Black-oil Sunflower attracts the best birds

It’s time again to sing the praises of black oil sunflower, at least if the questions I’ve been receiving are any indication. For those of you who’ve recently started reading this column this may help you attract more birds and avoid some common problems associated with bird feeding. For those who’ve been reading since the beginning, this will be a review, hopefully I’ll add some new tips.

At this time of year people are buying feeders for first timers and they’re looking for the best feeder to attract the biggest variety of birds. They’re usually surprised when I recommend sunflower, saying they were thinking more of “regular birdseed”, whatever that is. If you have a tube feeder with sunflower only you will get more birds than the same feeder with mixed seed. Most birds will come to the feeder look in the hole and if all they see is the less desirable seed, then they will head over to the neighbours house. Certain birds will rifle through the seed to get the ones they want but that leads to another host of problems with unwanted birds and rodents eating the spilled seed. A platform feeder will attract a lot of birds with mixed seed but what to do with all the seed nobody wants, you likely paid good money for things that our birds won’t eat like, milo, hulled wheat, oats and barley. Even though our birds eat corn, it’s not the favourite of many and usually gets spilled on the ground. It’s also quite expensive when it comes as part of the mix.

Think of your neighbourhood as a smorgasbord, think of mixed seed as the tray full of frozen peas and carrots, think of the black oil sunflower as the tray of lobster tails and imagine where the line up is. I hear people (especially my family) say, “Oh, that’ll do, if they’re hungry enough they’ll eat it.” I don’t know if that’s ever been true, but these days with so many people feeding and so many people who take better care of birds than they do themselves, I don’t think a chickadee would ever “get hungry enough” to eat milo seed. Birds have wings and birds have ears, so when they hear all the noisy birds fighting over your neighbours choice sunflower, they simply fly on over and get in on the action.

I know all mixed seed isn’t created equally, the general rule of thumb is the blacker the mix the better, (As long as the black is from the sunflower). There are two problems with this though, there are still seeds that some birds don’t like and they will end up on the ground. Most of us don’t mind too much as other birds will clean it up, it’s when the clean up crew turns out to be 30 pigeons and they hang out on your roof waiting for the next job to come along that you start having trouble. If you’re getting sparrows and junco eating the millet under your feeder you can put a little millet off by itself somewhere, this way you aren’t depending on the tube feeding birds to spill enough seeds for the ground feeders or maybe they are spilling too much, attracting unwelcome visitors and killing the grass, I like to have more control over how much seed is out at one time. The sparrows and junco will thank you, they’ll be able to eat their millet without getting pooped on from above.

Most people agree with the straight seed over mixed theory, unfortunately not many of them are the ones selling the seed, so when you go into a store and ask for the best seed to attract birds you’ll likely be handed a mix... by the kid who started working there last week. Sometimes stores push mixes because there is much more money to be made, you can add cheap filler and charge as much or more as the higher quality sunflower seed.

I haven’t sold mixed seed for years, and I spend a lot of time not selling it, explaining the benefits of individual seeds in each area. I have many happy converts and I have many people who I catch with a bag of mixed seed hiding under a blanket in their trunk when I carry their sunflower out. They say it’s “just in case.” I smile, nod and wonder if they really needed the $100 feeder to keep pigeons away or if simply stopping the mix would have worked as well.

I keep trying though, especially with first time feeders, you don’t have much time to get them hooked. If they receive a feeder full of mixed seed and all they attract are starlings, pigeons and rodents, they’re not likely to enjoy the experience and continue. If their first birds are chickadee, nuthatch, goldfinch, grosbeak, cardinal (I actually had a customer who’s very first bird was a Northern Cardinal) they’re much more likely to enjoy feeding and make it a lifelong hobby.

What I recommend for first timers is a decent sunflower feeder, whether it be a tube, mesh or hopper, I’ll usually ask the location it’ll be used, not everyone has to worry about pigeons so they’ll have more options. This gets you started, from there you could add some speciality feeders; if you’re liking the finch that are coming and you want to attract more, you could add a nyjer feeder. If you’re liking the woodpecker, chickadee, nuthatch (or want to attract a few birds that don’t usually eat any seeds), you could add a suet feeder. If you like sparrows and doves, add a ground feeder.

These guys all eat sunflower and the majority of our birds prefer it, the best part is, it’s one of the most inexpensive seeds you’ll feed. If you never feed anything else you’ll still enjoy visits from most of our feeder birds.

Listing is a fun birding activity, especially in winter.

It’s that time of year again, bird listing seems to gain popularity in winter. It’s not that there are more birds around, I think it’s because we have more time on our hands and what could be a better way to get through a long winter than adding birds to some of your various lists.

New Brunswick naturalists keep a winter list, the period for this one runs from the first day of December until the last day of February. This list has contributers from all over the province it doesn’t record numbers of birds, but rather if the species was represented that winter. I particularly like it if I see a bird that I don’t expect in winter, I check the winter list and often it has been noted on several other year’s lists.

Take our robin, inevitably I will get phone calls or hear reports on the radio that a robin was sighted in the winter. People always find it odd and wonder if it means an easy winter or early spring, but if you go to the winter list you’ll see it was checked off every year since 96/97 when the list came on line.(If I knew where to look, I’m confident it would have been recorded every year).

You’ll see some species that were spotted occasionally, even the odd swallow, warbler and flycatcher; you’ll be wondering what these guys would find to eat in a New Brunswick December.

So far this “winter” there were 131 species of birds recorded in New Brunswick, the average is 161. You’ll see this and be thinking, wow, this is going to be an awesome year for birding, only 8 days in (11 by the time you read this) and we’re already at 80% of the yearly average. Hopefully that is the case, but the first couple weeks of the count are the most productive, there are still some stragglers and since birders know this there are many eyes out there trying to find them. The last 20% that will bring the list up to the average will be much harder to tally that the first 80.

You can check it out at nbwinter.ghnature.com and if you’ve seen any species not already recorded drop and email to Gilles, it would be much appreciated.

The oldest and probably the most well known census is the Christmas Bird Count (CBC), this is the 111^th year for the count that runs from December 14 to January 5. Volunteers go into the field on one day during this period and count as many individual birds as possible, it’s more than just ticking off the species, every bird counts, (even the starlings, who often win the prize for most represented).

Everyone’s welcome, no matter your skill level, you’ll be placed in a group with at least one experienced birder who also knows all the best birding areas in your circle. You may not be able to identify every bird you see, but more eyes help find birds and the group can put a name to them together. It’s a great way to learn more and make a contribution to conservation. If you don’t want to go into the field you can sign up as a feeder watcher, at times throughout the day you can check who’s at the feeders, you don’t have to stare out the window all day, you simply record the time spent watching, so four stints of 15 minutes each at peak times of feeder activity could tally up some interesting numbers. The results get compiled and are reported as X number of birds per hour of observation.

If you have a rarish bird around your feeders coming up to the count day, you could try to let the local compiler know. If you can’t watch your feeders that day, someone could include your yard on their route and add it to the year. If you have a bird that is seen in the count period but not on count day, it gets noted as being present during the count period.

All the New Brunswick counts and compilers are on David Christie’s website (it’s a long url, I put the direct link on twitter.com/thebirdgarden).

As with the winter list, the counts held early in the period will usually have higher numbers of birds than those held at the end, birds still hanging around and somewhat warmer temperatures are likely the reason.

Project Feeder Watch is under way, it starts in November and runs 21 weeks, taking you into April. You count birds at your feeders for 2 consecutive days in each week. If you miss a week or don’t have as much time each day, it’s OK, you record how much time you’ve spent watching, it’s all important information. You are asked to choose your count days in advance and not alter them because you have a particularly busy day at the feeders, if everyone was to do that it would seem like there were an abnormally large number of birds around in that winter.

The Great Backyard Bird Count for 2011 is from February 18-21, you can count anywhere you wish for as long as you want, you tally the highest number of birds noted at one time, (you don’t want to count that flock of starlings every time it circles overhead). When you’re done you enter your checklist on line, anyone can follow the progress as numbers get entered.

This would make a great activity for a class, group, seniors home or anyone else with an interest. Everything you need to know is on birdsource.org, including a power point presentation, tally sheets (enter you postal code and get a regional checklist you can print) and slide show, along with the history of GBBC, kids page, FAQ’s and previous years results.

I’ll certainly be exploring this site on the long cold winter nights ahead.

The gift of a bird feeder can change a life.

I know I’m probably bias, but I think the best gift you could give someone is a bird feeder. I felt this way long before I ever got in the business; shortly after my grandfather died we dropped in unexpectedly on my grandmother, it was almost lunch time and we had picked something up and were going to eat with her. It took her a long time to come to the door and when she did she was still in her pajamas, she said she’d been watching TV but it was obvious we woke her. This was a woman who was always up before dawn and had done the work of 2 people complete with a large breakfast on the table when her husband passed through the kitchen on his way to work.

My father asked her if she was going to get dressed and she responded that there wasn’t much point.

After our visit we were doing a little shopping, Dad was picking out the customary house coat and slippers for Nana when I said that’s just depressing. He tossed them back on the shelf and we wandered. We ended up in the bird feeder section where he bought a new feeder for himself, I said why not get one for Nana. He started to object but then thought more, she loved the birds when she visited our house, she certainly had lots of time on her hands now and really needed a reason to get up and out.

So we started with a window feeder, a good steel canister, seed scoop and a bag of sunflower seed. It was the most exciting part of Christmas for me, when we pasted her the small box with the window feeder, she raised an eyebrow, she no doubt was expecting another pair of pajamas and must have been thinking anything that would fit in this box would be a little risque to be opening in front of the kids.

She wasn’t very enthused with the gift at first, I guess it was like getting a new remote control truck and not having any batteries, but when she opened the seed, scoop and canister she was already seeing this had possibilities. By the time the chickadees started making regular trips back and forth from our identical feeder she was excited, when the grosbeaks started she couldn’t wait to get home.

When we dropped her off it was dark, but we put the feeder in the window, waited to make sure it would stay on (cold glass isn’t a suction cups best friend). To hurry things along we beat down an area of snow and spread some seed around the lawn. When we came in the house she was rearranging the living room, she couldn’t see the shrub from her favourite chair and she figured that would be where much of the action would take place.

As usual the season was hectic and we kind of forgot about the feeder, the next time we dropped in, she was up, dressed and rosy cheeked having just came in from filling the feeder. A much nicer picture than what greeted us a few weeks earlier. Her only complaint was there wasn’t enough room for all the birds to feed at once, she didn’t mind filling it 3 times a day she just didn’t like it when the chickadees had to wait for the grosbeaks to fill up before getting their turn. Not a problem, when we finished our visit we headed to the store for a larger feeder, we filled it at the store and snuck back to Nana’s house and hung it in the shrub. When the phone was ringing shortly after dawn the next morning, we had a good idea who it was.

Now we had a new tradition, no more slippers, now it was feeders, I guess in a way we were lucky back then, we didn’t know about the lifetime warranty feeders so we always new at least one thing to buy, replace the old beat up feeder we got her last year. But there were speciality bird treats, books and even a cheap pair of binoculars so she could get better views.

If you’re shopping for someone who you think may develop an interest in bird watching, start with a feeder, not a house. If you hang a bird house Christmas morning they’ll likely be staring at it for 4 months before you see any action at all. A feeder on the other hand could be doing a brisk business by lunch time.

You can get someone started in a life long hobby for as little as $10, a cheap feeder and some seed. If it’s a gift for someone who may not be able to fill it by themselves, be ready to get them a larger feeder so they won’t have to worry about getting someone to fill it every day.

If the person on your shopping list already enjoys feeding birds you have many possibilities for gifts they will appreciate. There is the larger feeder, species specific feeders like suet, nyjer and peanuts. Even small bird specific feeders if they are complaining about bullies at the feeders.

If they already have enough feeders (although I haven’t met many people who think they have enough, only their spouses), you may want to give a bird house, a different, possibly better field guide, an online membership or subscription to a birding magazine. A pair of binoculars will open a whole new world of birds to someone who doesn’t already own a pair. A better pair will make a huge difference to most people too, try to get a look through the pair they are using, if the image isn’t great this may be a good gift idea. Be ready to spend at least $100 for a good starter pair and you can get a fantastic pair for $200, if this is out of your range consider going together with family members or giving a gift certificate towards a good pair. The really cheap binoculars don’t make the grade for birding and usually deteriorate from use. Avoid gimmicks like zoom, ruby coated optics, built in radios, built in digital cameras.

There are so many gift ideas for the bird watcher in your family that you never have to worry about what you’re going to give again.