Backyard tip of the week: The time is near when you might consider a birdbath heater to keep your feathered friends going through the coming winter months. You don't need anything large, a small heater will work fine depending upon the size of your water feature. Perhaps, a low wattage electric heater that will simply keep the water flowing and unfrozen. You can even use a plug-in timer to save electricity during the daylight hours. If you can do this, you'll spot many different species of birds at your birdbath, you'll find birds that don't regularly frequent your feeders will benefit greatly from a continued source of water in your backyard through the chilly winter. Try it, you're sure to love it!
Backyard sightings for last week: Including northern cardinals, dark-eyed juncos, and white-throated sparrows. Carolina wrens, eastern goldfinches, house finches, purple finches. Red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, the tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, blue-jays, mourning doves, American crows, grey squirrels, some deer, and a not so friendly neighborhood sharp-shinned hawk.
Cool sightings of the week: Last Monday a friend gave a new songbird feeder to me as a present! It was a tall, slender wooden feeder with six perches and a handsome cedar shake style of roof shingles. I filled it with black oil sunflower and hung it in place of the existing songbird feeder which has been showing signs of wear lately from too much squirrel abuse. Of course, it was late in the day when the feeder was put up and no bird action was spotted on Monday. Tuesday morning, however, I awoke to find a lone house finch had found the new feeder and was eating contentedly at one of the perches which looks like a twig, but is actually made out of metal so it will last longer. Either way, about twenty minutes later, I heard an avian ruckus outside the window and looked out to find at least seven birds, from house finches to gold finches, even a downy wood-pecker were now eating at the new feeder. They liked it just fine and had begun using it much sooner than expected. It was very cool!
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