We had a couple of unusual sitings this week.  I looked out to our birdfeeders this afternoon and saw a downy woodpecker at our sunflower seed tube feeder.  This is unusual during this time of year.  They are regular visitors during the late fall, winter, and early spring when we have our suet feeders filled.  They love the suet and will also go for the sunflower seeds.  But, when the weather starts to get too warm and the suet melts and goes rancid we stop putting it out and the downys disappear for a few months.  It was a suprise to see one in August.

The other unusual siting was a young bald eagle flying just about 40 feet over my head.  While playing golf this weekend I looked up and saw this bird fly over and all of a sudden realized it was a small bald eagle.  There are not many mating pairs in this region of southern Ohio so although they are not rare they are also not abundant.  Although I have seen some occasionally on tree branches along the Ohio River this was the first time one has flown directly over me.  It was a beautiful sight.

Bird feeders are a great way to attract and feed birds.  The simplest method is to place the food on the ground.  Ground feeding is one way to attract birds that normally take all or part of their food from the ground anyway.  This is one way we feed our birds and along with it an old stump is used as a simple platform bird feeder.  We are able to attract many different types of birds by this method of feeding.  On a regular basis we get cardinals, titmouses, nuthatches, juncos, blackcapped chickadees, doves, blue jays, grackles, red winged blackbirds, cowbirds, sparrows, and finches.  And we also get our fair share of squirrels who tend to gather up a lot of the sunflower seeds we place out.  But we also put out corn for the squirrels to distract them (somewhat) from the seeds.  We also get a couple of chipmunks, but they’re too small to make a difference in the amount of food put out.  During winter and early spring our ground feeding also tends to attract other types of birds that we don’t normally see at other times.  Some examples are the rufous-side towhee, and one year for a week evening grosbeaks, and a couple of times rose-breasted grosbeaks.

Other bird feeders we use are a squirrel proof tube feeder and a squirrel proof hooper feeder.  The tube bird feeder is designed to be filled only with sunflower seeds.  This bird feeder tends to attract red bellied woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, blackcapped chickadees, titmouses, nuthatches, and finches.  During the winter and early spring this feeder also attracts gold finches.

We fill our hooper bird feeder with a birdseed mixture that contains millet, cracked corn, some shelled peanuts, and sunflower seeds.  This bird feeder tends to attract cardinals, finches, black capped chickadees, and rarely we have seen the red bellied woodpecker there.

During the winter months we put out suet holding bird feeders.  We keep the suet out until late spring until the weather starts to get too warm.  Besides the normal woodpeckers and chickadees the suet tends to attract birds that we seem to see at our bird feeders only during this time of the year such as the hairy woodpecker and the mockingbird.

The addition of a simple birdbath you will attract birds to your backyard.  We have a traditional pedestal birdbath placed in a spot in one of our flower gardens.  It is near, but not under, a large tree and some old wooden crossbars that used to support an old tree house.  This gives our birds a place to leap to, if they have to when wet, like when our neighbor’s cat comes around.

The birdbath is close to our hose line so it is easy to keep clean with a quick scrub before filling with fresh water.  We have read and seen that you can attract even more birds by adding a mister or even a dripper.  We would love to hear from others who have added these features to their birdbath in their yard. 

To provide a safe perch we added a good size rock in the center of the birdbath.  Since we also have other visitors, such as squirrels, to the birdbath we have surrounded it with metal fence stakes to keep the birdbath upright.  We have seen birds sitting on the fence stakes waiting their turn in the birdbath.

Binoculars are a great way to get close up views of the birds and animals that we attract to our backyard.  We have been able to identify several different species that looked similar to the other birds we have attracted, but the binoculars helped us to see the subtle differences that we couldn’t see at a distance.  We currently use a Bausch & Lomb 8-24 x 50 pair of binoculars.  They have rubber protected eyepieces and a zoom knob that lets us zoom from an 8 to a 24 power.  Although this zoom is a nice feature we find that we get a better picture when using the 8 power.  (The 24 power tends to be blurry closer up).

The binoculars are a little cumbersome because of the size, but we have gotten use to them and we don’t carry them into the field for bird watching.  They would be a little too heavy on a strap around our neck.  Our On-Line Nature Mall has a wide variety of binoculars to choose from.  Small field size to larger models.

As I mentioned in our Attracting Birds blog we have several mammals that live nearby and visit our backyard.  The largest is deer who roam in small groups throughout the neighborhood.  They were cute until they destroyed a hemlock that I had carried from my parent’s house as a very small sapling.  It had grown to about 8 feet tall and then the deer discovered it.  Had I known of their taste for hemlock I would have surrounded with a tall fence in the winter.  Now I am trying to nurse it back to life.  We have also seen them come to our bird feeding area and eat the birdseed that we have placed on the ground.  We usually try to chase them away because we are trying to feed the birds not them.  This year we have resorted to spraying the area with a liquid fence type product.  It smells terrible for about a day, but it seems to work.

We also have raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and chipmunks.  We don’t mind feeding the squirrels and chipmunks because they can be fun to watch, but our real problem is the raccoon who comes at night.   He shakes the squirrel proof hopper feeder and the squirrel proof tube feeder to empty all of seed out to snack on.   He used to knock them on the ground every night until we chained them to the wooden supports of an old treehouse.   The squirrels can’t get in those two feeders, but the raccoon just bullies them and shakes them until the seed is on the ground.  We now only put out as much as the birds can eat in a day so the raccoon finds them nearly empty which doesn’t seem to deter him.  Maybe that’s why he shakes them so hard.  He should try anger management.