Transformer said:
So glad you posted this! I am in CT and I think we have a New England phenom here. I also have the thistle up and have not had to refill it since I first placed it WEEKS ago. (Except for that one time the squirrel jumped on it and tried to open it from the top! But I had a Christmas Tree Shop squirrel-proof feeder with a baffled top and he couldn't do it.)
If I have up the suet (Christmas Tree Shop was out on my last visit) I see plenty of woodpeckers. But I see less cardinals and jays now than I did a couple of weeks ago. I do not yet have a water feature, so...this might limit what I am attracting. Having a variety of foods and seeds is a good idea.
Also, perhaps there was a kill at the feeder(s). Our neighbors have cats and one day I noticed one of them sitting Cheshire-like under the feeders. This might scare them away!
This is my first year truly birdWATCHING, so...I have no basis for comparison. Let's NE folk keep in touch via this board/thread so we can compare notes.
Hello,
On the 29th I was attempting to take bird photos using the digiscoping method. It's where you connect your digital camera to a spotting scope to zoom in close to the bird. I didn't get any good shots but some people gave me some advice in another forum I will try.
This day the tube feeder was filled in the morning with what looked like some normal mixed seed with allot of pre-cracked sunflower mixed in. The yellow finches concentrated on the tube feeder and left the thistle seed sock alone.
This day they ate twice as much as I've seen recently. But only the golden finches tend to come to the feeders lately. I think they may be choosing this other food source for nutrition reasons since I assume it's mating season for them. I don't know much about the thistle plant, if this plant was giving them seed they may prefer the fresh plant's seeds. It seems too early for flowers and plants to be producing good bird seed to eat but who knows.
The only other bird that has started eating from the tube feeder are a few nuthatches. 99% of the time last summer we had the golden finch, house finch, nuthatch and mourning doves feeding from the feeder. The mourning doves sit in the seed shell catcher plate we attached or they feed on the ground. Ground feeders were pigeons, crows, starlings and grackles. The rare birds for us were Blue Jays and Cardinals. I'll try to find what they like the most and try to attract them. I would love to have Cardinals and Jays around. I think we may have had house sparrows at the feeder when one type of mix seed was used.
One reason I wanted to start taking pictures besides having the picture after was to ID what was feeding. There was so much activity and some birds tend to grab one seed and fly off it's hard to tell what they were. Then I wanted to get pictures of birds peached in the tree for a more framable photo.
This is my first spring watching as well so I assume its all normal.
Do you live close to the woods? I'm wondering if that's why we don't see too many wood peckers. We are in a suburban area with houses all around. There are woods pretty close by about 7 or 8 houses from here. It seems like when some bird feeders are close to the woods they get more jays.
I do know one thing to watch out for is the quality of the bird seed your buying. The really cheap bags of feed can be old seed that never sold somewhere else. My dad tried to get away with buying a large bag of seed for cheap at one of those stores where everything ends up that people don't want or overstocked items. I knew it was a bad idea and when it was used in the feeder the birds stopped feeding.
Having everyone else in my area feeding birds, I buy the best quality feed I can find. Pet stores can have very good feed for an extra dollar or two, sometimes the same price. I also add extras like dried meal worms that some birds like. In the summer when I did this all the birds were at our feeder and I could see no birds or few at other peoples feeders. Also mixing pre-shelled sunflower bits really attracts the finches. The downside is cost. We had so much activity it was costing allot for the good feed.
The birds would even let you get close (I could slowly walk and then lean on a car that was about 15 feet from them) because my dad filled the tube feeder every day and they trusted as a little more. Sometimes a finch or two would not even fly off when my father lowered the feeder to fill it, they just jumped to the branch and waited for him to come back.
I think next time I plan to practice photograhy I'll spread a mix of seed near the feeder a few days before and see if any more birds come.
YellowBudgie