Any bird feeders?

I have four different finch feeders in the pine right outside the window above our computer desk and it has birds on it no stop as long as there is daylight. These feeders are filled with a thistle seed/millet mix and finches, chickadees, juncos, nuthatches and downy wood peckers all feed heavily on them. Sparrows have been a problem so I put a couple 4 pound tower feeders out about 60 feet away from the finch feeders and so far have had great results in keeping the sparrows off the better food. The towers are on each end of the clothes line posts and get a generic wild bird mix to which I add about 4 pounds of sunflower seed to a 20 pound bag. I also have some suet feeders scattered thru the yard and those are busy with anything from the pesky starlings to five species of woodpeckers, nut hatches, chickadees and juncos. I’ve got three red-bellied wood peckers that show up several times during the day and are new to our feeders this year. They are a big and beautiful wood pecker but tend to be shy.

A few years ago I began saving the body fat from the deer I shot to grind and cook down into liquid fat to which I added cheap chunky peanuts butter and generic bird seed before pouring it into a cake pan to cool. I can cut this into chunks for suet cages or I can stuff it into holes bored in birch logs that have an eye screw in one end for hanging. This fat food is a super good one that the birds seem to favor over any other suet blocks.

Another home brewed treat for the birds is a Kool Whip carton full of bacon drippings just set out where the birds can get to it. Its got to be up on a ledge or table or a feeder arm so ground critters can’t make off with it. There are times when a tub of this has so many birds on the rim of it you can’t see the tub itself. I have no idea if its the fat or salt and the little bits left in the grease from the bacon but bird love this stuff.

This cold weather is a reminder that our bird friends need a little extra now and I enjoy having them around. Right now I have 11 finches and a downy wood pecker right outside the window. They sure are fun to have around and to watch.

My parents in rural Goodhue county keep up pretty well with their bird feeder and it brings in a lot of colors, like yellow finches, cardinals, and blue jays. In fact, a week ago yesterday during the Vikes game I saw Seahawks on TV and blue jays just outside the window (pun intended).

Finches are feeding hardcore all day here. Also got some corn left over that I’ve been giving to the squirrels. Bought a heated bird bath through fleet farm too.

for some reason I don’t have a lot of birds in cold spring. I don’t have sparrow issues. I only feed sunflowers, safflower seeds and thistle seed. sputzies don’t like that kinda food!!!!!!!! I could put a suet cake out and it would rot before they eat it.

however up at the cabin the suet cakes are gone in less then a week….all 4 of them. new years weekend when we were up fishing we must of had 30 pine grosbeaks!!!!!!!!

I forgot about the bluejays and the cardinals. We see those everyday as well but only once or twice each day.

Another sighting that gets pretty common of late is a sharp shinned hawk. He’s a bird feeder to …he feeds on birds. He’ll put on a show that’s a riot to watch but I cringe when he shows up because of the birds bouncing off out picture window.

Targaman….we have finches show up just a hair before the sun rises and they stay all day. Two of the finch feeders hand on branches of a white pine right next to the house and they’ll sit in that tree as long as the sun is up. The downy wood peckers like the pine too and I can watch them go from a spot of sun to another spot of sun as the sun moves thru the day.

I’d like to say that the birds are cheap entertainment but that seed can get expensive fast. I’m filling the tower feeders every morning and they are completely empty when I go out to fill them. Fun stuff though.

Great post, Tom. I’ll need to try the bacon grease. Have never done that.

And it super important once you start feeding, to keep it up till spring!

Side story. Last couple of winters we have had rabbits living up under the deck. They spend the night cleaning up the seed that has fallen to the ground. I’ll toss out a carrot every once in a while and they eat those too. The rabbits don’t seem to fair well in my yard. It’s just a matter of time until an owl has dinner.

Ever heard a rabbit scream?

-J.

I realize you can’t see what type of weeds these are growing in the tree rows. But holy crap do the birds like these seeds. Indescribable how many birds are in these rows.

Last year I laid plastic down as a drag and pulled with the atv. Kids pounced the brush and we collected about 10# of seed. I put them in my dad’s feeders and the birds didn’t take to it too well. I’m sure there were a dozen different seeds in there. Wish I knew which and what they are eating

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It has been a busy time by the feeders. I do try to keep them full in the winter months. I do something similar to Tom with the deer fat. I don’t melt it down, but run it through the grinder. I then mix with peanut butter, corn meal, oatmeal and some sunflower seeds. I make them into 1 inch rolls and stuff them into an old birch log. The woodpeckers love digging that delicacy out of the logs. Been getting quite a few non typical birds at the feeders the past few weeks.

I am getting a flock of turkeys the last 3 years. They can eat a 50 lb bag of chicken scratch in a hurry along with plenty of shelled corn.

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Trent is actually the one who put me on to the deer fat thing, I just took it a step further. Trent also made a pusher to fill plastic tubing with the suet mix then push it out so it can be cut into the plugs he mentions to fill the holes bored in birch logs. Works pretty slick.

Carole and I have saved bacon grease for years in containers like the one mentioned and then take a few of those at a time up to the cabin to mix with daily left-overs to feed the bear. I mentioned that we had too many of these tubs in the freezer and that I was going to mount one on a feeder arm and see how the birds liked it. The response was crazy. I have a large nail [40 penny] driven into the feeder arm and the head cut off. I take a frozen tub of grease and heat up another nail the same size with a torch and melt a hole in the bottom of the tub and continue on thru the frozen fat. Then I just slide the whole tub, open side up, down on that nail in the feeder arm. That feeder also has a metal wrap running from the ground up 4 feet on the post so critters cannot climb it.

I used to love the amount of finches that would hang out on the thistle feeder in the winter. Then the males in the spring would start turning yellow and soon it was only one or two pairs who’d visit in the warm months.

We get a lot of titmice, chickadees, cardinals, Carolina wrens, downy woodpecker and mourning doves down here. We also get Eurasian doves which look almost identical to mourning doves, but twice as big. We have had 2 dozen doves in the small corner of the yard at one time, which is cool.

Today I went out and a dove was in the lanai. Luckily the dogs raced by without seeing it. It hit the screen a couple times before it relaxed and let me grab him. It was cool holding it, you know how much I love nature, and it flew off after a minute or so no worse for wear.

I don’t boil the deer fat, I hang the rib cage full of the scraps.

We have 2 suet feeders right outside the deck door… love watching the BIG pileated woodpeckers work em, its like a mini cage match !!! We get lots of downy woodpeckers and chickadees

Dogs….

I don’t boil the suet, I just grind it and heat it until it can be mashed easily and the other stuff blends in without hard stirring. In town a hanging chunk of carcass might be over the top as I have a very busy park and walking trail system right at our back yard. lol Things got real testy a couple years ago when I butchered a couple pigs in the driveway. lol

There was an article in the local paper a couple weeks ago about habitat reduction was causing issues for red-headed wood pecker numbers in our area. A week later the same reporter offered a little bit of a retraction. lol I see a red-headed every now and again here but this season we have had three red-bellied woodies that show up together each time they appear. Must be a family unit of some sort. When they are on the suet outside the office window they are literally only 8 feet from my face and offer a great look at them. They are beautiful birds. Our old oak gets visited by an occasional pileated but they don’t spend much time on the feeders. Our kitchen window looks out at that oak. The oak gets hawks and eagles on occasion too.

Pileated woodpeckers are so cool.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

Dogs….

I don’t boil the suet, I just grind it and heat it until it can be mashed easily and the other stuff blends in without hard stirring. In town a hanging chunk of carcass might be over the top as I have a very busy park and walking trail system right at our back yard. lol Things got real testy a couple years ago when I butchered a couple pigs in the driveway. lol

There was an article in the local paper a couple weeks ago about habitat reduction was causing issues for red-headed wood pecker numbers in our area. A week later the same reporter offered a little bit of a retraction. lol I see a red-headed every now and again here but this season we have had three red-bellied woodies that show up together each time they appear. Must be a family unit of some sort. When they are on the suet outside the office window they are literally only 8 feet from my face and offer a great look at them. They are beautiful birds. Our old oak gets visited by an occasional pileated but they don’t spend much time on the feeders. Our kitchen window looks out at that oak. The oak gets hawks and eagles on occasion too.

well there is getting the deer part too!!!!!!

Pileated woodpecker pics at the feeder…big birds sure do a job on the suet cakes in a hurry !

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Those are nice pics of the pileated.

I love pileated woodpeckers. We see an occasional one at our place, but my folks have 2 that regularly visit their feeders.

We’re not big into it, but we have two feeders out. We get a lot of cardinals, bluejays, chickadees, purple finches, and nuthatches.

I put up a screech owl house this fall that I hope gets filled in the spring–we have a ton of mice and voles!

In the summer, we feed the hummingbirds. They’re fun to watch. I have a feeder suction-cupped to the window by our dinner table, and the kids get a kick out of watching them.

We got a couple pileated peckers we see here occasionally.

We also have a couple owls that have scared the crap out of me in the morning and at night.

Got a humming bird feeder, but don’t see many, although the neighbours see them a lot. Probably too many wild Flowers with the good stuff for them to bother with our fake crap.

dogs wrote:

I don’t boil the deer fat, I hang the rib cage full of the scraps.

x2…….After they are done with it an ant would starve. I’m guessing the citified folk might have an issue with seeing that though.

Jon Jordan wrote:

The rabbits don’t seem to fair well in my yard. It’s just a matter of time until an owl has dinner.

On Sunday of last weekend I saw a Bald Eagle on my neighbors roof. I was watching football and out of the corner of my eye I saw him/her swoop in and land. It’s not to easy to miss something that size when he flies 10 yards from your large livingroom window. I’m guessing with all the waters freezing up they have to find new “targets” and we have a ton of rabbits running around. Of course by the time I went and got my camera it took off.

That was a first for me to see a eagle that close and in a residential neighborhood to boot!

Do we still have whip-poor-wills? Not that I expect to see them at the feeder. Was just something that crossed my mind the other day. I haven’t heard one in a long long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_whip-poor-will

Dave Lozier wrote:

Do we still have whip-poor-wills? Not that I expect to see them at the feeder. Was just something that crossed my mind the other day. I haven’t heard one in a long long time.

I think they’re still around but it may be that urban sprawl is encroaching on some of their habitat. Being bug eaters they are along the Gulf Coast and into Florida now. Another thing that makes them hard to know whether they are around is their nocturnal nature. If you don’t hear their night song you’d never know they were here. I just think that with the spread of housing many of the pockets of habitat they use get taken down and houses go in.

Dave Lozier wrote:

Do we still have whip-poor-wills? Not that I expect to see them at the feeder. Was just something that crossed my mind the other day. I haven’t heard one in a long long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_whip-poor-will

We still have them in my area…I was delighted to hear them the first summer we moved here, I hadn’t heard one since I was a kid. Habitat and urban sprawl took their toll in my former home(West-central Ill).
I feed the birds obsessively, I think I get it from my late Grandmother. She loved the birds, knew them all by their calls. I’m not that good, but I keep a couple of good bird books around for reference. We get the usual north-woods birds, and the occasional oddball. My best yet was a Northern Shrike two years ago; nailed a dove and sat in the snow and ate it while I watched. Evening and Pine Grosbeaks, the occasional Rose-Breasted and suddenly this year a whole flock of Cedar Waxwings working over my crab-apple tree, competing with half a dozen grouse for the leftover berries. I could watch my birds all day…
Interesting to note: On two occasions while ice fishing and on a hot bite, I’ve contacted my wife and asked her what the birds were doing. On both occasions she reported that the birds were “going nuts” on the feeders.

We feed year around and get to see some migrating warblers, and other species in spring and fall. In summer we get Rose Breasted Grosbeaks and various birds bringing their young to the feeder. We keep a list of the species we’ve identified and have had 42 different kinds of birds so far.

Nothing new this year. A few titmice are wintering here and thought I saw a redpoll the other day.

To keep starlings off the suet I made a box to put around the feeder so that only the bottom is open for the woodpeckers to use.

If you have stale bread, cookies, crackers, popcorn, etc. put it out for the blue jays. It’s a hoot to see how worked up they get hauling it off before someone else gets it.

Starlings are the pits and rank right up there with crows for me. I toss a firecracker out the garage door when starlings are a heavy presence. The noise doesn’t seem to bother the “good” birds.

We have pretty much all the same, common birds mentioned by others at our bird feeders. (not pileated wood peckers or gross beaks though)
Our house over looks a fairly large marsh. Common predatory birds that show up are Red Tail hawks, Sharp Shinned Hawk & American Kestrel.
The Kestrels are very cool to see. They’re fast and deadly!

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We’ve been getting a yellow colored warbler. Not sure what the species is yet.

I’m hoping sometime in our travels to see a painted bunting.

I hate the starlings. They come into my yard in force and attack the suet and peanut butter feeder. The pileated are great until they bore holes in your gable ends and get into the attic. I had covered three holes thru the siding & sheathing before I finally had them covered with steel siding.