The newcomers have been less this past month, although the ones we did get were very pretty. Technically we only got two new birds in April since the third one was just passing through one rainy day.
The first pair of birds to show up were these Mallard Ducks. They spent the morning wandering around our backyard as well as the neighbors. Lily couldn't have been more excited. She was plastered to the window shouting for me at every webbed step they took. I suppose that since they didn't feed from the feeders and were just resting for the morning that I shouldn't count them, but I'm still going to.
Next we got some American Goldfinches. I included a picture from the web of them since mine was barley so so. At times we will have several Goldfinches at once. Even the females are a bright yellow.
My mom ended up giving me the rest of her birdseed, which was to attract Blue Jays. It looked more like trail mix than birdseed. Apparently the squirrels were also attracted to it, which was all my mom was getting so she gave it to me in the hopes of completing what she called the "primary bird backyard". Now if you are like me you are wondering what in the world a primary backyard is. Well, I'll explain. What she meant was since I had Cardinals (red) and Goldfinches (yellow) that I needed to attract a Blue Jay (blue) so that the primary colors were covered in my yard. I put out the Blue Jay birdseed and low and behold...
I mean they were there the next day. I personally do not know how good a sense of smell birds have. I can tell you that since we started this back in January I have not seen a single Blue Jay in our backyard. I know that Blue Jays are very aggressive. Now I'm thinking they must be like some sort of Mafia. The only thing I can think of is that some other bird tipped them off that there was now bird food for them in my backyard. Probably some poor little Sparrow that had to bring the Blue Jays a share of the food it found and had hungry mouths to feed at home. Either way they have been in my backyard almost everyday since.
There has been one problem that I have had with the birds. With the Starlings to be exact. For the past 2 1/2 months I have been setting up a garden and growing my vegetables from seed indoors under lights. I doted on them. I have spent hours reading on different types of gardening. I have mapped out the garden on graph paper. I've driven miles to get supplies and materials. Let's just say, I've put some time in.
Last week marked our official "last frost date" for this area. I happily skipped out to the garden that I had prepared and planted all my seedlings. I was beyond excited. Then...over this past week those *&!# Starlings ripped out and flew away with more than 1/2 the seedlings that I grew. Grrrrr...
I literally felt sick. I've had issues with rabbits before, so this garden is fenced in, but birds had never been an issue for me. I was hurt, and angry. I wanted a shotgun. I didn't want to just harm them, I wanted to blow them into little feathery pieces. Since I can't do that I found another solution. I went to the dollar store and bought rubber snakes and metallic pinwheels. This is what my garden looks like now.
All the pinwheels are red, white, and blue. So it's all very patriotic. So far it's working. Fingers crossed it will continue to do so. However, due to the fact that the Starlings are also attracted to my yard because of the bird feeders I have decided to stop filling them for my gardening season. It's not worth having my garden destroyed just so we can enjoy watching all the birds. So this will be the last installment of backyard birds until the fall crop is over. I think I will shift over to the garden and what I did there so you can be expecting to see some posts on that instead.
The first pair of birds to show up were these Mallard Ducks. They spent the morning wandering around our backyard as well as the neighbors. Lily couldn't have been more excited. She was plastered to the window shouting for me at every webbed step they took. I suppose that since they didn't feed from the feeders and were just resting for the morning that I shouldn't count them, but I'm still going to.
Next we got some American Goldfinches. I included a picture from the web of them since mine was barley so so. At times we will have several Goldfinches at once. Even the females are a bright yellow.
My mom ended up giving me the rest of her birdseed, which was to attract Blue Jays. It looked more like trail mix than birdseed. Apparently the squirrels were also attracted to it, which was all my mom was getting so she gave it to me in the hopes of completing what she called the "primary bird backyard". Now if you are like me you are wondering what in the world a primary backyard is. Well, I'll explain. What she meant was since I had Cardinals (red) and Goldfinches (yellow) that I needed to attract a Blue Jay (blue) so that the primary colors were covered in my yard. I put out the Blue Jay birdseed and low and behold...
I mean they were there the next day. I personally do not know how good a sense of smell birds have. I can tell you that since we started this back in January I have not seen a single Blue Jay in our backyard. I know that Blue Jays are very aggressive. Now I'm thinking they must be like some sort of Mafia. The only thing I can think of is that some other bird tipped them off that there was now bird food for them in my backyard. Probably some poor little Sparrow that had to bring the Blue Jays a share of the food it found and had hungry mouths to feed at home. Either way they have been in my backyard almost everyday since.
There has been one problem that I have had with the birds. With the Starlings to be exact. For the past 2 1/2 months I have been setting up a garden and growing my vegetables from seed indoors under lights. I doted on them. I have spent hours reading on different types of gardening. I have mapped out the garden on graph paper. I've driven miles to get supplies and materials. Let's just say, I've put some time in.
Last week marked our official "last frost date" for this area. I happily skipped out to the garden that I had prepared and planted all my seedlings. I was beyond excited. Then...over this past week those *&!# Starlings ripped out and flew away with more than 1/2 the seedlings that I grew. Grrrrr...
I literally felt sick. I've had issues with rabbits before, so this garden is fenced in, but birds had never been an issue for me. I was hurt, and angry. I wanted a shotgun. I didn't want to just harm them, I wanted to blow them into little feathery pieces. Since I can't do that I found another solution. I went to the dollar store and bought rubber snakes and metallic pinwheels. This is what my garden looks like now.
All the pinwheels are red, white, and blue. So it's all very patriotic. So far it's working. Fingers crossed it will continue to do so. However, due to the fact that the Starlings are also attracted to my yard because of the bird feeders I have decided to stop filling them for my gardening season. It's not worth having my garden destroyed just so we can enjoy watching all the birds. So this will be the last installment of backyard birds until the fall crop is over. I think I will shift over to the garden and what I did there so you can be expecting to see some posts on that instead.
0 comments:
Post a Comment