Feeder birds!

[PGBird]

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Good afternoon, fellow birders! Are your feeders up and running full
speed? I know many of you feed year round, but I'm basically a winter
feeder owner. I scatter cracked corn on the ground for the doves,
sparrows, and juncos. There is a suet feeder which is being visited
by more than just woodpeckers and nuthatches -- the house sparrows
have taken quite a shine to it this fall probably because of the seed
mixed into the cakes I buy. In a swinging platform, I put a safflower/
black oil mix of seeds -- it's open and can be visited by all the
birds though I do need to get the squirrel baffle above it. It
actually serves as a rain shield more than a squirrel baffle. Not
that I don't have squirrels, but they don't come in from above -- they
scale the pole! Yesterday one got up there -- means I need to adjust
the baffle below -- and when I went out to chase him off, he stayed
put until I grabbed hold of the feeder and swung it -- probably not
the brightest thing to do, but I couldn't believe his boldness -- just
stayed put until I gave the feeder a good shove.

One of the hard things to accept about feeding the birds is when
Cooper's and Red-shouldered Hawks include your feeder in their daily
route. I've had a red-shouldered regularly for the past couple
years. It reminds me of those lessons we learned back in school about
the survival of the fittest -- now we get to experience it first
hand. Best way to handle this is to have good cover near the feeder
so the smaller birds have somewhere to flee. If you don't have bird
friendly shrubs, check out pages 19 and 20 in the Winter Parks Plus
for an order form for the Lake County Soil and Water Conservation's
annual tree seedling sale. The "wildlife" packet might be a good way
to expand your backyard habitat! If you don't have the Parks Plus,
they can be picked up at Penitentiary Glen Nature Center.

Lake Metroparks and local birding groups are offering several
opportunities to bird this month. I don't want you to get rusty just
because it's winter! Pat Morse will be leading a Bird Walk at
Penitentiary Glen on Saturday, December 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Call 440-358-7275 to register for it. I'm coordinating the Willoughby
area Christmas Count on Saturday, December 19 for the Cleveland
circle. To join us, call me at 440-227-6391 or if you live in
Willoughby and could submit a feeder count for your yard on that day.
Blackbrook Audubon will be conducting their count the following day,
December 20, for the Painesville circle. To contact them, go to
www.blackbrookaudubon.org for information.

Finally, there are some interesting recent postings for this area on
the bird list serve.(http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/
OHIO.html). Observers watching the peregrine nest on Terminal Tower
in downtown Cleveland are pretty certain that a male fledged in 2007
from the nest at the CEI plant in Eastlake is claiming that territory
for his own. Another person mentioned seeing 18 Bald Eagles at one
pond in a state wildlife area in western Ohio this past week. And
there has been an interesting thread of conversations about the
population trends of red-breasted mergansers which are abundant on
Lake Erie at this time of year. All of them are exciting observations
for birders!!

Keep birding!
Mary Huey
Interpretive Naturalist
Lake Metroparks
mh...@lakemetroparks.com