Year-round Backyard Birding!

For over thirty years, watching birds in my backyard has by far been my favorite hobby!  So many regular visitors like the black-capped Chickadee, Oregon Junco's, my solitaire yellow-rumped warbler (winter and spring only), the year round humming birds and my favorite winter friends the bush-tits.

"Just watching the birds helps me to relax." Bring your family together through appreciating nature, you would be surprised how observant children can be.  When my children were young, road trips used to be such a hassle of "are we there yet?"'s  then we started counting birds of prey.  My children were better at it than I was, and pretty soon they would be the ones telling me about the different hawks!

To become a backyard birder just put out feeders and water (bird bath) and you will have grateful feathered friends visit you everyday!  Fresh water and fresh feed, is essential to keeping them in good health and coming back regularly.  As a general rule of thumb I change out their feed and clean the feeders weekly.  Trying not to waste any, I dump the old seed into the bushes, the Juncos clean up the rest!

"The type of feed matters!!!!"
Mostly the birds prefer the Pacific No-Waste blend from Backyard Birds, with a layer of black sunflower seeds.  A small nyjer (thistle) sock is good, to help attract golden finches, lesser's and pine siskins.

  There are year-round Hummingbirds?!?

 Homemade hummingbird feeders with lots of color attract Anna's hummingbirds, I recommend you have more than one if you are getting these birds regularly to your backyard.  They do NOT seem to share well with each other.  I have three out for the three regulars that reside here year-round.  Make sure to clean your feeder every week!  There are deadly fungus, molds and germs that can harm these delicate birds, so keep them fresh and clean.

Hummingbird recipe:  1/4 sugar to 1 cup of water ratio.  Bring the mixture to a boil, cover and remove from heat when cooled to room temperature fill cleaned and air dried feeder. NO DYE NEEDED!

Create a bird friendly back yard!

Birds love shrubs, trees and bushes, it seems like the more you have the more birds!  To try to maximize the natural habitat for my backyard friends I often create whimsical fences out of bush and tree trimmings.

Cedar Wax Wings came to my raspberry bushes many times this spring, a rare visitor since I don't have a stream nearby.  This year I will have twice as many raspberries and look forward to seeing them again.

 Squirrels can be a problem for robbing your feeders, I chose to make peace with them. 
 I buy a bag of hazelnuts from Backyard Birds and found that nothing gets wasted, the Juncos, pine siskens, Stellar Jays and Scrub Jays all enjoy them.  It has been months since they have even bothered this feeder!


We enjoy a cup of coffee together in the morning, well at least I do while they serenade a "thank-you!"
Next blog will be about the types of foliage to landscape with to attract more birds. 

My love for birds has taken me all around the PNW, I was astounded to find rare Sandhill cranes last winter at Vancouver Lake.

 Bushtits are my favorite feathered friends often at my feeders.  Suet can attract many different birds, from the Yellow-rumped and Townsend warbler to the Black-capped and Chestnut Backed Chickadees, both regular at my suet feeders.

ULTIMATE BIRD FEEDING
Recently a Coopers Hawk came down and startled my friends.  Luckily he did not catch any of my birds. Shocked and horrified I asked the staff at my bird store said they were necessary to cull the sick birds from the local populations.  So I made peace with it, and try not to name the birds anymore.

BAD KITTY!!!!
Cats that roam free are my worst enemies, as a bird lover.  They are not natural to the area and do quite a bit of damage to the local populations.  All the cats (seven of them), are my neighbors pets and I don't want to cause anyone else grief, so I spend a lot of time chasing them away with clapping and yelling.  I have seen as many as two birds a day die.  These are very healthy well fed cats, peoples pets!

Cat owners, this includes me, please let your cats out at night, and in during the day if you must let them out at all!  Don't take my word for it check out what the Audubon says!

Christmas tree feeders?!?
Christmas trees slathered in crunchy peanut butter and seed can be a real treat for your feathered friends!  Unfortunately dogs like them too, so I put a little critter fence around mine!

When you start attracting Red breasted nut hatches, downey and hairy woodpeckers, bewicks wren, Oregon Juncos, Grossbeaks, House Finches, House Sparrows, Spotted Towhee's, Flickers, and Varied Thrushes regularly you have definitely achieved star status with the birds!

I don't even mind the starlings, since I have no bird houses for them to steal from the local blue-birds, they may eat a lot of my suet, but that keeps it fresh for my regular favorites, the bush-tits.

Lesser gold finch male winter at feeder with shelled black sunflower seeds mix.

Loud scrub jay letting all the other Jays know about the fresh peanuts!