New Products?

Every month there are new products on then market that are supposed to entice more birds to your back yard or make your life easier. If you subscribe to any birding magazines, most of them have a new products section each month. When you run a shop, you get flyers with what’s new and what’s hot on a daily basis. I have to admit, I don’t read all of these and often rely on a customer’s request it before it comes to my attention, there are a few that I think would be a great idea, if they worked, some that I was pretty sure were duds right from the start, (but I bought them anyway) and a couple that I’d have to file under “if you’d buy this you’re a true bird nut”.

One of those things that I’ve seen advertised a lot is the Audubon BirdCam, I thought about it and placed it in the “it would be great if it worked” section of my wish list. It’s a motion activated digital camera that you place near your feeders and snaps pictures of what ever comes by. A version of this is used by researchers, for example in Fundy Park where they are trying to get a picture of the elusive Eastern Cougar, a camera like this is set up near scent posts. I thought it would be great to not spend hours in the cold or heat or mosquitoes or even the kitchen window to try to get pictures of my feeder visitors. At about the same time I was going to try one out I had an order from a very good customer who is also my guinea pig for testing new products, I let him buy things, test them out and report back to me. If it’s a dud, it ends up in my yard if it passes inspection I’ll add them to inventory. I’m still waiting to see some pictures taken with the camera, you never know with the shots taken for the advertisement, I imagine they would neglect to say, “It snapped 2 million shots and this is the only one fit to print.”

My guinea pig also tested out the Hawk Eye Nature Cam, it’s the one you can place right inside a bird house and watch the comings and goings on a monitor. I still can’t believe the luck, it was set up in one house and all the other houses were removed to “force” the bird to go to the one with the camera, and it worked, I’d be moving it all over the yard for years trying to get the right house.

They were able to watch a Tree Swallow pair build a nest, lay and incubate eggs then feed young, no doubt the best thing on TV this summer.

Also available is the Timelapse PlantCam so you can record your plants growing if that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat, I’d just like to find out which cat keeps eating ours and throwing it up on the floor.

Last summer, when some Riverview rats were displaced by road work and ended up foraging under bird feeders, I was asked to order some SeedHoops to keep seed from being knocked on the ground. These are 30 inch screens that hang under the feeder and catch spilled seed, unfortunately they catch wind, snow, bird poop and every pigeon in the neighbourhood. Fortunately by the time they arrived from my supplier the rats were back underground...out of sight out of mind, and I still have a case of seed hoops.

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all another gem arrives in the mail, this time from BirdWatchers Choice, the W is a pair of binoculars, clever, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that they’re selling canned fly larvae. That’s right maggots, and a 70 gram can costs me $6.60 US before shipping, that’s $94.29 per kilogram...wholesale...for maggots...and to think, all this time I’ve been throwing them out.

The can reads: soft and moist, easy to handle, farm raised. I wonder if they have many requests for farm tours and what do the owners say when people ask what they do for a living. I thought I had it bad, I usually don’t tell strangers what I do, people think I’m nuts if I say I can earn a living making bird feeders and houses, I can’t imagine the comments when you say you’re a maggot farmer, would you even bother to put it on a resume or would it be easier to say you were in the penitentiary for those last 5 years.

If you bought a can, where would you store it, you wouldn’t want your teenage kids finding it when they come home late at night with a bad case of munchies.

I’ve been thinking of a new product for a few years myself, and if a maggot cannery can fly then my idea for deer repellant should be a hot seller. It came to me when I heard of a company selling Scandinavian wolf urine to keep deer out of your garden. I thought, “Why would Canadian deer be afraid of Scandinavian wolves.” If you really want to keep them away, (and this is my product), you should use Albert County deer hunter urine, this is a predator our deer are familiar with. If your deer are really smart and know when hunting season is over we’d sell Albert County deer jacker urine, the label would have one of those 4x4’s with enough lighting on the roll bar to land jets. The secret ingredient, Jack Daniel’s, if that doesn’t keep the deer out of the dahlias, nothing will.

Maybe I should do a business plan, now that I’ve put it on paper it looks like something ACOA would really get behind.

I’ve noticed quite a few posts on natureNB lately about earwigs in bird feeders, most seem surprised by this, for those of you who have one of my feeders that were made over a year ago this is likely a common occurrence. Now I make a “new and improved” feeder that is 95% more earwig free (although I don’t actually advertise this fact)...I bevel the top spacer to eliminate the area between it and the roof where the earwigs like to hide. I’m pretty sure that’s all it is, a hiding place, the discussion was weather or not they were attracted to seeds, I don’t think so as they’re in the empty outdoor display feeders as much as the full ones, (don’t worry we tap them out before we sell them). They hide in almost anything we have outside, now I make it a habit of dumping my work boots before putting my feet in, I shake the shirt I wear welding before I put it on, they’ll hide in anything.

In closing, one last earwig story, warning for those who already have an earwig phobia, stop reading now.

During the last peak in the earwig cycle I was visiting my parents in PEI, my father was complaining that his shower had no pressure. Thinking it was calcium deposits from their extremely hard water, I got a cup of vinegar and soaked it. It seemed clean though and nothing was bubbling so I took it off, it was one of those hand held jobs and at the beginning of the hose there was a screen, it seemed clogged…(last chance to put the paper down), when I opened the tap with no head attached a 5 inch plug of earwig pieces shot out into the tub, hummm, that’s likely to affect pressure. Then I started to think that the kitchen and bathroom sinks had screens too...and yes they were plugged with earwig pieces as well. I guess the earwigs like it under the dark cool cap on the well and many fall in, are chopped up by the submersible pump and delivered to all rooms in the house; so you decide, should the new product be a flavoured protein drink or the vermin-proof well cap.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better...

A question I hear a lot is “How can I get rid of the black birds?” The first thing we have to clarify is which black bird you have. The problem birds seem to be crows, grackles and starlings; with Red-winged Blackbirds sometimes ruffling the feathers of the home owners.

This time of year the most common complaint is about grackles, and the inquiries have started coming in earlier this year, which makes sense since they arrived about 2 weeks early this spring. I’ve been seeing what looks like like small flocks of grackles preparing for migration for a few weeks, but quite a few people confuse them with starlings, ( and vice versa) and sometimes even with crows. What difference you say.......the big difference is in how you control them.

Grackles are no doubt the hardest one to control because they like almost all seeds and especially seem to like the favourite of most small birds, the black oil sunflower seed. You can limit the access by using only really small feeders, removing trays and shortening or removing perches all together. The mesh feeders seem to work pretty good as well, but not excluding them all together.

The worst thing you can do is feed mixed seed, the seeds the other birds don’t like and fling out of the feeder are like a magnet to grackles (see my past rants on mixed seed).

If you do this you will cut down the numbers of grackles coming to your yard, hopefully they will move on down the road to someone else’s house with nice large grackle friendly platform feeders. I have a rather large yard and feed cracked corn in large open feeders and spread it on the ground in the fall. When I do this I rarely get grackles on my small sunflower feeders. So if you have the room get the 40 kg bag of cracked corn from your local feed mill ($16 plus or minus $2) and feed the black birds in the far corner of your land. If you don’t have the room, tell your neighbours how great crack corn is at attracting birds maybe even give him a large bag to spread around his yard.

I usually only go through about one bag each fall and I feed a lot. My goal is to attract and identify some rarities that tag along with the large flocks; and I have had success, a few Rusty Blackbirds and one Yellow-headed Blackbird. If you really want to make people take a second look, spread the corn in designs like crop circles, when a couple hundred birds are eating in the grass, you can’t see the corn, only the birds. I use an old 5 gallon water cooler bottle full of corn to “draw” my patterns. Yesterday the circle was all blue with jays, while we watched it turned black with the grackles.

The bright side of the grackle is that they migrate, (crows and starlings are a year round pain). They have already started gathering is large flocks in anticipation of departure, but if you have a problem now and you don’t cut down on the trays and perches, it is likely to get worse before they all leave usually around the same time the leaves drop.

If the black birds that are causing your troubles happen to be smaller with a short tail, longer beak and spots, than you have starlings. I’ve got good news and bad news: Bad news first? They don’t migrate. They will be with us year round, for ever. They are easily one of the smartest birds, well maybe smart isn’t the right term, they are one of the most “adaptive” birds at my feeders. So it can be a little troublesome to “limit their consumption” from your feeders. They wouldn’t even be that much of a problem except they travel in gangs (if that’s not the correct term for a group of Starlings it should be) of sometimes 50-100, bully the other birds and they devour only the most expensive food. The favourite is peanuts and peanut butter suet and they will be attracted to seed tubes with mixtures that contain peanuts and corn as well.

The good news is, it’s easy to feed the small birds and exclude Starlings. They won’t do acrobatics and hang off a small tube or mesh feeders containing only sunflower seeds. So the chickadee, nuthatch, Goldfinch, Purple Finch, grosbeaks and much more can eat in peace. They won’t eat nyjer, so you can feed all the finch, and they won’t eat millet so you can feed sparrows, junco and Mourning Doves.

The biggest problem with starlings is if you want to feed woodpeckers, more chickadees, nuthatch and Blue Jays. If you feed suet you will likely see starlings, you can limit their activity with the up-side-down suet feeder, it doesn’t work 100% but probably about 85%. In my yard, a cake that would only last 2 days in the regular feeder when starlings are at their worst; in the up-side-down it will last over 10 days. The starlings can only hang on for a few seconds as opposed to the whole day on the regular feeder.

If you want to feed peanuts, the quarter inch wire mesh peanut silos work the best, if you don’t use the tray, starlings will have a hard time, the smaller guys cling to the wire. If it’s Blue Jays you want to attract, try the peanut in the shell feeder, starlings don’t bother these and if the grackles become a problem you can move it really close to your house where they are quite uncomfortable to approach, the Blue Jays aren’t shy at all, they will actually come right inside if you let them. Last year I fed peanuts in the shell inside the door of my shop, but the jays got a little carried away, coming all the way in eating out of all the display feeders, that didn’t even bother me too much, it was when they started opening their own bags of peanuts on the shelf that my wife put her foot down. Even if they opened one bag it wouldn’t be so bad, but I guess they wanted only the best nuts and every bag was opened. (not to mention the droppings they were leaving behind on the new feeders). This year the feeder is back outside the window where if I show my face at all the grackles beat it to a more distant feeder, I still can’t fill any display feeders if I want to leave the door opened though, some jays seem to have a long memory.

If crows are a problem, the tricks mentioned above should take care of them. Make sure it is crows you have, it’s surprising the number of people who confuse them with grackles. We have a crow feeder, it’s just a box on a pole high enough to keep the dog out, any left overs and scraps that the crows would otherwise rip out of our garbage bag go into this feeder. We have maybe 6-8 crows that hang around and they never bother the feeders, they rarely even eat the corn that I spread on the ground.

Another installment in: Birdy Words You Should Know

You might hear: I finally traded in my old porros for a new pair of roofs.

I’ve never really stopped to think how odd this statement must seem to non-birders, but honestly I hear it or something similar often. They are referring to the prism system in their binoculars, porro prisms are the more traditional type with the large lens spaced wide apart and the barrels take a little jog before the eyepieces to get them close together to match your eye space.

Roof prisms have a more straight through design. It used to be considered that you could get a better binocular for the money if you chose porros, but technology has changed and roof prisms are greatly out numbering porros both in purchases and models offered by companies. Roof prism are more compact, tougher and they are able to be made with extremely close focusing options; it’s common to be able to focus at 4 feet, some models even less. (More on why you would want that a little later.)

Having said this, I still feel that the low end porros are better than low end roof prism, generally speaking, that would be under $195 but there are exceptions, you need to compare for yourself. A good roof prism will have “phase corrective coating”, and just because they say, “fully multi-coated” they don’t necessarily have the phase corrective coating.

You might hear: I stuffed some suet in a snag and the woodpeckers went wild.

Again, I not lying, I’ve heard this on several occasions, in bird land a snag is a dead tree that is still standing, aka a woodpecker magnet.

Suet, technically speaking, is the big chunks of fat around the kidney of cattle. Also a woodpecker magnet, so if you combine two magnets you get one really powerful one. I know more than one person who has a large bore drill bit on a cordless drill to make even more stuffing holes in snags.

In bird land though suet has become fat with any and all kinds of mixtures added, there is berry, dried fruit, insects, meal worms and all have some seed thrown in to make it look even better to the buyer, not necessarily though to the end user. Remember, if a woodpecker won’t eat the seed on a feeder he is unlikely to eat it in the suet mix either. Most suet mixes have cheap seed like millet or corn added as filler, so make sure the $5 a pound “Premium Insect Suet” you are about to buy isn’t half full of 13 cent a pound corn.

A little more on suet versus fat.

You can get fat from almost any source, you can drain the fat off you meat when cooking, lard is the fat around the kidney of a pig, shortening is vegetable fat and all these can be mixed with seeds, peanut butter, corn meal, oat meal even a little flour to stiffen it up. But, you have to watch that it isn’t melting in the summer, the way woodpeckers feed, with their breast pressed against the holder and even up-side-down under the holder to get the last pieces, the melting fat will drip into there feathers and is very hard to get off in the bird bath. It can hinder flight and the insulation value of feathers.

Even raw suet, which is great to feed in winter will drip in summer. If you want to feed suet in the summer it should be real suet and “double rendered”, that is, cooked then strain off all the bits and let it harden. When you heat it up the second time, (the double part) you can add your secret ingredients and pour it into molds. The longer the mix “ages” the harder it gets, so if it’s a little soft, keep it in a cool place for a few days.

You might hear: It’s just another LBB.

What they mean is little brown bird, some birders just skip over all little brown birds without even trying. I’ve heard, “It’s just another LBB” while the bird was still scratching up seed 20 feet away, a quick look and there was a striking White-throated Sparrow. There are many LBB’s around, but each species is different and quite beautiful. I’d find it acceptable to say, “There’s an LBB in that birch tree at three o’clock”, if you are calling it to the attention of other birders and I might not push you in the river if you right it off as an LBB if it got away before you had a good look.

I’ve also heard LBJ and I used to think it was American birders confusing the term with their former president, but apparently it stands for “little brown job” which, to me, is even more annoying.

You might hear: I built a roosting box for chickadees.

The first time I printed labels for my roosting boxes I slipped in an “a” for an “o” and was trying to sell roasting boxes. I was getting weird questions and the odd dirty look until I noticed my mistake.

A roosting box is a place for birds to spend the night, it’s similar to a bird house but larger, the hole is on the bottom, there is no vent holes at the top and the inside is lined with numerous perches. This design allows groups of birds to safely get into one cavity and share the trapped body heat.

You might hear: There wasn’t much bird activity in the heat of the afternoon so we decided to do a little dragonflying.

Sound exciting? It is, New Brunswick has enough dragons and damsels to keep you hopping for several summers. I found and incredible website called Odonata of New Brunswick, (there’s a link on our blog) it lists the damselflies and dragonflies found in our province, complete with species profiles and pictures. This is better than the books and you might see some familiar names who have contributed to the many pictures. Get ready for this...New Brunswick has 37 species of damselflies and 97 species of dragonflies. I think I can identify about 4.

Another similar activity to keep birders busy on the hot days when their prime focus are keeping to themselves, is butterflying. Again New Brunswick has a whopping 85 species of butterflies to challenge your identification skills. Once you get hooked on dragonflying and butterflying you’re going to want one of those close focusing binocular I mentioned earlier. Some species require very close looks to get positive identification, but mostly they are just incredibly beautiful and you are going to want as good of views as possible.

If your binoculars are 8x42 and they have a close focus of 3 feet, that means the object appears 8 times closer or 4 and a half inches away. I don’t know about you but my eyes won’t even focus on objects that close.

If anyone is interested in New Brunswick checklists for dragonflies and damselflies or butterflies contact me and I can e-mail it to you.

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