensing peanuts in the shell, and one with smaller mesh for unshelled peanuts.

The center feeder is for peanuts in the shell,
the two on either end for unshelled nuts.

Blue Jays love to take the whole (shelled) peanuts away to cache for later, so I always like having some available. Before I started offering peanuts in the shell, I saw maybe one or two Blue Jays a day, sometimes none at all. Let me hang this feeder, though, and within minutes, I will have 5, 6, or even more jays all at once. They fly in and out so quickly that I have yet to get a decent picture of them, but I'm trying. The ones who are too impatient to wait their turn at this feeder will come to a platform feeder to gobble up a crop full of black oil and safflower seeds, but even they don't stay still for long. For a big bird, jays are damned hard to photograph.


The jays aren't as interested in the unshelled peanuts, which leaves them for the less aggressive birds. Red-bellied and Downy Woodpeckers love this feeder, as do White-breasted Nuthatches and especially Tufted Titmice. Occasionally, I will see a chickadee here, too.


This is a better picture in person. When I took it, I still had my old, Stone-Age computer, and couldn't upload or store photos on it, so I was getting my pictures on a CD. Now, I can't find the disc that has all my bird photos stored on it, so I had to take a picture of the picture.

Bird Feeding, part 2

Continuing my series on wild bird feeding:

One bird seed I can't live without is Nyjer, sometimes called "thistle" seed. It is worth its weight in gold(finches) and is priced accordingly, but I have to have it.

The tiny seeds are best served in a specially designed feeder, to avoid waste and to keep the bigger birds from stealing it. I have three different types of thistle feeders, though I rarely use all three at once. The tube feeder on the right is one I have had for many years. Even though the plastic is discolored and stained, the little ports still work fine to dispense the Nyjer, it keeps the seeds dry and protected, and it is easily taken apart for cleaning.

On top of that is a "thistle sock," a mesh bag style of feeder, which came free in a plastic jug of Kaytee brand seed. I don't use these often, and usually throw them away after they become soiled, since they are hard to disinfect.
I buy most of my birdseed from Peggie at Wild About Birds in Milford, who packages it in small plastic bags. If I run out, I will pick up one of these jugs, which I like for their storage potential. Because Nyjer seed will turn rancid quickly, especially in hot weather, I store my extra in the 'fridge. After accidentally puncturing a plastic bag and having to clean up spilled Nyjer seed, I saw the benefits of re-using the jugs.

Nyjer is a finch magnet, and will attract goldfinches, Pine Siskins, Purple Finches, and the ubiquitous House Finches. Because I have a ton of House Finches, and because I serve many other seeds that they can eat, I like this upside-down feeder for keeping them out of the Nyjer.Goldfinches can hang upside-down to eat and House Finches can't, so this feeder with the holes under the perches means I can always see goldfinches in my yard.

There is no protection around these feeding ports, so if you have a squirrel problem, they will quickly chew through the plastic, and all your Nyger will spill on to the ground, so be warned.

Here's hoping for an influx of Purple Finches and Pine Siskins this winter!

Bird Feeding, part 1

There has been a chill in the air the past few mornings, and the hummingbird population has dropped off dramatically in the last week. Sunday morning, I watched a goldfinch feeding on the dried seed heads of my Echinaceae (Purple Coneflower.) I can't ignore the signs any longer; it's time for fall bird feeding season again.

I usually stop feeding birds in the summer. At that time, I'm busy with bluebirds, hummingbirds and purple martins, and don't have the time or energy to manage seed feeders, too. Most birds can find plenty of food on their own, and I keep water available to draw them in close to the house for easy viewing. After feeding wild birds for 9 years here, the last two seasons I have had outbreaks of Mycoplasma conjunctivitis among my house finches and goldfinches, so now I try to encourage them to disperse during the summer, hoping to cut down on the spread of this contagious eye disease.

The first step in resuming feeding is to clean and disinfect everything I can. I prefer feeders like this tube style that I can take apart.
Every plastic and metal feeder gets scrubbed in hot water and Dawn dish detergent, soaked in a 10% bleach solution, rinsed thoroughly, and then dried in the sun. Then, I refill each feeder with a particular type of seed.
In this tube feeder, I use safflower. This is a high-oil seed, very attractive to cardinals and other desirable birds, and less likely to draw house sparrows. For those of you with squirrel problems, safflower is a good alternative to sunflower seeds, as it is said that squirrels don't like it. (Luckily, I have no squirrels here.) You could also use sunflower seeds or nuts in this style feeder.
Finches are my primary customer at this feeder, but it also attracts titmice and white-breasted nuthatches. Cardinals don't like the little perches on tube feeders, so I put their food, a mix of sunflower and safflower, on a platform feeder.

In future posts, I will show you some of the other styles of feeders and types of feed I use, and hopefully, some photos of the birds they attract. For more information on bird feeding, or to participate in a Citizen Science project, go to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's website and their Project Feederwatch page.