Some very knowledgeable and experienced birders post to these Lists. Still, we ask you to treat the following comments as ideas, opinions and informed advice.
problem birds - making suet - hawks and cats - do feeders make birds dependent? - bunnies at feeders - other mammals - when late blizzards hit - wind chimes
"Problem" birds - One trick I've learned to rid feeders of pigeons, grackles and starlings is chicken wire wrapped around feeders. It does work exceptionally well with ranch style feeders. Gazebos and silo type feeders are more difficult to protect, but pigeons rarely have access to them anyway. The disadvantage is that other "desirable" larger birds are also denied access (jays, grosbeaks, etc...)
- Feeding only sunflower, safflower and niger (in finch feeders) have reduced my problem considerably. I also made a "scrap basket" described in the North American Bird Feeder Handbook (NAS), that keeps the starlings busy with stale bread, scraps of cheese, spaghetti, you name it...
Starlings as pests - Where I have a lot of problems is with starlings and suet. To get rid of the pests, I made a suet dispenser out of scrap wood and stapled hardware cloth on one face. I then hung it upside down (mesh side down). I then inserted a one litre milk container filled with a suet mixture. I first removed one side of the carton container, exposing the mixture. Starlings don't hang upside down, so they haven't touched the feeder, so has no one else!!!... yet. For those of you who feed suet mixtures in logs, drilling holes on one half of the log and then hanging them horizontally, "hole side down" with attract nuthatches, creepers and chickadees, but no starlings, YEAH... Now, if I could only find a way to keep pigeons and starlings away from my platform feeder. Maybe a "cage" of some sort... with 2 to 3 inch openings... let me think about it...
Starlings again - Hanging your log feeders horizontally can help prevent Starlings from getting a free meal. Placing the holes at least three to four inches from the top of the feeder may keep most of the Starlings away (they would perch on top, and reach over the edge to eat from the upper holes). Also, not providing any perches seems to help too. Occasionally though, the odd Starling may actually "hover" in front of the feeder, and try to peck the suet mixture out onto the ground, where they would all feast upon it. Whatever you do, you can't always keep "undesired" bird species away all the time... All you can do is try and minimize the opportunities for them, while at the same time keeping your feeders accessible to your target species. After all, the Starlings and Pigeons don't know they're uninvited!!
Getting Fat - After considerable fighting with the supermarkets around here, we have learned that they virtually never have anything but Suet, which is special fat from some private location in the cow. It's used in baking (yuk) and thus commands a price. When we ask for "scrap fat", we get blank looks. Apparently most if not all of the fat is trimmed off before meat arrives at the supermarket. So, we go to a small "mom and pop" meat store, who do their own meat-cutting. They have lots of scrap fat. We get them to put 20 lb. or so through their meat grinder, turning it into a sort of pale red ground beef (and pork, truth to tell). They charge us a nominal price for their labour. At home, we render the ground fat in a large pot. This just means heating it up gently until the fat melts. We get it somewhat above boiling, and keep it going (watching very carefully all the time) until it stops bubbling, at which point all the water has been driven off. We let the pot cool down until it is safe to handle, and decant the molten fat into plastic containers, which are popped into the freezer when cool. There are lots of little bits of flesh and gristle remaining in the bottom of pot which we discard. The result is a freezer full of little containers of more or less pure fat, which spreads like butter at room temperature and works well when rammed into holes in "suet logs", etc. We don't mix anything with the fat normally, but cutting it 50/50 with peanut butter and a little corn meal makes a very effective food for Brown Creepers, when spread on the sides of trees. To re-iterate: PLAYING WITH MOLTEN FAT ON A STOVE REQUIRES YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION. Don't take any chances at all.
Hawks and Cats - To discourage hawks and cats, you can put your bird seed inside lobster traps, perhaps on a variety of flat trays. Traps can be stacked one atop the other. Close the larger openings with hardware cloth, there have been cases where Mourning Doves actually wormed their way inside through two pockets and even found their way out again. Sparrows and Juncos seem to have no trouble moving through the mesh You can also put them beneath hanging feeders to catch spilled seed and discourage pigeons. The traps fill up quickly with snow, in much of the province it rains at least every couple of weeks during the winter, so it's not a problem. Banged-up traps are often free for the picking at local dumps, or just ask fishermen for old ones they no longer want.
Hawks again - If Sharp-shinned Hawks are killing birds at your feeder, here's an idea: plant a ring of hardwood saplings around the ground feeders and the base of each of the platform feeders. Cats and hawks can't get through and the birds love to perch on the branches. To the sides of my platforms you can attach branches. Again the hawks can't get in and the birds really like to sit on them. It can be a pain stepping around and over the brush, removing the brush every couple of weeks to clean the feeder areas and placing the brush back, but it is worth it!. It creates a natural situation for the birds and a much safer one. It is extra work and perhaps not as attractive, but it has been successful.
Do feeders make birds dependent? - It has frequently been shown that most birds coming to feeders obtain only part of their food there, while continuing to forage in more or less natural habitats. Just how much birds depend on your feeder depends on whether there are other feeders nearby, on the weather, and on whether a species is near the edge of or beyond its normal range.
If you have a few neighbours who are also regularly feeding birds it is likely not a big problem if you stop feeding during a three-week winter vacation, but if you are the only one providing food in your neighbourhood you have a responsibility to be consistent. The birds established their winter home range based partly on your feeder. There may be ten chickadees around instead of five because of you.
What's been said in the last two paragraphs can be all wrong during extreme winter weather. When a blizzard drops a metre of snow, most of the ground-feeding sparrows in your area will depend on bird feeders for their survival. If a storm coats trees, shrubs and the ground with a heavy layer of lasting ice, even more species will absolutely require that supplementary food until conditions improve. The same applies to out-of-range or marginal birds. In northern areas at least, they rely much more heavily on feeders than the usual wintering species. When I had a female Cardinal all winter a few years ago I'm sure it got more than 75% of its food at my feeder. It would not otherwise have survived. Nor would the 20 or so Mourning Doves I get each winter. They're just not capable of finding enough food [during winter] in the wild here. Both these species have expanded hundreds of miles northwards because of bird feeders. Cardinals and Mourning Doves are no problem. There is little competition between them and other species, but I would think twice about my feeding operation if I felt it were benefiting significant numbers of Blue Jays, Common Grackles, Brown-headed Cowbirds or Starlings, which rob or parasitize nests or compete commonly for cavity nest sites with other birds. I wouldn't stop feeding but I would adjust the kinds of foods and the type of feeders to make my place less attractive to those birds. [Because of the new pigeon by-law, people in Moncton are going to have to do this to reduce the attractiveness of their feeders to pigeons or risk being fined.]
Feeders for predators? - Are we stacking the odds in favour of the predators? Yes, I believe we are...but: we are also stacking the odds in favour of the songbirds' survival, just by the fact that we are putting out seed or suet for them. {I don't have the study in front of me, but it showed the intuitive..chickadee flocks that made use of feeders had higher survival than those with no access to feeders.} Let us remember that the predators who are getting the birds under these conditions tend to be the natural predators of these birds (for me, merlins and sharp-shins are my "feathered friends, too"). If you put the feeders closer to shrubbery, then cats, both domestic and feral will have the advantage. To me, this is unacceptable.
Bunnies at feeders - For the past month or so I have had two Snowshoe Hares visiting my feeder sometimes together, sometimes one at a time. We have a compost pile about 30 metres from the feeder and over the years I have often seen hare tracks around the compost pile where the hares have fed on vegetable peelings and the like. This year however, it seems the hares have learned to come up through a 5 metre wide spruce hedge row to where I have the feeder. They appear to be feeding on cracked corn which I throw out on the ground or snow. This morning I got a good look as our white visitor crouched over the corn and I believe, ate it. I cannot say I actually saw corn go into its mouth but after lowering its head to snow level it was chewing something which I assume was the cracked corn. A few minutes later, it was back at the compost pile perhaps looking at some apple peelings which had been thrown out last night.
More Bunny stories - I remember a certain incident that happened here in my back yard. One morning while I was filling my feeders I noticed a small pile of fur laying on the ground directly below my feeders. After a quick inspection of the fur I guessed that it probably belonged to a hare. All that was present at the feeders was that small pile of fur. Once I approached my patio I noticed something strange. I bent down with my shovel and scooped up the chewed up remains of a hare. What was interesting is the very little amount of hare parts remaining. All that was left was one ear and the very end of the hare's nose. Was a surprise! My many years of watching Colombo on TV helped me in coming to the conclusion that whatever killed this poor hare must of done so under the feeder and then it took it under the patio to eat it. My question is : What kind of animal or Raptor would kill and devour its prey in this way. You see this was the cleanest eatery that I ever saw, just one ear and the very end of the hare's noggin remained. What would do this?
More on Hares - When I moved to my new house two years ago and noticed all the deer tracks around, I rushed out and bought a fifty pound bag of pelleted feed which is supposed to be popular with deer (I've forgotten now what critter it was actually manufactured for). Anyhow, the deer didn't seem to appreciate it, but the hares obviously did. This year I built a little weatherproof feeding station just for them to keep their feed dry, as the pellets turn to mush if they get a little wet. The bunnies seemed quite self-sufficient most of the winter, but lately have been gobbling the feed up as fast as I put it out. When I noticed that they also seemed to be cleaning up the cracked corn that I put out for crows, I started throwing some of this in their little shack, too. Somebody cleans it up each night, and the only tracks near the feed shack are Hare. I also have an annoying racoon hanging about, and it is possible he is getting to the corn without leaving a clear trail (perhaps). I call him annoying because he has mastered the anti-squirrel apparati which successfully protect my feeders from other furry pests, and cleans out my sunflower supply from time to time, and has also wandered off with my two home-made peanut butter logs. Wish I knew where he lived, I'd go make faces at him. ~:0 )
Hares again - I haven't exactly been overwhelmed by VARYING HARES at my feeders, but after a fresh snowfall I often see the tracks of one individual. By turning on the outside floodlights, I have seen it a few times about 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning. It is usually digging under the feeder, where it gets sunflower seeds and cracked corn. It also likes white millet, and prefers that almost as much as the racoons do. They have been coming every winter since I started feeding in 1991, but I've never identified more than two.
- For a couple of years when there weren't many Cats and Dogs in Bishops Mills we had Hares browsing on Apple branches we had cut out of our trees, and they left bright blue (windshield antifreeze colour) spots on the snow, as well as plausiblely urine-coloured brownish-yellow spots.
Other mammals - Last night I thought was the time to start making an effort to trap my resident groundhog, who is a luxury I cannot afford:) When I block up the holes he makes to prevent my pipes from freezing, he simply chews another! So I baited the borrowed trap with fresh turnip as instructed, and when I finally got to bed last night, I realized from the strange thumping sounds that I had an animal in the trap! When I went out this morning to gloat over my quick and easy success, I found, not my groundhog, but a SKUNK!!!!! Bad news!!!! I was referred to the local Pest Control businesses, but one of them even suggested that the easiest thing to do was simply to let the skunk die!!! Why does he imagine that I borrowed a *LIVE* trap rather than let one of my neighbours snare him, as he volunteered to do?
- If you approach the live trap slowly and carefully, you can release the skunk without suffering any ill effects. Key words here are 'slowly' and 'carefully.' Been there, done that, and don't have any scar tissue. :)
When late Blizzards hit - The storm that hit yesterday (and is still going on!) has challenged all our feeder visitors . . . I've one unexpected example to share: While I have thrown out some extra goodies . . . I was quite surprised to witness ROBINS fighting over the few small perches on my "thistle" seed feeder. Don't know that in all the years I've provided thistle seed I've ever seen Robins go for it. It's hard to know how best to offer help, when the sticky wind-driven snow covers it over faster than I can put it out.
More Blizzard of March ‘97 stories - When the storm hit here around noon on Tuesday, our whole yard came alive with 250 to 300 birds of various species including AM. ROBINS, JUNCOS, AM. TREE, SONG and FOX SPARROWS, BLUE JAYS, RING BILLED GULLS, GRACKLES, STARLINGS, AM. CROWS, RED WINGED BLACKBIRDS, RED BREASTED NUTHATCHES, AM. GOLDFINCHES, BLACK CAPPED and BOREAL CHICKADEES. The feeding frenzy continued for the next 48 hours until the storm started to let up late this morning. If we get two or three fox sparrows in spring we feel lucky. On Tuesday afternoon there were 24 at the feeders.
- When I put out the last of our fruit and berries, the robins did not take long to clean them up. Once they realized that there was no more they took over the table feeder. From late Tuesday afternoon, all day Wednesday and again this morning there was always two or three in the feeder eating sunflower seeds. By this morning I was getting used to the robins at the feeders. Then I walked out to our other feeders in the yard and found 1 male MALLARD DUCK happily eating seeds under the feeders. I guess there was not much for him out on the marsh with the heavy snow cover.
Do wind chimes bother birds? - Someone asked; the Museum Zoologist suspects that the chimes should have little effect on the birds, in that the majority of the produced sound is actually ultrasonic, so what we (and the birds) hear is only a small fragment of the sound generated.