Focus on Wild Birds in the Garden

Posted by Jamie McIntosh Dec 4, 2008

I was slow to get out my bird feeders this autumn. Having two new kindergarteners and one new preschooler in the family takes up far more time than it seems it should. In fact, I hadn’t thought much about our neighborhood wild birds since I took the feeders down this past spring. The birds seem to vanish into the heavily wooded green space behind my back yard when the leaves fill out.

However, one day I noticed a lone chickadee hop onto a feeder I left hanging on a high branch. He peeked fussily into each feeding chamber, and flitted off. Wait! "Come back," I thought, "I haven’t forsaken you."

The next day I put out my platform feeder, my peanut feeder, my heated birdbath, my thistle feeder, and I had refilled the empty feeder with sunflower seeds. It didn’t take long for word to get out about the feast. I need to pick up some hot pepper suet to discourage the greedy squirrels, and then my bird feeding station will be complete.

This supplemental diet can make the difference for non-migratory species that must eat every day to survive. I’ll wonder where they all went when spring arrives again and I take the feeders down, but when I see a cardinal prowling for tomato hornworms, I’ll know it was worth it.