Winter bird feeding tips.

Brrrrr...... it's suddenly so cold out there! So glad I filled the bird feeders yesterday while it was still beautifully snowy but not frigidly cold.

With the arrival of the cold weather I thought that now might be a good time for a few quick tips on how to feed the birds to help them survive a cold winter.

Winter bird feeding tips:

1) Stock those feeders!  Birds need lots of calories to keep warm on cold winter days.  Provide food that has the maximum bang for the calorie buck:

• Black oil sunflower chips (sometimes called sunflower kernels or hearts) have a high fat content that can help power little birds on those cold winter days.  The fact that the sunflower shell has been removed means that the food takes less effort to consume which can also help.
• Skinless peanuts have a high calorie and fat content which is important for birds in the winter time.  
• Suet (beef kidney fat that has been specially prepared) is another great energy source for birds on cold winter days.

2) Regularly fill your feeders!  Now that the birds have found your backyard and are relying on your help to survive the cold, it's important to keep the food coming.

3) Put up a few different types of feeders in your yard.  This will spread the birds out and reduce competition at your feeders.

4)  Keep the feeders clean of snow.  Snow on the feeder just blocks the seed holes and leads to seed spoilage if and when the snow melts, so try to keep your feeders brushed off.

5) Keep your feeders clean of mess.  Some birds are very susceptible to salmonella.  Bird droppings on the feeder and around the feeder can help spread this sickness from one bird to another especially when you have lots of birds at your feeders.

Those are a few tips for the day.  Happy winter bird feeding!

Kelly

Get Ready for the Redpolls

With winter approaching, we are starting to see birds migrating to their winter feeding grounds.  That means that the redpolls hopefully will be showing up at my feeders later this fall.

Did you know that Common Redpolls and Hoary Redpolls are generally found year round up north in the North West Territories, Nunavut, the Yukon and Alaska? They actually breed in the very northern edges of these areas right around the Arctic Ocean. According to the the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, these hardy little souls can survive temperatures of -65 degrees F (-53 degrees C)!

In the winter months, though, even these birds say "enough is enough" and many will migrate further south and be found down in southern parts of Canada and even down into the central or southern States. They are considered "irruptive" meaning that they follow food sources and their migration can not be predicted year to year.  So some years there will be many in an area and some years not.  Like Pine Siskins, these birds travel in flocks and when crowded at a feeder, can be susceptible to salmonella infections.

So how do you recognize a redpoll in your backyard?  Well it is a small bird and different from a house finch or purple finch in that it has a distinctive red cap on it's head.  The Hoary Redpolls are lighter coloured than the Common Redpolls, but the Common are more common so, given my lack of skills in identifying birds, I presume the ones in my backyard are Common Redpolls.

We thoroughly enjoy watching the redpolls at our feeders as they quarrel among each other and

have unique personalities.  We find that redpolls will eat from many different styles of feeders but seem to prefer our Mother Nature's Finch mix in a tube feeder or medium sunflower chips in a hopper style feeder.

Please remember to be extra careful about keeping your feeders clean of any bird droppings if you have large flocks of redpolls in your yard, given their susceptibility to salmonella.

A couple of final neat facts about redpolls again from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
1) they tunnel into the snow at night to keep warm
2) they can travel very long distances and have been recorded to travel as far as from China to Belgium.
 
What interesting lives these birds must lead!  Keep your feeders stocked for redpolls this winter.

Northern Flickers are one of my favorite birds and I have a few of them frequenting my feeders at this time of year.  Flickers are not as common as some of the other birds in your backyard, so I thought I would give you a bit of information on Northern Flickers and how to attract them.

Northern Flickers are part of the woodpecker family and spend most of their time on tree trunks or on the ground foraging for ants or other insects.   However, they do seem to enjoy the sunflower seeds and peanuts in our Jay & Woodpecker mix and I quite enjoy seeing one of these large flickers plop down in my platform feeder. These easy going birds are big enough that when they arrive at the feeder, even the blue jays and magpies think twice about trying to scare them off.

There are two forms of these flickers: yellow-shafted and red-shafted and they can interbreed when ranges overlap. The Yellow-shafted Flicker resides in north and eastern North America. As the name suggests, the yellow-shafted flickers have yellow under the tail and wings. They also have a grey cap, a beige face and a red bar at the nape of their neck. Males have a black mustache.

The Red-shafted Flicker resides in western North America. Very similar to the Yellow-Shafted flicker but with red under the tail and wings.  

These birds are migratory and I believe we have had both red and yellow shafted flickers in our yard over the winter at different times.

To attract these birds to your yard, I recommend offering Mother Nature's Jay & Woodpecker Mix in a tray feeder or platform feeder positioned near some trees in your yard.  I also recommend having several suet feeders positioned around your yard as they enjoy suet very much in the winter time.