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Health & Fitness

GUEST Blog: Spring Birding by Dee @LIBirding.com

Bird watching is a wonderful way to connect with nature all year round. If you’d like to attract birds to your yard, you’ll need to provide a few of the basics: Food and Water. Those two alone will get the birds into your backyard. 

Put up feeders and make sure that there is a bird bath nearby, as well. Birds not only drink from the bird baths; they bathe in them, as well. 

Some birds that eat birdseed are: Song Sparrows, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Mourning Doves and Red Winged Blackbirds. Other birds eat insects and berries and fruit! If you have Blueberry bushes or any native berry bushes, all the better. House Sparrows, though not native to the US, are often the bird beginners encounter first.

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Get a nice feeder, and make sure to place it away from trees, branches and fences. (You don’t want squirrels and raccoons eating from them!)  For this reason, it’s not a good idea to mount them on a tree, so use a pole or shepherd’s hook and make sure to get a “squirrel baffle”. (this is something that is tubular, and will mount on the pole, keeping squirrels from climbing up to eat seeds. If you are creative, there are a number of online DIY baffle instructions.  Items such as soda bottles, Slinkies and stove pipes can be used. ) Peanut feeders are great, too. You can put whole peanuts in them and you’ll attract a variety of Woodpeckers, as well as Tufted Titmice, Chickadees, Blue Jays, Carolina Wrens- to name a few!

Make sure you put birdseed in your bird feeder. Really!  I once had a woman email me, telling me she’s had her bird feeder out for a year and never sees any birds at all. I asked her what she was putting in the bird feeder and she said, “The book I read said to just put a bird feeder up and forget about it!”  Always put seed in your feeders, at least once a day to keep interested birds coming back. 

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Bird feeders and birdbaths go hand in hand. You eat, you drink. So do the birds. Place the birdbath within tenfeet of the feeder and please, empty the water each morning and replace with fresh water. Birds also bathe in birdbaths as well as drink from them

*In winter, add a small birdbath heater. Birds eating ice when there’s no water get very cold, thus needing more food to warm up. 

Shelter. This is two-fold. Shelter in the form of bushes, dense hedges, shrubs, and trees. Got those? Great! Birds will hang out in there when it’s very cold to stay warm, and when it’s very hot, they’ll go in there for the shade to stay cool. Easy!

This type of shelter also protects birds from predators. When a Hawk comes swooping down, the birds will all scatter into the hedges. Hawks eat songbirds. It’s Nature’s way. But birds are attracted to areas that provide them a quick getaway if they see a hawk in the area while they’re dining.  

Natural shelter also provides an area for some birds to nest, birds that don’t nest in birdhouses; such as Robins and Mockingbirds.

Bird house! Location, location, location!  Many types of birds will line up to rent or even buy that prime piece of real estate in your yard! Some birds that use bird houses are House Wrens, Carolina Wrens and Chickadees. My bird houses are angled to face South-East and are custom made, but you can buy birdhouses - just make sure that they have proper ventilation holes. (Also, in the late fall - October-  make sure to clean them out. And clean them again in early March in case birds have been roosting in them during the winter.) 

Make sure to place the bird houses away from trees or overhanging branches, so that raccoons can not reach in. You can also get a “predator guard”, that mounts on the front of the entry hole of the bird house. This makes it harder if not impossible for Crows, Blue Jays and the like, to stick their heads in and do harm.  Bird houses without purchases (actual places to perch on to, not debit cards)  are best if you don’t use a predator guard. These guards or smooth edges protect the eggs or nestlings.  

Bird houses should also be on poles, such as 4x4’s that are about 8 feet high or more. Place a baffle (they make special ones for 4x4’s), to keep climbing raccoons or squirrels from getting to the birds inside.

Important rule: Do not place birdhouses close together. Birds are territorial, so place them about 15 plus feet apart. A few well placed birdhouses will be all you’ll need!

Before you place any of the above, stand in the spot that you’re thinking of putting that feeder or birdhouse. Is it too close to a tree or fence? And also, place birdhouses out of the sun! It can get quite hot inside, which isn’t good for the birds inside, especially hatchlings that can not fly to get out of the heat.

   With March here, the birds are beginning to look for mates and also prime real estate (bird houses!), or areas for them to construct their own home.  I’ve already seen a male Cardinal feeding a female Cardinal. On any given day, I hear the calls of the Song Sparrows and Carolina Wrens, as well as the Red Winged Blackbird. Love is in the air! If you have bird houses, you will notice the birds flying in and out with little twigs, branches, or even animal fur. They are beginning to build their nest inside.

Here are a few tips to help the birds build their nests: Birds use a wide variety of nesting materials, from small twigs, branches, cat-tail fluffs, dry leaves, pretty much anything that they can find in the wild. But birds are an interesting bunch, because, they will literally fly by a sleeping dog or cat and pluck some fur from them, too! They dumpster dive, as well, and will gather cotton balls, hair from thrown out brushes, candy wrappers - oh, the list goes on. If you want to help the birds along, you can save the fur after brushing your cat or dog. You can also gather some cotton balls, even your own hair from your hairbrush. Find some small twigs, cat-tails and the like, and put them together in a clothespin and hang it near your birdhouse. Or, you can simply just put the pile on the ground, near your birdhouses when you see that the birds have shown an interest in them. You can purchase a nest material hanger like the one in this link, or make one of your own by using an empty suet feeder and putting all of your gatherings in it and hanging it outside, near your birdhouses. http://www.amazon.com/Hummer-Helper-Nesting-Material-Hanger/dp/B00BRJV5SO

 Any more questions ?

You can join me on our new Facebook page here, https://www.facebook.com/pages/LI-Birds-Com/139418006167797 (Please LIKE and then you can ask questions on our wall as well as share photos and tips, or anything bird or critter related!) Daily sightings of birds has “migrated” here from the mother site. 

You can also see our main website here. http://www.libirding.com/LI_Birds/Backyard/Backyard.html. Information on birds, migration and the best places to go bird watching is a hallmark of that site, which has been active for more than a decade.  Also we can help you with a Bird ID.

You’ll find a link to contact Dee or Dianne if you’re not on Facebook and have questions!

Thank you, Denise, for inviting me to write this guest blog for you! Your blog is so full of insight and wisdom!

Editors Note: Thank you Dee, for all the great info and for being part of http://www.libirding.com/LI_Birds/Welcome.html, a great resource right in our own backyards and online ! One further note, readers, please limit the pesticides used on lawn and trees.  Look in the Links section for information on that.  Happy birding! And don’t forget to report your sightings on the LIBirding Facebook Page ! 

Here are Some Helpful Links:

Cleaning Bird feeders:

http://web4.audubon.org/bird/at_home/bird_feeding/feeder_maint.html

Plants, Including Shrubs Native To Our Region (scroll down for shrubs)

http://www.plantnative.org/rpl-denjny.htm.

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