It Is Never Too Late To Start Birding

 

Jon and I have been friends for a quite a few years.  We met while students at CWU and were roommates for a while.  Jon studied science and education while my major was in economics.  As you can imagine, our opinions were often quite different.  Occasionally Jon and his “science friends” would go bird watching and I would make fun of them.  I would call them such humorous, and original, names like Tree Huggers and the Flannel Shirt Gang.  We definitely had our red state/blue state moments back then.

 

Jon and I still get together often and he was the first person I called when I started thinking about buying The Wild Bird.  I knew he would have some insight into the bird scene and I wanted to enlist his aid as a part-time birding tutor.  Since then, Jon has taken Nancy and me birding a few times.  It has really made me change the way I view bird watching.

 

One of the first things I noticed was that getting good at bird identification would be next to impossible if you didn’t have someone more experienced to help out.  Jon knows the identification points to look for and can usually ID a bird pretty quickly.  I, on the other hand, look at the bird, put my nose in the field guide, and then up again only to find that the bird has moved.  It really helps to view a bird through your binoculars while having someone next to you explaining the points you should look for.

 

Secondly, I love the way birding forces you to expand your area of awareness.  You have to take notice of the sounds behind you and movement at the edge of your vision.  A birder will miss so much if he only pays attention to what is directly in front of him.

 

I also greatly appreciate how it is an activity that allows friends and family to spend time together.  Birding gives you those quiet moments where you get a chance to converse, exchange knowledge and joke without a lot of the external stimuli that infect our normal days.  Then, at some point during the day, you can all gather at a nice café or picnic spot to eat and visit.

 

Finally, birding gives us another reason to walk away from our daily lives for a short while and re-visit nature.  Not only that, it can be a very low-tech activity with none of the paraphernalia of a ski trip or round of golf.  You can have a great day of birding  with nothing more then a field guide and a decent pair of binoculars.

 

So, come on by The Wild Bird if you are interested in birding but not sure where to start.  We can help to point you in the right direction.

 

House Sparrows

 

Shortly after buying The Wild Bird I noticed a small flock of House Sparrows (HOSP) hanging around outside the door.  At first I started feeding them any seed that had spilled in the shop.  Soon I was tossing out seed several times each day.  It got to where the sparrows would recognize my truck and meet me at the door each morning.

 

Last week I was doing some research and ran across some information on HOSP.  I knew they are an introduced species but was not aware of the harm they inflict on local birds.  The HOSP can be a cavity nester and will readily take a nest from another bird.  The sparrow may break any existing eggs and will also kill nestlings as well as the adult parent birds.  Often a nesting bird will be out gathering food only to return and find that a HOSP is building right over the top of their established nest and eggs.

 

Some people promote using traps in an effort to eradicate the HOSP.  That seems a bit harsh to me and is not an idea I can support.  However, I also do not like the idea of making life easy for HOSP when they are such a destructive non-native species.  So, as much as it hurts when I see them staring at me through the shop’s door, I have decided to no longer feed HOSP.   

 

Should I Stop Putting Out Suet?

 

The quick answer is that you shouldn’t stop feeding suet.  Years ago suet wasn’t much more then a clump of beet fat that would get all drippy if you put it out on a warm day.  Fortunately, that is no longer true.  Modern processes produce a suet cake that can be used on all but the hottest days.

 

Additionally, many people only feed suet in the cold months because they believe that is when the birds need the protein.  Birds do need the calories in winter but they also need them during migration, nest building and raising their young.  In short, suet is a great feeding option all year long.

 

April Specials

10% off all Woodstock Chimes

 

10% off all Cohasset bamboo chimes

 

Buy a Countryside Culture feeder and receive a free 5lb bag of our Non-Sprout Mix

Calendar

 

April

 

12th          Kitsap Audubon Society General   Meeting.  (Poulsbo Library @             7pm)

 

21st          Stillwaters Environmental Cen          ter EcoFest. (Kingston)

 

21st          West Sound Wildlife Shelter            “Call For The Wild” Auction           (Kiana Lodge)

 

27th-        Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival 29th            (Hoquiam)

 

 

May

 

10th Kitsap Audubon Society General Meeting. (Poulsbo Library)

 

12th Backyard Wildlife Festival (Tukwila)

 

12th International Migratory Bird Day (Everywhere)

 

18th Puget Sound Bird Fest (Edmonds)

 

18th- Leavenworth Spring Bird Festival

20th

 

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