January 18, 2008
Backyard tip of the week:Black oil sunflower seed is probably the single best bird seed to use to attract a large variety of birds to your feeders. Offering more meat per shell, surprisingly, the smaller black oil sunflower seed turns out to be a more economical choice than the larger striped sunflower seed. So, if you haven't already, you may consider using black oil sunflower seed in your feeders. The birds are sure to love it!
Backyard sightings for last week:
The new songbird feeder has been getting more action lately as the smaller birds get used to it. New feeders may take weeks to attract visitors, depending upon their design and location, others will work more quickly or even immediately. The goldfinches are warming up to their new thistle feeder as well.
The red-bellied woodpecker was spotted again this week. This time, foraging through scraps of walnut and brazil nut shells. Cracked nut and other such food scraps are great to leave out for our avian friends, as mentioned last week.
Other backyard sightings this week include northern cardinals and dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows, eastern goldfinches, house finches and purple finches, downy woodpeckers, white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, blue-jays, the occasional pair of crows, a couple of grey squirrels, a pair of European Starlings, and many, many pairs of mourning doves, a few of which were caught on film Tuesday while drinking from the pond.
Cool sighting of the week:
From a neighbor's backyard - While driving past a nearby farm on Monday of this week, an enormous migration of Canada geese was observed heading south near Route 57 in Broadway, NJ. Many thousands of geese flew by at various altitudes and speeds, in different yet similar formations. Certain groups of the Canada geese overtook others, but not even one bird flew alone. It was magnificent!
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