Your back yard feeders are in an emergency situation when a major snowstorm is occurring in your back yard.  It is important that you keep your back yard feeders free of snow and ice during any weather system, as the local population of song birds can easily perish without new food during a wet and cold weather pattern.  Bird food should be available and offered easily, to ensure your song birds do not die during the evening hours.  Often, a very wet and heavy snow will cause songbirds to be trapped in a new and uncertain area of the backyard.

Snow and Back Yard Feeders

Squirrels, red squirrels, moles and other rodents will frequent your back yard feeders during a snow event, so it is important that you venture outside to ensure that your feeders are active and ready to work for your back yard birds.  If your feeder is encased in ice, chances are, a mouse or squirrel will take full advantage of the frozen obstacles you may use, to keep your birds fed.  Back yard feeders often work with a mechanism that will flip, twirl, or block a fat squirrel or mouse from feeding.  When this mechanism is frozen, it creates a dangerous advantage for your rodent population to explore and realize the opportunity of your back yard feeders.  Do not let the opportunity occur, and be sure to bring all frozen feeders indoors, for cleaning and maintenance.

For this reason, it is always a good idea to have an extra feeder that is clean and stored indoors, empty of food.  The outdoors is a great place for you to find time to unwind and enjoy your back yard feeders, but they will require some down time once and awhile.  However, a snowstorm is a time where you may need some downtime, and as well, a full feeder at the same time.  That is why, having a backup for all your outdoor feeders is a great idea.

Use your back yard feeders that you have given up on, those that are less effective with your squirrel raiders, and give them a good cleaning with vinegar and water.  These will be good substitutes while the best feeders you use are warmed up and dried, cleaned, and all winter snow and ice is removed.

Back Yard Feeders Should be Filled with Protein

During a icy rain, or snow storm, your back yard feeders should be filled with the best sunflower seeds, or even some meal worms for your song bird populations.  The feeders are often very necessary during these events, when normal natural feeding areas are inaccessible.  With the advent of a snow storm, you will see increased activity at your back yard feeders.  The birds will be stocking up so to speak, as they will feel the change in pressure, and know when the storm is approaching.  There are many birds who realize the change before most wildlife, so an accurate weather predictor is your back yard feeders.   If you see increase in activity, you can count on some change to the weather.

Back Yard Feeders Can be Changed to New Offerings

Try to feed your birds something new during the storm, and a great offering during the storm that is new is a kind way to keep your beautiful birds alive and well.  You may find a new suet feeder a fun and good way to offer that protein that they will require.  With the new food, be sure to continue the same food you have offered during the winter, as they will not need too much change during this stressful time.

You may see that the population of birds in your backyard are new and unexpectedly populated.  There could be a surprise to you with a new kind of bird, showing up with a dire situation of hunger and looking lost and uncertain.  The years where a snow storm dropped over a foot of snow in our back yard resulted in new warblers and nuthatches frequenting our feeders more often.  We did take care to ensure that our feeders were in use, and that created new birds visiting our back yard feeders.

When feeding the birds, the bird food you choose, will have a huge advantage in what birds visit your yard, and back yard for your viewing and hearing spectacle.  The food you choose, can choose the birds you want to see, and can result in squirrels visiting your feeder as well.

Bird Food in Your Back Yard Feeder Can Result in Squirrels

Best Bird Food Considers your Back Yard Bird Culture

If you are building a viewing bird feeder for your back yard, adding the staple bird food of black oil sunflower seeds, is a great way to start.  While black sunflower seeds are the best way to feed most birds, squirrels love them too.  They will do anything to get to this kind of bird food, and will dump your entire bird feeder on the ground!  Squirrels are a team, and will work together to find, open and eat all of your bird food in your feeder if it is black sunflower seeds.

If you want to see songbirds, black sunflower seeds will be great will bird food for cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, juncos, doves, and for gold finches.  House finches as well, love black sunflower seeds, and will eat from a pressed seed and suet hanging basket.

Millet and White Milo are Bird Food for Doves and Ground Feeders

If you are searching for a good food for ground feeders like juncos, doves, or morning doves, a millet mix will be your best food for wild birds.  Creating a bird-friendly habitat for these birds should start with an easy way to clean and keep the ground fresh for bird food feeders.  Often a daily scatter by you will suffice, but a low feeder with a easy platform, may be the better choice, with our busy days.  Adding a large plate or plastic tray to any bird feeder, can be the best way to feed these kind of birds.

Canary grass seed, while millet, milo, wheat, red millet, safflower, and oat groats can be a great mix for your kept and wild doves.  Squirrels are not too interested in this type of mix, as it is too tart or bitter for them.  Most birds in your back yard, will not enjoy this mix as much as a black sunflower seed.

How can I keep Squirrels from My Bird Food?

Aside from buying a yankee droll feeder that flips your squirrels off the feeder, you can always use a caged bird feeder that only allows a small bird to enter the cage.  Having a series of different bird feeders is the best way to showcase your bird food, and offer different varieties of height, branches and visibility for your bird feeders.

Another thing to consider, is squirrels are built and ready for competition.  So, beginning to offer them challenges, a feeder that is built for their curious and tenacious nature, is a good idea.  Build your feeders in your back yard, with some that can be easily infiltrated by your squirrels and bird, and others that have a deterrent from squirrels with a pulley system that hangs the feeder in a difficult place, and that offers a motorized flipper.  This feeder will be your bird food dinner plate, and bring great watching for your back yard.

Every back yard birder knows about the hanging bird feeders, and the dish bowl bird feeders, but few birders know that some birds, like the Junco, prefer ground bird food feeders.  These birds often wait for the droppings from hanging bird feeders, and are hungry when the feeders do not allow any food to fall.

Ground Bird Food Feeders for The Junco

Ground Bird Food Eaters Like a Junco

There are feeders that can be placed on or near the ground, but the Junco and other small sized sparrow birds, like to scratch. They are not picky eaters, and will eat the less loved white millet unlike a healthy squirrel who generally will pass on the millet, and go for black sunflower seed over millet.  The ability for the Junco to search and scratch on the ground, is a great thing for your bird watching scenery, as they are unusually active birds on the vulnerable ground.  Ground bird food for Juncos can be white millet, safflower, white proso millet, or even cracked corn that is mold free.  Corn has a nasty habit of inducing mold on its open kernel, so if you intend to add some starch by adding corn, you may want whole kernels, and crack it yourself before you scatter.

Ground Bird Food Attracts Not Only Juncos but Other Birds

Other birds that may be attracted to your ground bird food will include Junco, but also, Sparrows, Doves, Quails, Towhees, and some Bobwhite Birds.  You may want to include a healthy but skim scattering of food on the ground each time your fill your hanging feeders, to give your Juncos, and Doves the right nutrition for them.  They are great scatter feeders, and need to eat off the ground.

Wild Turkeys too, like to scatter feed, and will scratch areas clean when you have wood chips underneath hanging feeders.  Over the course of a few years, I have noticed that the soil underneath my feeders is rich and can be good to add to compost, to bring up the compost value for my garden.  The natural visits from our feathered friends, are a good nutrient addition to any yard.

Ground Bird Food can Create some Challenges

Even if you do not intend to feed on the ground, your ground bird food options will naturally occur from a hanging feeder.  The most careful hanging bird feeder still will have bird visitors, who like to dump food on the ground for others.  I watched a sparrow come to my feeder one day, and empty the feeder out for the flock below.

The next time I filled, I added a small but open chicken wire sleeve into the hole, and the dumper came back, but then dropped to the ground, and discovered the scatter I had left.  This way, the food was not as plentiful, as to encourage rodent and other wildlife visitors, but enough to provide the ground bird food that the sparrows desired.

There is always one sparrow in a group who is the dumper, and you can easily deter this one ground bird food eater with a small chicken wire sleeve inserted into the feeder.

Science is not just about molecules and atoms, but about biology, and our most budding scientists are young, so it makes perfect sense to find time to involve children by using birdwatching for kids.  Finding time to explain each of the birds you see in your yard, buy them some binoculars that are their own, can allow them the empowerment of learning, from their own back yard.  Birds are a great way to learn about species, latin or scientific nomenclature for birding, and bring new skills for emerging biologists in your neighborhood.

Birdwatching for Kids begins with Biology

Birdwatching for Kids Begins with Biology

Your new bird watcher can learn about species, types of birds, and the way they live in the wild with a simple set of tools.  Heading to the library, you can check out some bird reference books, and learn about basics of birds or the science of Ornithology, starts with learning about the parts of a bird.  Birdwatching for kids involves more than seeing the brown bird, but understanding the actual ways to recognize the different species, by visual cues like their anatomical features.

Birdwatching for kids can be greatly improved by watching, and reviewing these anatomical sections of each bird you see in your back yard:

Crown: top of the head

Eye stripe: Usually the mark on top of the beak or forehead

Nares: directly on top of the beak, the little transition from eye stripe to beak

Auriculars:  the Upper Mandible and Lower Mandible is the top and the bottom section of the beak

Nape: the back of the head

Chin: under the beak

Side of Neck: either side of the bird between chin and nape

Throat: front of the bird below chin

Mantle: Area on back, above wings

Back: just below mantle

Breast: Across from back and mantle under throat

Scapulars: the bend of the wings

Shoulder:  The upper top of the wings

Wing Covers: the loose upper feathers that float over the wings

Side: Lower sections of the breast

Secondaries:  The second tier feathers of the wings

Rump: the longer back feathers on the back above the tail

Abdomen:  Below breast, or belly of the bird

Upper tail coverts:  the Longer feathers of the back close to tail

Under tail coverts:  Under longer feathers of the tail top

Rectrices:  the Tail feathers that create the beauty of the bird

Birdwatching for Kids involves some tools

Now that you have some terms to use in your birdwatching experiences, a set of binoculars, a good bird field guide with pictures and descriptions, and a comfortable chair, is a great way to start.  Begin with adjusting the binoculars for your little ones eyes, and let them try them out in a stationary position.  Do not let them wander the yard with the binoculars glued to their eyes, as it will be important to show them that this can be too dangerous, as they could walk into obstacles or fall in a dip in the yard.

Birdwatching for Kids with Binoculars

Sitting in a chair is a great way to adjust to using the binoculars with the book.  A little table for a drink and a place to place the tools is important too.  The weather should be considered, and there is no reason you can’t do this in the winter as well, as the empty trees often are a better way to see the birds.  A cloudy day is sometimes better, as it makes it easier to spot the birds, and to see them in the trees without glare from the sun.  When you spot a bird, confirm with your own set of binoculars, and see if you can locate the bird in the book.

Learning about that bird can then begin to start the biology training.  The size, shape and the calls of the birds can be witnessed in real time.  A journal for your child can be helpful too, as birdwatching for kids can be a way for them to be apart of the birdwatching community.  Once a species is spotted, they can log into a web site like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and begin their career as a bird watcher or spotter.

Birdwatching for Kids can be Fun

While they are learning about birds, they are learning to love nature, find a way to be quiet, and encounter a patience that can assist them in life.  Being a bird watcher requires this quality and talent, and it can be a great way to see that the best things in life come to those who wait.  If you are interested in becoming a birdwatcher, you must endure some time between birds.  Another option is to place a feeder, some water, and that will help your new bird watch to become more active.

Find some time with your children, by finding time during your week to experience birdwatching for kids in the near future!

Crow Profile

 Crows in Indiana Are Roosting by the Thousands

If you have heard about all the apocalyptic news about the crows in Indiana, you are not alone. There are over 50,000 crows roosting through the winter, over Muncie Indiana.  The downtown area is covered in 6 inches of crow dung and droppings, and this area is becoming a large roost for the outer agricultural crows who are hoping to roost in the center of town.

Joy Sacopulos, of Terra Haute, has organized a committee to scare and frighten the crows from the inner parts of Terra Haute.  Armed with screamers, or fireworks that are used to move large bird populations, Terra Haute is working to pressure wash downtown areas, and to continue to monitor the urban areas of Terra Haute where they are roosting.

The crows live peacefully from April to September, but during the  winter months, they have to set up a warm place to live or roost.  The trees of Indiana, are becoming scarce, and crows are large territorial birds.  They, along with Ravens, often need a spot to place sticks, twigs, leaves and other filler materials to roost effectively along the tree line.

Crows Roost in Trees

Crows in Indiana Searching for Roost Locations

Crows in Indiana reportedly are looking for spots to spend the winter, and each year the numbers grow.  Despite what some religious preachers and dynamic religious speakers have discussed, this is not a plague, but a simple act of good agricultural results, creating more crows and ravens than there are roost locations.  The trees and high roost locations in Indiana have been suffering, due to tree illness, and the large influx of new birds.

With trees suffering, people can make a difference by thinking differently, and adding trees to their property and landscape.  Commercial areas should add trees, and parks and federal state parks should be adding roost poles to edging areas, where trees are young.  The use of roost poles, and adding simple taller boxes for the crows, should be a good long term solution for the urban areas of Indiana.

Crows and Gulls in Flight

Crows in Indiana and Elsewhere are Smart Birds

There are 117 varieties of crows and jays, which are linked to Blue Jays, Gray Jays, American Crows, and the like.  They are worldwide species, and the North American Species are limited to just 16.  Here is the list for North America:

• Gray Jay
• Blue Jay
• Green Jay
• Brown Jay
• Scrub Jay
• Black-billed Magpie
• American Crow
• Mexican Crow
• Fish Crow
• Chihuahuan Raven
• Common Raven

Raven Profile

American Crow Facts

The common crow, or the American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, is a large bird from 17 inches to 21 inches.   The american crow has a stocky appearance, and a fan shaped tail that is different from the Raven, that has a wedge shape to the tail.  The main difference between a black American Crow, and the Common Raven is the tail shape, and the call.

American Crows, have a call that is caw-caw or caa-caa.  Ravens are more boisterous, with a call that is more guttural, and sounds like a wonk-wonk.  Ravens, as well are larger, and can get as large as 27 inches big.

Crow or Raven Eggs

Crows and Ravens nest in large nests, and can produce 4-7 eggs when they are in their roost.  The color of the eggs are usually spotted with brown and dark streaks.  The mother crow will bring in fur, moss and anything soft or shiny to the roost.   They are cliff dwellers too, and if you have a large cliff near your farm, your crow population will grow each year with your efforts.

Ravens are mostly in Canada, and in the western parts of the United States.  The American Crow is a warmer climate bird, and can be very hesitant to range into colder areas.  This would explain the roost of the crows in Indiana.  Colder weather can be very difficult for these larger birds, as they require a warm shelter to protect themselves from freezing temperatures.

Ravens and Crows are scavengers, and will eat any form of protein that is dead and available on the coasts, lakes, and roads of North America.  They will announce a dinner arrival, and claim their food, with a loud call, which can be threatened by other crows and ravens without the claim.

Crow In Nest

Crows are very intelligent,aand will flock together if something is curious and interesting to them.  They enjoy sparkly and shining items, and many crow roosts will be full of metal, and other reflective items.  Crows were considered a pest, and often are killed by pesticides or shooting, which is not a legal way to evict crows from your natural area.  Crows are a large benefit to our ecology, as they find and consume dead animals and other refuse, and will take care of the health issues in the fields and woody areas of our continent.

Crows Storming

Crows in Indiana Grow in Population

As the agricultural efforts of North America continue to improve, so do the populations of the American Crow.  The problem is that they have little habitat that they can use during the winter.  In the warmer summer months, they are happy to fly through fields and open areas, and stay near those areas, as they do not have to worry about freezing temperatures.

In certain cases, it may be necessary for humans to plant more trees, protect mature trees from disease, and build roost locations for these ever growing populations of birds.

Crows are Not this Big

This Photoshop photo is too much!  This is a funny picture, as a little one would never be able to get this close to this smart bird, as they are very wary of humans, and will watch and fly away, before becoming too curious. One final thought, the Crows in Indiana, do not get this large.

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