I found this critter stopping by to help himself to a peanut butter-bird seed mix I had put out for the birds. I don’t like to encourage wild animals to get that cozy in our yard, so I won’t be putting out peanut butter again. In the meantime, he had a great meal and wasn’t just playing possum.
© Huffygirl 2014
© Huffygirl 2013
Downy Woodpecker (© Huffygirl 2012)
I’ve been seeing Downy and Red-breasted Woodpeckers at my bird feeders for quite a while, as long as I keep putting out their two favorite foods: suet and Bark Butter, which is fancy bird peanut butter. Lately I’ve had a large, animated visitor to the Bark Butter board, who aggressively attacks the Bark Butter and keeps coming back for more, but is easily scared and flits away at the sound of my turning on the camera, even from ten feet away, inside the house. At first I thought this was a Downy gone wild, but I think what I may be seeing is a new visitor, a Hairy Woodpecker.
Downy W. or Hairy? (© Huffygirl 2012)
Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are quite similar in coloring, although Hairy is differentiated by its larger size and longer beak. Downy has a speckled white patch on the back, while Hairy’s patch is all white, often difficult to distinguish from a distance. Hairy is a shy country bird, usually sticking to forests and is skittish at crowded feeders. Downy, the city bird, frequents suburban yards and is not afraid to join the food fray with chickadees and nuthatches at feeders.
This new visitor has been difficult to catch with the camera, so I’m still not sure if he is Downy or Hairy. I’ll let the readers, and perhaps some bird experts out there decide. Meanwhile, I’ll keep putting out lots of Bark Butter at the feeder, as it seems to be like crack for the birds. They appear the minute I put it out, and scrape the board completely clean in short order.Even non-clinging birds like the shy ground-feeding Junco’s will have a go at perching on the board to get a taste.
Junco perching to eat Bark Butter (© Huffygirl 2012)
Male goldfinch, almost ready for spring. (©Huffygirl)
The birds in my area are taking on their colorful plumage, a sure sign of spring. After all, they have to look their best for mating season, especially the males. They need their bright, colorful feathers to attract the hottest babes in the bird world.
The color change is most obvious in the goldfinches. The males are changing from yellow-brown to all yellow, but as you can see by the pictures, this happens gradually. They’re still a way off from the bright canary yellow they put on for spring. The females are shedding their all brown look for yellow-brown, similar to the coloring the males had all winter.
It’s a little hard to tell the males and females apart during this transition time, but by May it should be obvious. In the meantime, watch for typical male behavior to differentiate – things like hogging the remote, watching too much basketball, and driving big birdie SUVs 🙂
This female (lower perch) looks good, but these guys have a way to go (© Huffygirl)
He's still working on getting his bling. (© Huffygirl)
© The author and Huffygirl’s Blog, 2010 to 3010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author and Huffygirl’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Freshly Pressed 2-2-11
Fame is fun, but fleeting. For a little less than a day, I got to experience the exhilaration of being Freshly Pressed, that is, my blog was picked as one of many for the week to be featured on the WordPress home page. But hey, out of 390,600+ bloggers, quite an honor and not a bad gig. My featured blog was HuffyHow: Birdy Buffet, a blog I wrote about bird feeding, with photos I took of my backyard birds. https://huffygirl.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/huffyhow-birdy-buffet/
I got to read comments from a bunch of great readers and fellow bloggers. Many have their own blogs about birds, nature, wildlife and the like, with
My lead birdy in "Birdy Buffet." (Photo: Huffygirl)
interesting photos and advice on all things nature. I heard from folks in the UK, Australia, Germany, United States, Canada, and even someone with the very cool name of Beau ( if that is your REAL name.) 🙂 It was great to expand my world view and to hear about experiences in other countries. And that is really what blogging is all about. Although we bloggers tend to be somewhat egocentric, encouraging everyone to read our blogs (which of course we think are the best), promoting our blogs and hoping that our blogs too will be Freshly Pressed, blogging is really not just about us. It’s about opening our minds to hear what others have to say, to learn of other’s experiences, and to share our experiences too, thus in some small way making the world a better and maybe a smaller and friendlier place, one blog at a time. So thanks WordPress. Thanks for letting me and other bloggers do what we do best. For me it’s to make someone laugh, cry, think, learn, among the community of fellow bloggers.
© The author and Huffygirl’s Blog, 2010 to 3010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author and Huffygirl’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Unfortunately this poor bird is named "Tufted Titmouse." (Photo: Huffygirl)
This time of year the winter doldrums begin to set in. The fun of Christmas and New Year’s has passed and the Superbowl without The Bears is just not anything to get excited about. It’s too early to psyche oneself up for spring and Valentine’s Day is just a blip of a holiday. That makes it a great time of year to enjoy watching the colorful and interesting birds that come to backyard feeders many times a day. Backyard bird feeding is not hard, and for
Goldfinches are harder to spot in winter when their yellow plumage has faded. Look for the white and black bars on the wings. (Photo: Huffygirl)
a minimal investment you can enjoy watching the birds from the cozy inside comfort. If you haven’t been feeding the birds since fall, it may take a while to attract them to a new feeder. Be patient – this is the time of year when birds are burning lots of calories to stay warm, and they’ll eventually figure out there is a new feeder in town and come around. The best place to get advice on how to start bird feeding is your local birdseed store. There ‘s also a ton of information available online. In the meantime, here’s a few HuffyHow tips.
My bird feeders: note squirrel baffle and ground cover. (Photo: Huffygirl)
Start with a basic pole and offer at least two different foods. This time of year the birds are looking for high-fat foods to help them stay warm, so a good place to start is a suet or Bark Butter feeder (a commercial suet and peanut butter mix) and a mixed seed feeder with peanuts, sunflower seeds and millet. My feeders are: mixed seed and peanuts in the green feeder; mixed finch food in the tube feeder, suet in the green cylinder and Bark Butter on the wooden board.
Tell the squirrels to keep out. Use a squirrel baffle on your pole and place it
far enough away from ledges, roofs, and decks from which the squirrels can jump onto your pole. Or use only squirrel-proof feeders, like the green one here. If you feel too sorry for the squirrels to exclude them, set out corn in a squirrel feeding area separate from your bird feeder. Don’t feel too sorry for them – if you let squirrels take over your feeder, the birds will be driven away.
A basic heated bird bath (Photo: Huffygirl)
Provide a water source – a heated bird bath works great. Birds need water for drinking and bathing, even in the winter.
Keep things clean – periodically clean feeders according to the recommendations that came with your feeder, and discard seed that becomes wet or moldy. Spoiled seed can make birds sick.
Don’t forget the ground feeders. Birds like Juncos and Mourning Doves only eat from the ground. Most of the time enough seed will fall from your feeder onto the ground for these critters, or you can sprinkle some out periodically or add a ground feeder station. (but be careful, these can attract squirrels.) I put a handful of seed on my patio ledge so I can
This guy eats mainly close to the ground (Photo: Huffygirl)
watch the skittish Dark-eyed Juncos.
Avoid bargain bin seed. There’s often a lot of filler in the cheaper discount seed. The bags may be cheaper but you spend more in the long run because there’s more waste. I like the “no mess” varieties of seed which only uses shelled seeds. These cost more, but there is no wasted seed, and no mess of seed shells on the ground to clean up later.
Clinging birds like this Downy Woodpecker and Flickers, like the suet and Bark Butter. This feeder is just a board with a clip on the back.
Provide cover. Birds need plants and bushes nearby to give them shelter while feeding. You can give them some extra shelter in the coldest months by recycling your Christmas tree as a temporary shelter underneath the feeder.
Name names. Get a bird guide-book or check online.
© The author and Huffygirl’s Blog, 2010 to 3010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author and Huffygirl’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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