Q. I have a nyjer feeder, it's visited by lots of birds. Today I found a dead bird, a small finch, on the ground beneath it. Over the winter the seed below has built up quite thick. Sparrows and towhees dig under there and the grass is ruined and has fairly deep holes (2-3") in which the seeds accumulate. I scraped off some seed a few weeks ago and I wonder if moldy seed underneath could have killed this bird. I will go out now and clean up all the seed from the ground but how would you suggest I prevent this in the future?
A. I doubt the bird died from eating at your feeder, sick and injured birds gravitate towards the easy seed and usually stay there until they recover, die, or become the dinner of the neighbourhood hawk, as these guys usually ignore the warnings of other birds and are slow to fly off. I much prefer to see an obviously sick bird quickly dispatched by a Merlin than hanging around the feeders for days, suffering and spreading disease, just able to elude my attempt at capture.
In case it is contagious though, it's a good idea to clean up under the feeders and give the feeders themselves a good cleaning and disinfect with a 1:9 bleach solution to prevent any possible disease from spreading to others. It's also a good idea to have several locations for your feeders, in a tree you'd just move them to a different branch, I move my hangers closer to the house in winter and farther away in summer, this gives the ground a break. I hear people say they don’t want the feeders over the grass but rather in a flower bed, personally I like my feeders where I can get under them with the lawnmower with a bagger in summer or snowblower or shovel in winter to spread it thin enough that you won’t even notice it after the black birds pass through. Grass is quite resilient and given half a chance you won’t see any difference in the lawn directly under the feeders. In the flower beds though, empty seed hulls and bird poop stick to broad leaved plants (I was once asked, “Is that a spotted hosta?”) and uneaten seeds sprout into all kinds of odd looking weeds. It’s a lot harder to clean up spilled seed in a flower bed.
It also sound like you’re being much to kind to your birds, there shouldn’t be that much seed under the feeders, let them go empty every now and then, all birds will eat from the ground, when the feeder is empty the finch will do the clean up for you.
Make sure the feeder you’re using is meant for nyjer, the hole should only be large for a seed to pass, if it’s as big as your finger, it’s meant for sunflower and that would explain why there is so much spilled seed.
On the original e-mail there was no location, I assumed with enough towhee to excavate a ditch under the feeder she wasn’t from around here. I was also interested if it was nyjer or finch mix. I just received this e-mail this morning.
Hi Dwayne,
I'm from Victoria, BC [so my snow blower idea wouldn’t work] and yeah, they're getting straight nyjer seed.
PS I cleaned up the area, put new soil and placed a bird bath beneath the feeder. It seems to be catching about half the fallen seed so it wasn't exactly an answer to prayer but it helped.
YIKES, I’ve written back and will likely have enough material for another column, in the meantime, “Don’t try this at home.” A bird bath directly under a feeder is not a good idea, especially a feeder with a spillage problem to begin with, then you get the extra bird poop from the feeder as if the bathing birds don’t poop in the water enough. I’ve asked several more questions about this situation, to be continued...
Q. I'm assuming the attached pictures are last year's baby American Goldfinch - but none of my books show the juvenile colors like this, so I thought I'd ask you. They certainly act like Goldfinch.
A. These are actually Pine Siskins, I used to think they were female or juvenile Goldfinch too. They do act the same, are the same size, travel together and eat the same stuff. They even eat from the up-side-down “Goldfinch only” nyjer feeder. In the winter you’ll sometimes see them traveling with Redpoll too. The Pine Siskin’s beak is finer and more pointed but they are still strong enough to open sunflower seeds. The song is easy to pick out of the flock, it reminds me of the psssst noise you make to chase a cat out from under your feeder, only higher pitched and less angry.
Q. Is it too late to put out a bird house?
A. Not really, there are still some birds who haven’t decided on a site, some birds that may attempt to nest again if the first nest failed and others who will have more than one brood per year. Even if there are no takers for nesting, the houses can provide night time roosting sites for several species.
So my advise, it’s not too late but don’t wait, put it up today. (I say that every week.)
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