The bird seed lady/Sarah/http://www.prdseed.com

*Robins  *Wrens  *Chickadees  *Creepers
*Catbirds *Grackles *Woodpeckers  *Grosbeaks
*Tangers *Sparrows *Brown Thrashers *Mockingbirds
*Warblers *Finches *Vireos   *Field Sparrows
*Orioles *Cardinals *Juncos   *Indigo  Buntings
*Kinglets *Blackbirds *Nuthatches  *Rufuse-Sided-Towhees

Mealworms come either live or dried.   To avoid the larvae growing it is best to use dried mealworms.
You don’t need an expensive feeder to offer mealworms.  Tuna or cat food cans, butter dishes, small containers will usually work.

Below is a list of some suppliers that provide mealworms:
www.songbirdgarden.com
www.thenaturesway.com
www.driedinsects.com
www.nabs

Happy Birding!
The Birdseed Lady/Sarah/http://www.prdseed.com

A good cleaner is vinegar and water.  The ratio should be one third  vinegar to water.  Dawn dish washing soap is also a good product to use. Some people use bleach, but if you want to keep it chemical free, vinegar and water does the trick.  I use a baby bottle brush to get  those hard to clean spots.  Some bird feeders come with a cleaning brush at purchase.

The most important thing is to put fresh bird seed out. Thistle bird seed or nyjer tend to get old and mold quickly when it rains.  This  seed attracts finches, redpolls, indigo bunting and small song birds. Another popular seed is  black oil sunflowers, which attract all bird species, large and small.  However, if you don’t want the shells on the ground, other choices, but more expensive seeds are sunflower hearts and chips or hulled sunflowers.

For those people that prefer a seed mix, Prdseed.com offers a variety.  The Black Max mix is popular, however all the mixed seed choices are excellent for your back yard birding. If you can’t decide and need help choosing the right  bird seed for your feeder, please call the bird seed lady and I will be more than happy to help you find the right seed choice.

 Sarah/The bird seed lady/http://www.prdseed.com

218-839-0117

Thank you for sharing your photos Judi

The bird seed lady/Sarah/http://www.prdseed.com

Well, all right then, if it’s so easy, why haven’t I been more successful? It’s certainly not because I don’t have opportunities. In fact, I had a wonderful opportunity one winter day a few years ago.

Throughout the night it had been snowing here in rural west central Wisconsin, and although I knew my bird feeders were almost empty and it’s part of my routine to fill them first thing in the morning, I decided to wait until the snow had stopped. The cardinals, chickadees, juncoes, blue jays, pine siskins, goldfinches, chipping sparrows, nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers—and the occasional downy woodpecker—wouldn’t want mushy sunflower seeds. And besides, they still had a little bit left.

By the time it quit snowing, and I had shoveled all the paths and had cleared the driveway, the bird feeders were completely empty. I quickly filled a bucket with sunflower seeds and a songbird mixture flavored with cherry juice, and then I started on my rounds.

The first stop, since it is closest to our walk-out basement, was the cedar tree my father and I had found growing wild on our farm nearly thirty years ago. We had dug it up and transplanted it at the house my parents had built when they retired from farming. Mom and Dad are both gone now, but the cedar tree lives on.

As I began to scoop bird seed into the feeder, I heard a chickadee right above my head. The little guy was perched on a snowy branch studded with blue juniper berries, watching my movements with bright, alert eyes. Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee—chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee, he said.

It sounded like he was scolding me.

“Yes, yes,” I replied, “I know you’re hungry. Just wait a minute, will you?”

When I dumped the second scoop into the feeder, I suddenly remembered something an elderly neighbor had once told me about feeding chickadees. I set the bucket down, put a few sunflower seeds in the palm of my glove and propped my arm on a low-hanging branch. About a minute later, I almost fell over from the shock when the chickadee flitted down, perched on my finger and took a sunflower seed. He flew up to his branch, ate the seed, and then came back for another one.

After the fifth sunflower seed, I still couldn’t quite believe it. I figured my husband, Randy, would have trouble believing it too, but I wanted to tell him, anyway. I raced around to the back of the house and threw open the door.

“Randy! Come here!” I shouted.

My husband almost overturned his chair in his haste to get up. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Put your coat on. You’ve gotta see this.”

Randy worked nights, so he had been sleeping all day. For him, late afternoon was like everybody else’s early morning. In a few minutes he came outside. “It’s not very warm out here,” he muttered. “What is it I ‘have to see?’”

“This,” I said, walking down the shoveled path toward the cedar tree.

In the meantime, several more chickadees had joined the first one. I put some seeds in my hand and propped my arm on a branch.

“What ARE you doing?”

“Watch,” I said.

And sure enough, in a little while a chickadee landed on my glove, took a sunflower seed and flitted back to his branch to eat it.

Randy’s mouth popped open in surprise. “Let me try that,” he said.

Soon the chickadees were taking sunflower seeds from Randy’s hand as well.

Then we decided to try it without our gloves. Didn’t matter to the chickadees. Their wire-thin feet clasped our bare fingers just as easily as they had gripped our gloves.

After that, Randy tried putting some sunflower seeds on the bill of his cap. At first the chickadees seemed perplexed by the situation, but finally one brave little soul tried it. Hooking his tiny feet around the brim, he took a sunflower seed and flew off. Once the others saw their leader had come to no harm, they decided to give it a try. The best part came, however, when Randy put some seeds on top of his cap. I never in my wildest imagination thought I would see my husband with a chickadee sitting on top of his head.

“Quick,” Randy murmured, barely moving his lips, “get the camera.”

I inched around the corner and zipped into the house.

“Where is it?” he whispered when I came back outside a few minutes later.

“Ummm…ahhh…well…we’re out of film.”

If Randy hadn’t had a chickadee perched on his head, I’m sure his reaction would have been more forceful.

“Oh, sure,” he hissed, “here I am with a chickadee sitting on top of my head and we don’t have any film?”

So, the next day I went to town and bought several rolls. Then we tried every trick we could think of to coax the chickadees into sitting on Randy’s head again. Nope. Nothing doing. Absolutely not. They wouldn’t even come within ten feet of us.

And here it always looks so easy in those commercials. Just load your camera, point, and shoot, they say.

Right.

By:  LeAnn R. Ralph

So here’s what you need to do to start preparing to participate.   www.birdsource.org/gbbc/. 
Here it will describe how to obtain your tabulation sheet, how to submit your tabulations, and describes how to make your observations.  Then read the instructions on how to tabulate your observations.  Also read how to print a bird list of birds in your zip code area.  Next read how to submit your tabulation counts to the Cornell Lab of Orthinology.  Then of course comes the four days of observations in your back yard followed by the actual count and submission to the Cornell Lab.

It doesn’t cost you any money to participate in this year’s GBBC, nor does it pay you anything.  However, there will be drawings afterwards for all who submitted tabulations.  The prizes to be given out are all really nice prizes.  See list on main Website.

Not-for-Profit Sponsors for the Annual Great Backyard Bird Count are:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology – www.birds.cornell.edu
Audubon Society of America – www.audubon.org
Bird Studies Canada – www.birdscanada.org

Cheers,
Harry “Gipper” Morris
BirdhouseAmerica.com

Bird Man of Alcatraz (1962) – A fictionalized film about Robert Stroud, a federal prisoner who reared and sold birds and became an ornithologist.

The Birds-(1963) – A classic Alfred Hitchcock  action thriller movie of birds that attack people.

Happy Feet-(2006) an animated movie about penguins that dance.

The Big Year-(2011) A comedy movie featuring Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, Jack Black, three guys who are on a quest to be the year’s top birder.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill-(2003)-Documentary featuring Mark Bittner, caretaker of San Francisco’s flock of wild cherry headed concurs.

Paulie-(1998)-Movie about Blue Crowned Concure that gets separated from his owner.

The Real Macaw-(1997)- A film from Australia, tale of 149 year old blue and gold macaw.  Good movie for young and old ages.

Winged Migration-(2001)-Movie about migration of birds with birds of all species in flight.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins-(2011) – film starring Jim Carrey who finds himself with 10 penguin roommates.

The March of the Penguins-(2005)-Narrated by Morgan Freeman.  An educational movie about Emperor Penguins and their fight for survival in harsh condition.

On a personal note, I have yet to see most of the movies above.   I did like March of the Penguins, the scenery was outstanding and a very educational movie.   A great flick for kids who can learn more about the environment.

The birdseed lady, Sarah/http://www.prdseed.com

Of course, we have to credit her husband Mike, who actually took the photos with his Nikon Camera. Great job,  Mike

Lynn orders the Prdseed No Mess, a general bird seed mix that has white millet seed, sunflower hearts and chips, and safflower birdseed.

Prdseed.com previoulsy did a simular blog on the Red Tailed Hawk with featured Customer Beth Fillman, from New York in March Please view on:

http://www.prdseed.com/blog/?p=298

Beware,  those hawks sure do get around.

Thanks for sending in your photos, Lynn and Mike

Sarah/The bird seed Lady/http://www.prdseed.com

One warm fall day in 2010 ,before my daughter became married and multiply-impregnated, and while my son was working overseas; my daughter came to visit me at my house in an old section of Columbia.  “Weeter,” I asked, “go look in the garage and see if you can find that little space heater to use on cold mornings at your place.”  Her name “Liz,” a name I had always hated after that unfortunate childhood experience, but I mostly call her the name I called her when she was a toddler.  Trying to hang onto things in a changing world.  Also trying to avoid replacing her furnace.  At the moment, I was also petting Roxanne, amazed for the 400th time at how cute this clumsy labradoodle puppy really was.  At this point I was having trouble determining whether I was actually closer to the puppy or the sometimes-I-go-to-class-when-I’m-trying-to-make-my-father-happy daughter.  Just a momentary twinge of doubt, there.

A scream from the backyard intruded before I resolved the question in my mind. Ahhh! Dad, hurry! I ran to the back door.  My 22-year-old daughter, standing in front of the garage, was shouting to me to come out into the yard, pointing excitedly over my head as I stepped out onto the deck.

I quickly hobbled out onto the deck, into the yard and turned to look back behind me, above the roof of the house, and then I saw…..nothing.  She said a humongous bird, not a hawk, not a vulture, not even an Eagle, had perched on the crown of the roof and was looking at her when she came out the garage.  she said she could hear its wings beat as I came out of the house, but it was like nothing she had ever seen.  She has seen songbird, some of them pretty large.  We live in South Carolina and she has gone to the coast in and around the salt marshes for at least a week every summer since she was born.

Oh yes, the internet.  Looking at pictures of some of the largest birds in the world, she shouted, “that’s him!” as she pointed to and then enlarged a picture of the wood stork.  I was doubtful.  We got some other pictures of wood storks, and read that they are somewhat threatened, breeding only in southern Georgia and Florida, but sometimes range into South Carolina.  I don’t think I had ever seen one before, but it was truly an impressive bird species, according th the author of the scholarly article.

Later that day, I went out to feed the koi in the little cement pond next to the house, and well there weren’t any.  I called to them, banging the border-stones together, and nothing.  I thought perhaps they were really afraid, something had scared them, maybe a hungry cat, and so I threw some food around in different spots, but saw nothing.  Then with a dull, sick realization, I saw there had been some other feeding going on.  Reading some more about the wood stork, one of its most notable behavioral characteristics apparently is,”…standing in shallow water and feeding until there are no more fish.”

I actually had names for some of those fish.  Well, trying to stay positive, I thought now is a good time to clean out the pond, and the next day I syphoned out all of the water, only to find about 35 small fish down in the muddy bottom of the pond.  Hurrah! Determined to save them and not give up the cleaning, I put these 1 to 3 inch goldfish, koi and shibunkins  into a 55 gallon drum, along with a pump and removed the rest of the water out of the pond, and started scraping out the pond, there being about 2 year’s worth of leaves and other muck waiting at the bottom.

When I was done, I started filling the pond with the garden hose, which would take several hours.  After that I would add water treatment and then put the fish back in along with the simple filtration system.  Late that afternoon, I went out to see how the pond was filling, thinking it was probably ready.  As I came out the side door, I saw a majestic slate-grade bird standing on top of the 55 gallon drum, looking at me casually with beady eyes but betraying very little interest.  With a few great swoops of its powerful winds, it slowly moved across the yard, gaining altitude into the trees, and away.

There was one half of one dead fish left in the drum.  I had helped to provide a couple of awesome feedings for an endangered bird.  So I got that going for me.

Author:  Anonymous

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