I recently signed up for a newsletter from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Here are some of the more interesting tips that caught my eye.
1. To attract the most birds, the best all-around bird seed to buy is the black-oil sunflower seed because it is full of nutrition and small enough for smaller birds to crack open. The larger, striped sunflower seeds are too big for the smaller birds.
Hummingbird at the feeder. (Photo credit: Darmichar)
2. Continue to leave your hummingbird feeders out late into the fall because hummingbirds migrate individually, not in flocks, and a late-brood of hummingbirds might need to stick around a little longer to build up their storage of fat to make the long trip. This is also good for hummingbirds birds enroute to replenish their energy reserves. Don’t worry that it will keep them from migrating at all, as it is the change of day length that triggers migration, not the presence of food.
RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival: Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest (Photo credit: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent))
3. Don’t throw away the seeds from your cantaloupes, pumpkins, or watermelons. Dry them and feed them to the birds in the fall and winter (you may need to grind them in your food processor for the smaller birds).
Orange Slice (Photo credit: Joshua Drew Vaughn)
4. Some birds don’t eat seeds, or at least it is not a major part of their diet (robins, thrushes, bluebirds, and waxwings), so put out raisins, apple slices and orange slices, or other fresh fruit.
Life is an Adventure
The website I’ve used in the past for scat identification, let me down on this one, so I had to do a lot more searching for photos that matched, but I believe I was successful in identifying which animal produced this scat.
