This is an exciting time of year. The cardinals, tufted titmice, and chickadees are up before we are, singing their hearts out in the early light as the snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils emerge from their snowy beds.
Most of the 30 to 40 juncos we have hosted over the winter have left for their breeding grounds in the northern woods. Only three or four have stayed. Could it be the unseasonable weather? The goldfinches are starting to get their bright yellow feathers—a certain sign of spring. We have never had so many goldfinches as this year. At one point we counted over 40 of them. They fill the air around the house with incessant twitters.
A red-tailed hawl scans a pasture. (Photos by David Durrant)
As soon as the ice was off our pond we had a pair of common mergansers and also some wood ducks, their colorful plumage rivaling the beautiful hooded mergansers that came the following day. Mallards have been daily visitors along with the great blue heron that patrols the edge of the pond, plucking frogs and fish as he stealthily circumnavigates the body of water. A beaver checked out our pond for a couple of days, but thankfully it did not stay around long enough to do any damage to our trees.
We have been hearing barred owls at night hooting their familiar “who cooks for me, who cooks for me” call. Owls are one of the earliest of nesting birds, and they are probably nesting in one of the large conifers in our neighborhood. The red-tailed hawk is an almost daily presence hunting in the fields for voles, mice, and the like. Hawks, like owls, eat mice and other small mammals.
Another hawk that we have seen regularly is the Cooper’s hawk, which patrols the area knowing that there are plentiful birds around the feeders and the farm.
A common raven.
The bluebirds we have fed all winter are actively checking out our nesting boxes, which pushed us into making our spring rounds of all the boxes to turf out unwanted guests. This year we removed 10 field mice nests and a few old house wren nests, along with last year’s bluebird nests that had not been taken over by the field mice.
We eagerly await the arrival of our “mosquito squad” of tree swallows and barn swallows (why spray!) that will devour thousands of mosquitoes over the summer. According to my yearly record, they should be arriving soon. The song sparrow has arrived and will soon be checking out the shrubs in our perennial garden for a suitable nesting spot, and the phoebe is checking out nesting spots around the barn.
A nice surprise this year in the neighborhood is the arrival of a pair of ravens. Although we have fleeting visits and have heard them in previous years, this is the first time they seem to be hanging around. They were doing their courting dance in our pasture the other day. One of them was collecting wool from our sheep, maybe for a nest or maybe just an offering. While picking up brush in the front of the house this weekend, we heard their deep “bronk” call. One raven was sitting right over us in one of our stately maples. Even 60 to 70 feet up, this bird seemed enormous.
More birds will be arriving from their wintering grounds farther south. In fact, today we heard that there were some sandhill cranes on Bolton Flats, so we will be off to try to see them along with the numerous other migrants that enjoy the flooded cornfields.
People often ask us how we attract so many birds, so following are some of our responses and suggestions for a bird-friendly environment.
Maintain a bird-friendly yard
- Plant native plants. Birds depend on the fruit and seeds our native plants supply as well as the insects they host.
- Leave dead trees, as long as they pose no danger, because woodpeckers, wood ducks, chickadees, titmice, and other cavity nesters depend on these trees.
- Do not spray for mosquitoes. Many birds depend on these as a major food source, and other harmless insects may be killed.
- Do not apply chemical fertilizers, herbicides, etc. to lawns, gardens, or fields because birds like robins, flickers, and woodpeckers depend on these sources of food. Pollinating insects will also likely be killed.
- If you have a cat, keep it indoors. It is estimated that domestic cats kill around 3.7 billion birds a year.
- If you feel the need to get rid of mice or other rodents, do not use poisons. There are many documented cases of birds, especially hawks, being killed by eating rodents that have been poisoned. To get rid of mice in the house, use traps and not baits that are poisonous. The most effective trap we have found is “The Better Mousetrap” by Intruder, available at most hardware stores.
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Urban and rural lighting can disrupt migrating birds. Please remember to use shielded fixtures, and turn exterior lights off or put them on a timed motion sensor.
The Habitat Network website, a project of the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, offers further information on how to create a bird-friendly environment: http://content.yardmap.org.
Feeding birds
We feed sunflower chips in dedicated feeders for smaller birds like goldfinches, chickadees, tufted titmice, nuthatches, house finches, and even bluebirds.
Suet blocks are good to attract downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers. Chickadees, tufted-titmice, and nuthatches also enjoy the suet. We leave the suet in the plastic tray it comes in and hang it suet side down so that only the smaller birds get to it. This deters larger birds like blue jays, grackles, and starlings from gorging on it.
For larger birds like mourning doves, blue jays, starlings, red-winged blackbirds, and cardinals, we put a less expensive wild bird mix (from Erikson Grain Mill), along with cracked corn, on a large platform feeder placed away from the feeders that smaller birds use.
For bluebirds, specifically, we built a bluebird feeder and feed them the suet mix that we were given by bird expert Julie Zickefoose.
Water is important. We are lucky we have a pond that attracts all sorts of ducks, great blue herons, green herons, and so on. If you do not have a natural water source, you can make a birdbath, and there are inexpensive heaters one can use in the winter. We maintain a heated birdbath throughout the winter when the pond is frozen.
David and Pamela Durrant live on East Bare Hill Road at Micheldever Farm, where they watch their own peacocks and chickens as well as visiting wild birds.
