Are you feeding the birds this winter? According to an article in the WSJ 34 million people are, and they're spending $2.8 Billion to do it! Folks also spend $733 Million on houses, birdbaths and feeders, especially the new feeders that are supposed to fox the squirrels. The most successful one, the Yankee Flipper costs $111.00! It spins around, launching the squirrel into the air. WildBill's battery-powered feeder shocks the marauders, and costs $225.00. Fortunately I don't have a squirrel problem as my feeders are all hung outside the picture window in the bedroom upstairs. So far no squirrel, even the flying squirrel I've watched leaping from the maple to the windowsill, has been successful.
I love lying in bed watching the birds enjoying their early morning breakfast. My favorites are the beady-eyed titmice and the fat little chickadees. They have beautiful manners, all waiting their turn at the feeders. The goldfinches, no longer gold now that they've donned their gray winter coats, are forever squabbling with each other as they flutter around the thistle feeder (a misnomer - these tiny seeds are really niger, not thistle, and are imported from India and Ethiopia). The nuthatches, who used to spend their mornings searching for bugs under the bark of the maple tree, have learned that sunflowers are just as tasty as bugs and easier to find.
I see lots of woodpeckers each morning. The downy and hairy and redheaded woodpeckers all spend their time upside-down filling their bellies with suet, but the red-bellied woodpecker likes both suet and sunflowers. He consumes large quantities of both, but then, he is shockingly large himself, twice as big as his cousins. I don't know where he lives - in the cavity of some tree - but he never misses breakfast.
Besides providing entertainment, having the feeders outside an upstairs window prevents the squirrels and our cat from reaching them. The big drawback is that I never see the cardinal or the juncos or the doves, who refuse to eat seeds unless they're on the ground. It's been a tough winter for the birds, so whenever I fill the feeders I throw out a scoop of sunflowers for the ground feeders.
Back in the days when I was pinching pennies so hard that I begrudged even buying a bag of birdseed, I grew my own sunflowers. Sometimes I would use the seedlings that popped up under the birdfeeders each spring. I'd put them on the north side of the vegetable garden and let my pole beans use them to climb up. Both like soil that is sandy and slightly acid, about 6.7 pH.
The birds prefer the black oil type of sunflower seed, but if you want giant flowers, you should plant the Russian varieties. Organic Gardening always has a contest for the biggest sunflower head. One year the winning head was over 26 inches across. Whatever the size, the bright yellow blossoms will follow the sun with adoring eyes from dawn to dusk, the bees will buzz lazily from one to the next, and before you know it, intricate patterns of black and white seeds will appear.
When the seeds begin to ripen, the bluejays descend. One can't blame them, but I used to find catching a flock of screaming jays pigging out in my garden in August more annoying than catching my kids slurping down my home-canned peaches in September.
Bluejays are so greedy, swallowing a dozen or more seeds at once, hull and all. It's disgusting - like eating a banana without peeling it! It always used to infuriate me until I learned that a bluejay is a little like a cow - once he's gobbled his fill, he flies off to some quiet spot, regurgitates his seeds, opens them one at a time and eats the meat.
The first year I caught bluejays eating my sunflower seeds, I felt like cutting their heads off. Instead I cut off the flower heads and set them on an old door screen in the garden shed to dry. Two days later I realized what a feast I'd provided for the mice, so I quickly put them in a trash can with the lid on. At the end of the week neither birds nor mice nor anyone else would have wanted them. They were fuzzy and gray with mold.
The heads are very susceptible to mildew and need good ventilation while they dry. Hang them with string from the rafters of the barn or garage until all moisture is gone and the seeds can be brushed loose from the heads. I usually give this job to the birds. I take the whole head, set it in a hanging flower pot and hook it over the limb of a tree.
That article in the WSJ claimed that attracting wild birds to feeders spreads disease, aids predators and causes tens of millions of birds to fly into windows. Sorry, I don't agree. Feed the birds. It's been a hard winter.
