Category Archives: birds

The Downy Family – Feathered Neighbors

birds

This morning I met some new neighbors. At our suet feeder in the backyard was a mother downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) and her little one. Well, he was larger than his mother, but still had the plump, floofy-feathered, slightly disgruntled look about him I’ve noticed in many baby birds. After clinging to the bottom of the suet feeder and swaying about awhile, he gave up and sat on the top of the feeder. Mother took over the tricky task of getting the suet. She would hop to the top of the feeder, feed the young bird the suet, and then duck under again for more.

Throughout the day a few other young birds and a male adult also made an appearance. I’m not sure if all the woodpeckers were from the same household, but I’d like to think so. At one point we had five woodpeckers flitting about together between the pergola and the feeder.

Downy Woodpeckers at Suet Feeder

Here’s a photo of how we rig up our suet feeder so sparrows and starlings cannot access it. Since we leave the plastic cover on the suet and expose just the bottom, only birds that can cling upside down are able to eat the suet. So far it has worked great. We’ve seen both nuthatches and a chickadee here and there visit the feeder, but the woodpeckers are by far our most frequent visitors.

First Robin

birds, loki bed, spring

As I was making coffee this morning, I saw two robins on the fence beside our bird feeder. These little harbingers of Spring are a stark contrast to their frosty environment. It had rained over the weekend with the rain turning to some sort of sleet-like mess Monday and Tuesday. The forecast does not call for a break in the frigid weather until the first of April.

This year I’m going to take a shot at growing a lot of my flowering plants from seed. A gardening friend, Mr. D, will be bestowing Ms. A and I with a bunch of seeds  he harvested from his flowerbeds last Fall. I haven’t taken the time to assemble grow lights in the basement, so a lot of these seeds will be going straight into the beds when the soil has dried and warmed.

And finally, I noticed at the beginning of this week, the Lenten Rose will be blooming this year! It was introduced to the Lot during late Spring of 2009. Hopefully this icy weather will not damage the unfurling petals.

Bird Couisine

birds

I’ve noticed a large challenge in keeping a garden blog is finding time outside the garden to actually write content for the blog. Maybe other garden bloggers have a plan of attack they wouldn’t mind sharing?

Content for today’s post is courtesy of Mom G’s August / September 2010 copy of Birds & Blooms magazine. Here’s a recipe created by Donna Hunt of Alabama for homemade suet for feathered friends that grace the garden.

  • 1 cup lard
  • 1 cup crunchy peanut butter
  • 1 cup cooked oatmeal
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 cup crushed dried cereal
  • 1/2 cup flower

The birds would probably even enjoy an addition of dried berries or a dash of different seeds. I’ll hand this over to my Other Half for further development.