How to avoid attracting "rodents" with Bird Seed

It is not a big problem here in Alberta because we do not have rats here but in other parts of Canada, in particular British Columbia, I hear about challenges with rats being attracted to bird seed.  Of course bird seed can attract really any wild animal including bears, squirrels, deer, raccoons etc. So how do you avoid attracting these wild animals and just feed the birds?

Racoon caught executing a night time raid on a bird feeder near our Chin Ridge Office.

Here are some tips from the Wild Bird Feeding Industry on rats in particular but they really apply to most unwanted critters:

1. Mount your feeders high off the ground in a way that makes it more difficult for critters to reach the feeders.  
2. Use a squirrel proof feeder to discourage larger animals from eating at it.  For example some feeders are weight activated so that if a heavy animal stands on the feeder the seed holes will close up.
3. Use a seed catcher to try to prevent seed from being spilled on the ground and clean up seed regularly under the feeder.
4. Use good quality bird seed so that the birds consume it all instead of dumping the undesirable seed on the ground.
5. Bring feeders in at night to avoid attracting wild life that is more active at night e.g rats and racoons.
6. Store excess seed in plastic or metal tubs that are rodent proof.
7. Try to keep your yard clean of other waste that may attract rodents, e.g. garbage bins, petfood, uncovered compost or food waste piles, dirty bbq's etc. 

Following these tips can help avoid attracting those unwanted rodents to your back yard.

Now what kind of bird is that?

I often struggle to identify the birds in my backyard.  I know the usual suspects of course - my normal backyard visitors but when someone new comes along ....  So today when these large robin sized bird that clearly were not robins and not cedar waxwings and not kingbirds arrived in my berry tree for lunch at lunch time I started another round of frustrating attempts at identifying these odd characters.  This time I turned to technology for help:

A website that I find quite helpful is www.whatbird.com but specifically I like the step by step identifier on the site, which allows you to narrow down the possible bird type by using your location, it's size, colour, beak shape etc.  This allows use to use as many clues as you have at your disposal to identify the bird and hopefully saves you from the embarrassment of mistakenly identifying the bird as an unusual, rare, unlikely bird that never frequents your area as the bird in your backyard -trust me I have done this.  So anyways today I used this tool and determined I had Pine Grosbeaks (immature male or female grosbeaks to match the colour of birds) in my tree.

Now I really don't know if these were truly Pine Grosbeaks and based on the range map it would be kind of unusual to have them in my area.  However it was the best thing I could come up with after an hour of research.  As I never got organized enough to capture these birds on film, I can not get a second opinion on my identification but isn't that half the fun of bird watching - just trying to figure out who is coming to dinner?

New Year's Resolution - Fill the feeder more often with different seeds.

You have heard about the shoemaker's kids that don't have any shoes, well how about the Bird Seed Manufacturer's birds that don't have any bird seed?  It just seems that my days and evenings are so full that I don't get out in the yard much to top up those feeders.  So my 2012 resolution is to actually fill the bird feeders more.

After coming home from visiting relatives over Christmas, I found the feeders in my backyard empty as usual and went out to put new food in the feeders.  Of course as a bird seed manufacturer, we end up with the odds & ends from the bird seed operations, seed samples from this vendor and of this product or another that I end up dragging home.  So for the fun of it, I filled my feeders with different products and spent the afternoon doing backyard feeder observation.

Of course with our Mother Nature's bird feeding system, we recommend this.  Ideally you want to separate the birds in the yard to avoid conflict between them and to encourage the maximum diversity of birds in your backyard.  I sometimes forget to do this myself though and watching the birds eat that afternoon just reinforced how important this is. 

I had put tree nuts in my peanut feeder.  Tree nuts included almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts, pistachio, hazelnuts, pecans etc.  In fact most nuts with the exception of peanuts are a "tree nut" and we use tree nuts in some of our more exotic mixes.  However, I do not typically feed pure nuts and if I do, I would usually use peanuts.  Well I was so impressed with the birds reaction to the tree nuts.  The nuthatches and downy woodpeckers in my yard were head over heals for the tree nuts.  Meanwhile the finches definitely preferred the sunflower or nyjer seed while the juncos and doves were hanging out underneath and around the millet feeders.

Lesson reinforced:  Different food for different birds.  Diversity is the spice of life so mix it up this year at your bird feeders - oh and try to keep them full too!

Feeding your pet bird

I have mainly been talking about feeding wild birds in my blog to this point but today's blog will focus on our pet bird food products and the philosophy behind them. 

Yes we do manufacture bird food for companion birds, in fact this is how we got started in the bird seed business many years ago.  Our customers, many of whom are bird breeders, have very exacting standards on bird seed and we have created our seed mixes to meet those requirements.

One of the most important requirements of any bird seed mix is it's cleanliness.   Dust is very harmful to bird health and we triple clean our bird seed ingredients to ensure there is no dust in our mixes.  Then secondly, good quality ingredients are important.  We spend a great deal of time sourcing excellent quality ingredients for our mixes to ensure freshness, flavour and nutritional value.  Finally, our mixes are formulated to provide interest, variety and nutrition.  While our mixes are seed, fruit, vegetable and nut based, we do add a vitamin enriched pellet to some of our seed mixes where necessary to ensure that the seed mix can be used as a daily diet for your bird. 

We do not add preservatives to our mixes or food coloring.  This is because we know that some of these ingredients can actually be toxic to birds.  We believe in offering good, honest, all natural ingredients and believe that if we can educate our customers on how to store and rotate their stock effectively, then we should not need to add preservatives to our mixes. 

While some bird experts promote only feeding pet birds a pellet diet to ensure birds get properly formulated nutrition, it is our customers' experience that some bird's will thrive much better on a diet that has interesting and varied ingredients that provide this nutritional value. 

If you are located in Canada and are interested in trying a sample of our our Mother Nature's companion bird seed for your pet, send us an email at seed@chinridge.com and we will send you a sample to try.

So excited to have my red breasted nuthatches back..

I love nuthatches.  I love how they can walk down trees and hang upside down.  I find them very entertaining to watch. Very rarely I will get a White-Breasted Nuthatch in my yard but they don't seem to stay around.  However, when I do get some Red -Breasted Nuthatches in my yard they seem to stick around longer.

I think that the nuthatches sense that winter is coming as they are very busy and are back and forth to the feeder. In fact we had a bit of snow here today.   The feeder they are most interested in has primarily black oil sunflower seeds and some split skinless peanuts in it.  They also seem to be enjoying the suet.

In fact I can't believe how quickly all my suet feeders are being depleted by a variety of different birds.  I just put out 4 cakes last week and they are almost gone.

Keep your feeders full folks, your birds are bulking up and getting ready for winter.  

Back from the big city..

Had a business trip that took me to Toronto this week.  My husband and I used to live in the GTA some years ago when we were both yuppies chasing the dream.  It was nice to go back and visit the area.  I realize that I miss the culture and excitement that goes with a larger center.. we even managed to catch the Korean Harvest Festival and the Ukrainian Festival while we were there.  Yes I do enjoy the action and diversity of Toronto and I miss it.

However, I have to say that I think that I may have extended my life by moving back to a small town and working in the countryside.  That traffic on the 401 and QEW gets old pretty quick and really - how many birds are going to show up at your condo on the 40th floor overlooking a construction site in North York?  Yes getting back home did put the two lifestyles in perspective:

My road hazard today on the way to work out on the farm was sunshine in my eyes as the sun rose over the beautiful prairie .......
 

and my only traffic on the way home was this wonderful bird of prey who passed me by to land on a straw bale next to the road.  Yes I miss Toronto but you know I am pretty happy to live where I live and work where I work.  :) 

Bird seed Q&A : what are sunflower chips?

Whole sunflower kernels or "coarse" sunflower chips.

Sunflower chips are one of our best moving bird seed ingredients but what are sunflower chips anyway?  Well in the bird seed industry we often refer to hulled sunflower seeds as sunflower "chips" or sunflower "hearts".  "Coarse" sunflower chips are whole kernels, "medium" chips are split kernels and "fine" sunflower chips are finely chopped kernels. 

Sunflower chips are the perfect food for birds because their high oil content makes them a very nutritional food source.  In fact sunflower is the most preferred food of most seed eating birds.  Sunflower chips provide an immediate energy source (since they do not need to be hulled) thus allowing birds to conserve their energy which is especially important in the cold winter months.

Sunflower chips are the perfect food for people too because they are considered a "no mess solution" because there are no hulls to pick up behind the birds.  They can also be a "no sprout" solution if you use finely chopped sunflower seeds because they will not germinate under the feeder. 

Wow sounds good eh?  What's the catch?  Well sunflower chips are expensive in comparison to most millet based bird seed products and many of the common grocery or chain stores do not sell pure sunflower chips.   You may need to find it at a more specialized wild bird store or a feed store with a large bird seed section.

This fall it looks like sunflower chips could be a bit tough to find.  Last year's crop of sunflower has been just about consumed and the outlook for new crop supply is not looking as good as in past years.  So farmers who do have old crop sunflower are holding tight to their inventory, hoping that the already record high sunflower prices will rise even further.  Sunflower processors are having supply problems and are having trouble meeting contract commitments, leaving bird seed manufacturers like ourselves pulling our hair out and scrambling for supply.  Just another interesting bird seed season in the making.

Despite my grumbling about supply, I still am a big fan of sunflower chips,  if you haven't yet tried them in your feeder get a small package and try them out.  I think you will be amazed at how many birds these nutritional little seeds will attract.