Minnesota Birding: Attracting Birds to Your Home Place
Winter Birds
To start with, the season we are in today is winter. The birds of winter are different than the birds of summer.
My winter birds include Cardinals, Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, finches, nuthatches and sometimes an oriole. If a squirrel qualified as a bird, we have plenty of them, also.
Wild Bird Food
I use a wild bird food mix for winter birds. We also put out corn cobs and suet blocks.
The feeder that we use for seed, is a shielded feeder that is supposed to keep the squirrels from stealing the food. The first day, the squirrel got the top unscrewed and ate directly from the top. The suet bricks are on a hollow log that my hubby nailed a board that had two screws protruding an we press the blocks onto the screws.
We had obtained an old reel from somewhere from and my hubby did the same thing with it. Nailed boards to it with screws sticking up and we poke the ears of field corn onto them. The birds and the squirrels love to pull the kernels off the cobs.
We love to watch them. They all seem to get along. Well, actually, there was one day last year that the squirrels got into a standoff and the one squirrel had the other squirrel backed out onto the end of a branch. But, the birds and the squirrels seem to get along.
Bird Identification
Sometimes you have to fake it until you know what birds you are attracting.
Cardinals are red. Blue Jays are blue. Orioles are orange. Woodpeckers come in a variety of sizes and colors. One has a rusty red head and speckles on the wings. One has a tan head. One has a white and black head and speckles and white on the chest.
I have not seen any chickadees. Although I do see some nuthatches. Nuthatches are a gray bird that has a narrow black head and a white stripe on the face. The chickadees look like they are wearing a black baseball cap.
Bird Feeder Chair
I was looking online for a bird feeder chair. Have you seen them? From what I have seen in the past, they are a wooden chair that you sit on, and the arm rests are designed so that your arm goes in and where your hand pokes out at the end, your hand holds the seed.
When I was initially thinking of it, my brain started imagining what would happen if the birds went psycho and started pecking at my skin and the next thing, there'd be a skeleton sitting in the chair, picked clean. Shudder.
Just how far do you trust a bird, or a flock of birds. Think about those fish that eat your skin. Piranhas.
Yeah. I'm just going to continue to admire my birds from behind the glass window that I am looking out of. Safe in my kitchen!
