Now is a good time to feed birds, but here are some things to keep in mind
Did you know that the month of February has been designated as “Bird Feeding Month”? Since 1989? It’s important to keep feeders filled during winter months. If it is possible, include suet blocks and shelled peanuts at bird feeding stations in addition to black oil sunflower seeds, milo, millet, and thistle seeds to provide the extra calories that birds need. And if you watch closely, you can see chickadees hiding sunflower seeds under the bark of nearby trees after they have eaten their fill.
Feeding birds is relatively simple, fun, and relaxing for anyone to take part in, at any age. With more people working from home and more children learning from home, bird feeding is a perfect activity (especially if the feeders are visible from nearby windows.
But there are some dangers involved with feeding birds, too. Unrestrained cats are, in my opinion, the biggest danger. It is estimated that cats kill billions of small birds and other small critters every year. They are absolutely lethal in their attempts to catch and kill birds, quite often just for the challenge since many are wellfed before going outside to do their business.
What do you do if there are signs of cats hunting birds? Well, many years ago I suggested getting a BB gun to solve the problem, and readers from far and wide wrote me various notes suggesting various violence they wanted to perform on my tired old body. So now I simply suggest that feeders be emptied for a while until the danger to the birds has gone somewhere else. (But BB guns still work quite well.)
There are other dangers to feeding songbirds that are harder to avoid and pop up quite often. They are found mainly in the fully protected Accipiter family of hawks. There are three members in this family: the sharp-shinned hawk is the smallest; the Cooper’s hawk and the goshawk (the largest). All three species hunt songbird-sized birds. The goshawk will also take larger birds and mammals such as gray squirrels.
If one of these birds sets up shop near a bird feeder, do not panic. More often than not they will move on to another feeder in short order. However, if one does patronize a feeder, about the only thing you can do is stop feeding until the bird leaves. That should be one to two days at most.
All this talk of winter birds brings to mind my run-in with a winter bird that hung around for his spring frolic and his summer fun.
Now I’m not talking about the hen grouse that dragged its wing along as if it was broken to lead me away from her nest last summer (she hatched out 12 eggs). And I’m not too concerned about the redtail hawk that tried to take my head off when I walked too close to his (or her) nest (the two adults brought off three chicks).
No, this stuff I’m thinking of is truly strange.
You see, I had this male cardinal hanging around our house, and I do believe this bird was nuts. It began its day by attacking the mirrors on my pickup truck. In fact, it spent several hours each day engaged in that sordid and (hopefully) futile activity if I did not appear and send it off in search of other windmills to slay.
Of course I knew it was attacking the new rival male cardinal it saw. It was protecting its nearby nesting mate (four chicks) and its territory. I fully realized there was a rational reason for its continued self-abuse. But did it have to be so messy?
On most days both sides of my nearly new truck looked like it was parked under a very large roost of well-fed birds. I simply could not believe so much effluent and goo could come from one three-ounce bird encased in scarlet plumage. Turning the mirrors in on their built-in hinges so the bird could no longer see himself worked all right, but it was such a pain when I wanted to drive somewhere and forgot to turn them back out first.
I guess the best I could hope for was that the nesting season ended soon. Once the youngsters fledged (learn to fly from the nest), the adults would leave and my problem would be over.
Until the following year, that is.