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Be a Citizen Scientist: Project Feederwatch 2022 [1]

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Date: 2022-11-13

Red-bellied woodpecker. You can actually see the red flush on the underside of this male bird.

Cornell University can use your help. They’ve studied birds for generations (human generations as well as avian ones). They’re tracking bird populations and watching the changes happening under the pressures of climate change. Over more than two decades, they’ve seen the red-bellied woodpecker move further and further north as winters become warmer. They’re watching for the effects of food sources becoming out of sync with birds’ breeding cycles. But they need the help of birdwatchers all over the country and in Canada, too. And that’s where you can help.

The Feederwatch season is just getting underway. It’s active every year from November through April, and it’s open to anyone who can count. You don’t even need a bird feeder, as long as you have something in your watch area that attracts birds: water, plants that produce edible parts, shelter. Unlike the NestWatch program that I wrote about previously, they do ask money to fund this data collection. It’s a modest $18 ($15 if you are a member). They send you all the materials you need to count, plus a poster of the birds most common in your area, east or west. And they’ll tell you how to enter your data online. Or, if you are not computer-comfortable, there is a mail-in option.

I’ve done this for more than 25 years and I’ve learned a few things along the way. For one thing, that adorable bird above will throw food he doesn’t like, emptying the feeder quickly. Other birds will skip those seeds, too, but the red-bellies are adamant about it. For that reason, I spend the extra bit to get seed the birds actually like. Mixes aren’t always popular because they often have filler seed so I make my own, although I’ve found Pennington’s Fruit and Nut Blend to be acceptable to my birds. Don’t always believe the hype on the bags that says birds love the seeds inside. Not always true.

Then there’s the squirrel problem. Squirrels don’t like safflower seed. My (desirable) birds don’t mind it, even if it isn’t at the top of their list. But I make a mix of two parts safflower to one part whole sunflower kernels, and that gets a lot of birds, but the squirrels leave it alone. As a bonus, starlings won’t eat it, either. That goes in my Droll Yankee tube feeders, the ones that are over 50 years old.

I have fine mesh feeders for the birds that eat nyger (also known as thistle). The small birds cling to it to eat, and doves scrounge the dropped seed below. This seed can mold, and it’s really bad about that when it’s mixed with fine sunflower chips, so I never get the mix, only plain seed. Only buy what you will use in a short time, maybe a couple of months, and only put out what will be eaten in a very few days.

Yes, every seed eating bird pretty much likes sunflower seed and peanuts (as do squirrels, and varmints at night). I find, though, that the hulls are a real problem, so I spend the extra for hulled whole seed and shelled nuts. I have enough to do cleaning up the hulls from safflower and nyger.

The farm stores and hardware stores here sell 50# bags of safflower and sunflower seeds. I don’t buy the sunflower because of the hull. And I don’t buy the safflower, even though it’s relatively inexpensive, because the seeds are small. You are getting very little edible seed so you aren’t saving any money, and the birds are still expending a lot of energy to open them. That’s serious in cold weather, when birds lose a good amount of their body weight every night, when they can’t eat. So I buy the premium safflower from a specialty store.

I have had problems with starlings, squirrels, and nightly varmints, too, with the seeded suet cakes that are available everywhere. I go to the specialty store, where I can buy cakes of plain suet. It’s good energy in cold weather for chickadees and every kind of woodpecker in the area. What’s the problem with starlings? They, and the house sparrows (English sparrows) aren’t native birds. They are very successful at out competing our own birds for nest sites and food, and they over breed like crazy.

For some birds, an apple cut in half and smeared with peanut butter is a treat.

A heated birdbath is a nice extra, if you can manage it. Even birds that don’t eat seed, such as robins mockingbirds, will show up for water.

And here are some winter birds at my feeders:

Male northern cardinal

Blue jay

Downy woodpecker (I get the hairy woodpeckers, too.)

White-breasted nuthatch

Mockingbird (on a feeder pole but here just for the water and apples)

Black capped chickadee

Tufted titmouse (I’ve processed this to look like a watercolor painting. Sorry about that.)

Yellow-shafted flicker

House finches. The birds will fly at each other to make room at the feeders but they never make contact.

And a real prize, a Harris’ sparrow, our largest sparrow. These breed on the ground in the arctic and only show up in the US in winter. Many people have never seen one.

American tree sparrow

Eastern meadowlarks eat insects, not seed, but when there’s a heavy snow and ice cover, they’ll come close to the house just in case I have something for them.

Oh, no! Last year was especially bad. I had no acorns on the oak trees and maybe three black walnuts on the ground. My little squirrels have to eat, too. I know you’re overrun with gray squirrels in town, but in the country the population is controlled by hawks, owls, and coyotes. Still, they eat a lot, so I try to feed them away from the bird feeders, and they have their own heated water bowl by the garage.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/13/2135032/-Be-a-Citizen-Scientist-Project-Feederwatch-2022

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