My already award-winning photo of an airborne Tufted Titmouse is competing for the Grand Prize in Birds & Blooms Magazine’s backyard photo contest. Voting has begun online at www.birdsandblooms.com/Contests/Backyard-Photo-Contest.
The news on the home front is that our backyard has turned into a wild turkey habitat. I saw five turkeys in the still snow-covered yard this morning. Their footprints are all over our yard and even close to our garage. Pretty soon they’ll be ringing our door bell, demanding to be fed! We’re hoping that they’ll go somewhere else once the snow melts. Spring can’t come soon enough around here.

My favorite episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati” is the Thanksgiving show “Turkeys Away.” The joke is that the station manager drops domestic turkeys out of a helicopter, thinking they can fly. Around our house, we have wild turkeys and they’re flocking to our bird feeders more and more often. Until today, I had only seen one at a time. Today, I spotted three turkeys at the same time and did what any shutterbug would do: I photographed them.
As the snow melts away it reveals the sunflower seeds – and their shells – that have landed on the ground recently. It’ll be a chore to rake them up, but otherwise they will attract rodents if left unattended. As the weather gets above freezing it is also imperative to clean the bird feeders. We usually clean the feeders in the evening so they can dry overnight before they get filled again. For cleaning we use one part bleach to ten parts water. If you don’t have bleach, vinegar will do too. It is important to rinse the feeders thoroughly to remove any trace of bleach. Diseases can spread easily at a heavily frequented bird feeder. That’s why it is important to keep up with cleaning and/or removing moldy seeds.

Yesterday morning things were eerily quiet around our feeders. A couple of cardinals sat motionless in a pear tree and a squirrel practically hugged another tree. No one was at the feeders. That could only mean one thing: A predator was out there. And then I saw a Cooper’s hawk landing on one of our trees, the squirrel not too far above him! After a few moments it flew off again. It did not take long for the birds to return to our feeder.
This morning I spotted 17 cardinals in our backyard. I stopped counting them after that, because what was the point? I didn’t even know we had that many around. A less pleasant surprise was counting 18 starlings. Where do they all come from all of a sudden? I am pleased, though, to see a flicker returning to our feeder regularly. And after seeing a turkey at our feeder twice this week it isn’t showing up at all to be counted.

On Friday and Saturday our region was hammered with more than 21″ of snow. My husband had filled the bird feeder before the yard became unpassable, but the ground feeding birds were out of luck. However, our resident fox sparrow managed to dig a hole in the snow–something we had never seen before. After the snow fall ended my husband stalked through knee-deep snow to put out a platform feeder filled with corn and seeds for the ground eaters on top of the mass of snow. Needless to say, our yard is very busy.
Birds are not the only creatures taking advantage of our outdoor cafe. Last evening we saw a doe at the platform feeder. And today I observed a turkey for several hours eating happily away. In this weather no one wants to expand energy looking for food. I managed to take a couple of photos through our window glass, but when I ventured outside to take a sneak shot it must have heard me coming and flew away.
Hanging a bird feeder is a bit tricky. Put it too far away from the house and you have to trudge through snow and ice to fill it. Put it too close to the house and the birds might crash into your windows and perish. It is absolutely essential to provide the birds with shelter near the feeders (no more than 8-10 feet away) so they can escape if a predator lurks nearby. Lately, we have observed a hawk that often dive bombs through our driveway to make a surprise attack. Hawks have to eat too, but I would like the playing field to be level. Of course, if it was up to me they could eat all the starlings they like…

It is bitterly cold today and the birds were already at our feeder before daylight broke. Three crows descended on our yard, probably remembering that my husband throws out some peanuts every morning. They’ve been stopping by more and more often. Perhaps they figure that the best food is the food that takes the least effort to find.
How do our backyard birds survive the frigid nights, other than fluffing out their feathers? They roost, I’m told. They huddle together to give each other warmth or hide in tree cavities or vacant bird houses. Brush piles and evergreen bushes also provide habitat for birds. We had to cut down a shrub last fall and threw it at the edge of our hill side. That brush pile is now teeming with sparrows, juncos, and wrens. Shelter is also important for birds to hide in when our resident hawk lurks around.
In the morning birds have to replenish the energy they expended throughout the night. That’s why our feeders are busiest in the early morning hours. Late afternoon is another busy period. While birds cannot afford to totally rely on a particular feeder (they would be doomed if you moved away or went out of town) it is important to keep up the feeding throughout winter once you started feeding birds.