All winter I made my own suet for the birds from this recipe; it's not melt proof however so I've switched to premade stuff.

Sorry! I'm such a slacker about updating this page!

5-11-2010 We have nesting house sparrows which are providing me endless entertainment - listening to the babies peep, watching parents zip in and out to feed them, and mom's head poking out of the box. I wish I could see INSIDE the box. heh. So to amuse myself I saw these links today on lunch = bird web cam action! Barn owl babies, Barred owl babies and more barred owls, Eastern Bluebirds - which I've never seen in person, and a local bird cam from our area with most the birds I see listed with photos or video.

I also cleaned & filled our seed feeder (no mess blend seed) and the goldfinches, chickadees, and sparrows found it in less than an hour. I cleaned the thistle feeder and now just need to go buy some:) The birds seem to be doing ok with the calcium enriched suet I've put out for a couple weeks; we have two of these in use with squirrel proof guard hoods (also from Wild Birds Unlimited). I also made hummingbird food and will put those out soon too. We also have nesting material out but I haven't seen any takers this year.

5-14-2010 All day it's been a bird party in the backyard: catchup finches, american goldfinches, sparrows, male black headed grossbeak, flickers, ringneck pidgeons, and more!

5-21-2010 Our nesting sparrows are so freakin' cute! I can now see three of them! I took a few pictures:)

   

5-22-2010 A flock of chestnut sparrows came to visit our feeders today! I've a new bird (to me) three times now - a Wilson's Warbler . He's super cute! And curiously looked into my window at me for a while yesterday!

5-23-2010 We popped into Wild Birds Unlimited for more thistle and saw some hood/tray components that would be nice for the feeders. But apparently they don't work with our older and cheaper feeders. They do work with one of our finch feeders so we're seeing if the birds get used to them. It protects the seed from the weather and allows some of the discarded seeds and hulls to be caught for further bird sorting before they hit the ground. It's a bird party every day in the backyard with tons of birds!

5-25-2010 I'm really liking the tray component feeders and the newer easier to clean feeders. So I bought a feeder + tray, nicer thistle feeder with tray + suet + no Mess Seed + membership with WBU. Yah, that goes quite a ways to making the membership pay for itself. I put all the new feeders out and retired the old ones in the feeder graveyard area of the yard. I put the suet feeders and the seed feeder up pretty high inside the squirrel guard hoods since I've been getting starling visitors - which I could live without. So, let's see how all this works:) Oh, I hung the squirrel feeder out with food of course too. Now I just need to fix my chimes and the back patio is looking pretty great! Later that same day: the sparrows have fledged! I saw 3 (maybe 4) young feathered sparrows getting fed by our resident adult male and the male-female couple were getting very amorous in the plum tree most of the day. The birds seemed to get the hang of the tray components just fine and there seemed to be less seed waste. As described the trays encourage the birds to do additional sorting/eating of initially discarded seeds. The trays also seem to help the larger birds like the black headed grossbeak really access the seeds more easily. The starling can STILL get to the suet - darnit. I may have to raise it again but this will give the other birds a chance to get used it more up in the squirrel guard hoods.

5-26-2010 The resident female sparrow is back to sitting on her nest. H & I both saw the Wilson's Warbler today! During evening drive saw what might have been barn owl as we exited 509 onto S. 188th.

5-28-2010 Today we saw 5 collared doves. And it seems that the young sparrows hang out as a group in the tree. Very cute! Lots of birds every day at the feeders - the usual visitors: black headed grossbeaks, chestnut chickadees, black capped chickadees, bewicks wrens, flickers, stellar jays, goldfinches, and various red (or as I call them catsup) finches.