Buy a Bird Feeder and Don’t Get Hung up on It
The birds are beautiful and fun to watch, and if you are lazy, you don’t even need to leave your house to see them. Imagine ordering takeout food, you can order nature to just show up at your door. Well, you can. Hang up the bird feeder.
My bird feeders have been some of my greatest pandemic pleasures, but before I tell you about them, I want to make one thing clear: I am not picky with them. I have not researched the best bird feeders. I do not prepare bird root mixtures in an artisanal way. I don’t get hung up on individual birds either; I’m curious how many pairs of cardinals are in the neighborhood, but I’ve never tried to tell each other apart.
But the good news is that it doesn’t matter.
Whenever I ask people who are very good at poultry to tell me which bird food is the best, they always say, “Oh, I just buy big bags of black sunflower oilseeds.” With some degree of skepticism, I looked at the diagrams in which I like which birds, which seeds. And guess what? They all love seeds , which are as cheap as dirt.
I have seen cardinals, black-capped bluebirds, house finches, crested tits (tits?), House sparrows, song sparrows, chip sparrows, goldfinches, mourning pigeons, blue jays, and at least two species of woodpeckers that appear at my feeder. for sunflower seeds. Chipmunks and voles frolic in the trash heaps. From time to time a squirrel tries to climb the pole. When that happens, I go out and spray the PAM pole, and for a day or two thereafter, I have the extra fun of watching the squirrels try to climb the pole andslide merrily back down .
I have another feeder. Sometimes – once or twice a year – I saw a hummingbird take off on the porch and then fly away. I have never seen a hummingbird anywhere else, but one day I decided to hang up the feeder to see if the hummingbird returned. When I did, it took the bird a whole week or two to find it again, but now I see the ruby-throated hummingbirds – females, I think – come in several times a day.
For a hummingbird feeder, design matters a little more. By the end of the summer my first feeder was teeming with bees; I replaced it with a bee feeder . No problem so far.
Don’t get hung up on hummingbird food. The Audubon Society recommends one part white sugar for four parts water . Don’t add colorants or try to play honey or anything else. Just sugar and water. Wash and refill the pan twice a week.
That’s it – just hang up the feeder, fill it up and enjoy. Each of my feeders was cheap and the food I put in it was always the easiest option. (In winter, I buy cakes for a dollar apiece, also a scar.) And the birds continue to fly.