The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible: The A-to-Z Guide To Feeders, Seed Mixes, Projects And Treats (Rodale Organic Gardening Book) - Hardcover

Roth, Sally

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875968341 ISBN 13: 9780875968346

Publisher: Rodale Books, 2000

Synopsis

"It happens to the best of us--it's the height of feeder season, the yard is filled with customers, and you realize the birdseed can is empty. I learned my solution at my mother's knee--ransack the kitchen for anything remotely edible! Stale bread, withered fruit, and peanut butter are all fine fill-in-the-gap foods."

Pull up a chair next to the window looking out on your bird feeder and join author Sally Roth in an informative, inspirational, and often light-hearted look at the foods, feeders, and plants that invite birds to visit your feeding station. From fast foods and freezer treats to innovative ways of serving up leftovers, you'll find plenty of creative ideas for keeping your feeders filled when hungry birds are crowding the perches. Sally shares a lifetime's worth of bird-feeding experiences, including:

- which foods attract which birds
- helpful hints on choosing and maintaining feeders
- the best bird-attracting frutis and flowers to plant
- and much, much more!

You'll learn about the birds that visit feeders, too: how to identify them, how they behave, and which feeder foods they like the best. What's more, you'll discover a wealth of tips for turning your landscape into a bird haven that will ring with birdsong all year long. On every page of The Backyard Birdfeeder's Bible, Sally Roth shows you how to make your bird-feeding efforts more satisfying, more successful, and definitely more fun. Put her knowledge to work in your yard and enjoy the endlessly fascinating beauty of wild birds.

About this title

About the Author

A lifelong naturalist and gardener, Sally Roth was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After living for a brief time on the Oregon coast, she settled in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1992. Her previous books include Attracting Birds to Your Backyard, Natural Landscaping, and Taylor's Guide to Ornamental Grasses, and her articles have appeared in Organic Gardening and Fine Gardening as well as other gardening magazines. Sally also writes a weekly newspaper column about nature that appears in several Indiana newspapers. She frequently lectures and leads workshops on bird watching, natural history, gardening, and native plants.

From the Back Cover

The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible

Become the best bird host in your neighborhood. Let The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible be your guide to the foods and feeders, plants and projects that will guarantee you a yard that's absolutely brimming with birds!

"I was amazed by the wealth of information in The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible by Sally Roth! The book goes far beyond the traditional books on backyard bird feeding, offering information on flowers to plant, edible wreaths to make, clever ideas for birdbaths, and recipes using leftover food to supplement normal birdseed and suet. You will certainly attract more birds using the suggestions in The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible. If you can only buy one backyard bird book, this is THE book to run out and get!"
--Christine Tarski, Guide to Birding at About.com (birding.about.com)

"Few people can match Sally Roth's knowledge or enthusiasm!"
--Ruth Mullen, home and garden writer, The Indianapolis Star

"Sally Roth's new book is a treasury for anyone eager to know more about bird behavior, equipment, gardening, and so much more. Roth's love for birds and her hands-on practical experience are inspiring."
--Sharon Dunn and Michael Dunn, owners of Duncraft

"A masterwork! Sally Roth has written an essential reference for wild bird lovers. As they enjoy its marvelous content, readers will be amazed to discover their own transformation from mere 'bird watchers' to avid and qualified ornithologists."
--Samuel F. LaBudde, executive director, Endangered Species Project

From the Inside Flap

The Backyard Bird Feeder's Bible

"It happens to the best of us--it's the height of feeder season, the yard is filled with customers, and you realize the birdseed can is empty. I learned my solution at my mother's knee--ransack the kitchen for anything remotely edible! Stale bread, withered fruit, and peanut butter are all fine fill-in-the-gap foods."

Pull up a chair next to the window looking out on your bird feeder and join author Sally Roth in an informative, inspirational, and often light-hearted look at the foods, feeders, and plants that invite birds to visit your feeding station. From fast foods and freezer treats to innovative ways of serving up leftovers, you'll find plenty of creative ideas for keeping your feeders filled when hungry birds are crowding the perches. Sally shares a lifetime's worth of bird-feeding experiences, including:

- which foods attract which birds
- helpful hints on choosing and maintaining feeders
- the best bird-attracting frutis and flowers to plant
- and much, much more!

You'll learn about the birds that visit feeders, too: how to identify them, how they behave, and which feeder foods they like the best. What's more, you'll discover a wealth of tips for turning your landscape into a bird haven that will ring with birdsong all year long. On every page of The Backyard Birdfeeder's Bible, Sally Roth shows you how to make your bird-feeding efforts more satisfying, more successful, and definitely more fun. Put her knowledge to work in your yard and enjoy the endlessly fascinating beauty of wild birds.

About the Author

A lifelong naturalist and gardener, Sally Roth was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After living for a brief time on the Oregon coast, she settled in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1992. Her previous books include Attracting Birds to Your Backyard, Natural Landscaping, and Taylor's Guide to Ornamental Grasses, and her articles have appeared in Organic Gardening and Fine Gardening as well as other gardening magazines. Sally also writes a weekly newspaper column about nature that appears in several Indiana newspapers. She frequently lectures and leads workshops on bird watching, natural history, gardening, and native plants.

Reviews

Similar in layout and content to Roth!s Attracting Birds to Your Backyard (Rodale, 1998), this book is both enjoyable to browse because of its color photos, line art, and call-outs and useful as a home reference because of its alphabetical arrangement. Conveying an enormous amount of information on attracting, feeding, and observing birds, the entries vary in length from half a page to multiple pages for broad or complex topics such as the benefits of fruiting plants (trees, blueberry shrubs, strawberry plants, etc.) as a source of both food and shelter. Despite some overlap with his previous title, Roth presents enough new information, techniques, and anecdotes to make this work fun, worthwhile addition likely to be as popular as similar works by John K. Terres and Mathew Tekulsky. Recommended for public libraries."Bonnie Poquette, Shorewood P.L., WI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a copious, easy-to-use guide to bird feeding with 275 photographs and 125 illustrations. The pages devoted to the birds themselves--from blackbirds to wrens-- offer a description of each (including a color photo), a list of each bird's favorite foods, and a discussion of its behavior. The authors then provide extensive lists of flowers, fruit, berries, vegetables, plants, and seeds that attract birds, and detailed information on everything from baffles, banding, binoculars, bird counts, bird watching, binoculars, and field guides to discussions of bird communication, bullies and nuisance birds, and bird migration. And that's not all: Roth and Burgoyne offer instructions on how to photograph and draw birds, and how to build birdbaths and feeders; and they even present recipes for bird-seducing treats, such as blueberry bird granola, fruitful feeder bread, mockingbird manna, woodpecker favorite, starling pleaser, and bluebird tempter. Theirs truly is a comprehensive guide for bird enthusiasts. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Accessories

Manufacturers of bird feeders are making it easy for consumers to jump on the bird-feeding bandwagon. Of course, all you need to make the birds happy is a supply of seed and a tray to put it in. But if you feed birds on a regular basis and have a feeding station that includes several types and sizes of feeders, you'll appreciate the new labor-saving devices. You can buy gizmos that clean or hang your feeders, contraptions to keep out squirrels, and technological marvels to bring the bird world closer to you inside. Here are some of the accessories I've found most useful. Look for them in well-stocked bird-supply stores, home improvement stores, or discount stores, or order from catalogs such as those listed in "Resources" on page 348.

Scrub-brush hose attachment. This short-handled brush attaches directly to your garden hose. A stream of water travels through a narrow tube in the handle and loosens grime and stuck-on seed from your birdbath or feeder.

Brush for plastic tube feeders. Slide this long brush into your tube feeder and rotate to clean out old seed in a jiffy. Soft bristles won't scratch plastic.

Niger seed bags. Add extra feeding places for finches in a snap by hanging seed-stuffed pouches brimming with niger. Birds cling to the mesh and extract the seeds through the small openings.

Add-on trays for tube feeders. Cut down on spilled seed by attaching a plastic tray to the bottom of your tube feeder to catch niger or other seeds that fall from openings. Bonus: The tray adds perching room for cardinals and other customers.

Bell-shaped ant guard. Hook this plastic bell above your nectar feeder, coat the inside with petroleum jelly, and prevent ants from raiding your sugar water supplies. Longer lasting, more effective, and much less messy than smearing petroleum jelly on the feeder hanger itself.

Shepherd's crooks. Easy to push into any soil, these low-cost metal posts let you install feeders quickly and easily by stepping onto the anchoring support. Some feature more than one curved hook, for multiple-feeder capacity.

Accessories make your feeders more versatile: Suction cups with screws or hooks let you put a feeder right on your window. Use large nails to skewer citrus fruit or apples; chicken wire is handy for shaping a temporary cover or squirrel guard around a feeder.

Extra arms for feeder poles. A simple clamp lets you add extra hooked arms-- and that means extra feeders--to poles up to 11â?"4 inches in diameter.

Steel feeder stand. Heavy, tip-proof, flat base accepts a metal post, such as a shepherd's crook, so you can enjoy feeders on your deck or patio.

Tree-mount feeder bracket. Never have to £d a nail into living wood again. This stretchy cord wraps snugly around a tree to hold the included feeder-supporting hook. To avoid inadvertently girdling your tree, use this type of support for a winter-time feeder that you remove--along with the stretchy cord--when spring arrives.

Bird monitor system. Bring the sounds of the feeder area indoors with this wireless monitor system. It works like a waterproof baby monitor. The sensitive microphone picks up chirps, songs, and even the sounds of cracking seeds and rustling wings.

Accidents

BIRDS REPRODUCE IN BROODS to compensate for the many individuals lost to predators, disease, and accidents. Sad to say, human activity causes most bird accidents. The leading causes of bird fatalities include collisions with vehicles, fatal encounters with glass windows, knockouts at tall radio, television, or cell phone towers during migration flights, and bashes with big city buildings. Lighthouses, ocean oil slicks, and chemicals also take their toll on birds. Add the predations of our feline friends to the list, and you can see what a danger our human habits are to wild birds.

Apart from the widespread dangers birds face, there is a long list of other accidents that may befall them. Songbirds may become trapped in garages and other outbuildings. Quail, pheasants, and other game birds have had unfortunate entanglements with barbed wire. Lawn mowers and farm equipment endanger ground-nesting field birds.

Even water can pose a problem to swallows, which skim low across the surface to collect insects. One wing beat too low, and the bird may be unable to regain the air. In the feeder area, most accidents happen when birds fly into windows. Use fruit-tree netting, stretched tightly so it's barely visible to human eyes, to break up reflections and keep the birds in your yard safe.

Tribulations of Being Tiny

Hummingbirds are particularly prone to accidents due to their small size. They may become fish food or frog dinner at ponds. A friend of mine found a hummer hanging by its beak from her screen door. Bird watchers have found the little birds trapped in the sticky threads of orb weaver spiders.

Even spider webs may prove to be hazardous for hummingbirds and other tiny birds.

Acorns

Attract chickadees, jays, nuthatches, quail, titmice, wild turkeys, woodpeckers

Packed with protein, acorns are a huge hit with all nut-eating birds, including chickadees, jays, nuthatches, titmice, and woodpeckers. They're also tops with game birds like wild turkeys and quail. Lacking the necessary whacking power to get at acorn nutmeats themselves, smaller birds such as buntings, finches, juncos, and sparrows will clean up crumbs dropped by larger birds or acorns smashed by the bird-feeder filler (that's you).

Oak (Quercus spp.) trees of any kind are magnets for birds when the acorns are ripe for picking, which may be late summer to fall, depending on the oak species. Beating the birds to the harvest may sound a little mean, but you're really just stockpiling acorns for winter feeding when acorns can be hard to find.

Meaty acorns taste bitter to us, but they are beloved by birds, from chickadees to wild turkeys. Stockpile a few in the fall to offer as winter feeder treats.

Plant for the Future

MATURE OAKS add majesty to a landscape, but even young oak trees are of great value to birds. Many oaks begin producing acorns when they're 5 to 7 years old, and the crop only gets better as the trees mature. Even before they start to bear acorns, young oaks provide homes for tasty caterpillars and other bird- nourishing insects.

Before you plant, make sure you have room for an oak. Squint your eyes and picture a 100-foot-tall giant in your site, not that 4-foot nursery specimen you've been looking at. To keep maintenance to a minimum, choose an oak species that's native to your region rather than a nonnative species that may struggle in your local soil and climate.

Check your local nursery or refer to "Resources" on page 348 for nurseries that specialize in native plants. Or you can go the freebie route and simply plant a few of the acorns you've collected. Wrap the acorns loosely in a little cage of 1/2-inch-mesh hardware cloth to protect them from squirrels, then set them in the ground about 3 inches deep. Cover with a thin layer of fall leaves, and mark the spot with a plant label stake as a reminder to watch for sprouts in the spring.

Harvesting, Storing, and Serving Acorns

It doesn't take a lot of effort to gather a supply of acorns for winter bird feeding. Just fill your pockets whenever you notice the fallen nuts on your nature hikes or while strolling your yard. Although some acorns taste sweet to human palates and others are extremely bitter, birds seem to appreciate all of them.

Some acorns begin to germinate soon after hitting the ground, while others need a rest period over winter before they sprout. To keep your acorns fresh, store them outdoors or in an unheated garage in a moisture-proof metal container with a secure lid, so that squirrels don't help themselves to your hoard. When you want to give your feeder birds a treat, put a handful of acorns in an old sock, fold over the top, and use a hammer to split open the acorns. Pour the broken nuts into a tray feeder and sit back to watch the show.

Age

Our studies of captive birds indicate that if a bird manages to avoid predators, disease, accidents, and starvation, it can achieve a ripe old age of 10 years or more. Sheltered from natural disaster, robins have been reported to live as long as 15 years, and a captive cardinal reached the rather incredible age of 28 years!

Unfortunately, in the wild, birds rarely achieve their potential life span. Many of them live a very short life: from 6 months to a year or two, with an estimated two-thirds of birds that reach flying stage never making it to their first birthday. Records retrieved from banded birds show that representatives of many species, from chickadees and goldfinches to grosbeaks and jays, manage to notch 5 years or more, with some lasting into their teens. In general, very small birds such as warblers have shorter lives than larger birds. Hawks, owls, geese, and gulls and other seabirds hold the old-age records for birds: Some individuals have thrived for more than 40 years.

If you can distinguish an individual bird in your backyard, perhaps because of albinism or unusual behavior or song, you can keep track of its age yourself. A tufted titmouse with a white tail feather visited my feeder for 6 years, then disappeared in year 7. A blue jay that produced a distinctive imitation of a red-tailed hawk scream was a feeder patron and a nesting resident for 4 years.

About two-thirds of the birds that reach flying stage never make it to their first birthday.

Albinism

Birds of a feather flock together, and those birds that display the white feathers characteristic of albinism may not be accepted among their species. A flock of birds may harass or shun a mostly white bird, perhaps because its high visibility draws the attention of predators.

Partially albinistic birds are an oddity but not a real rarity. Once you begin watching the birds around you, you're likely to spot a robin or house sparrow or other bird with white feathers where there should be color. Stress or shock, injury, environmental factors, or genetics may cause the lack of pigment in the colorless plumage. Complete albinos, which lack pigment even in their bill, legs, and eyes so that these features show up as pink, are much rarer than partial albinos.

Identifying a bird with mostly or totally white feathers is tricky. Bird watchers must rely on body shape, song, or behavior clues to provide enough information to pinpoint the species.

Birds that normally are brown or black like this robin are more likely to display albinistic feathers than brightly colored birds such as goldfinches and tanagers.

Aloes and Agaves

Attract hummingbirds, orioles

Spiky, stiff-leaved aloes (Aloe spp.) and agaves (Agave spp.) hail from desert country, and so they make great garden plants in warm, dry climates. Agaves are American plants and are a familiar sight in the Southwest, where their tall flowering stalks attract thirsty hummingbirds. Aloes, including the well-known Aloe vera, come from Africa.

Separating aloes from agaves can be a challenge because the plants look similar. Some agaves even go by the common name "aloe," like the American aloe (Agave americana), better known as century plant.

These plants are a prickly bunch overall. They grow in a cluster of spearlike, succulent leaves armed with sharp spines to deter thirsty desert animals from munching on the juicy leaves. At bloom time, a flow ering stalk arises, bearing clusters of tubular flowers. In some species, the main plant dies after flowering, and new plants form around the "parent."

Agaves and aloes are at home in desert gardens, where their nectar-rich blooms draw crowds of hummingbirds and orioles. Outside of USDA Zone 8 or 9, treat them as indoor-outdoor plants: Keep them on a sunny windowsill in winter, then move them outside in summer. To encourage flowering, withhold water for 6 to 8 weeks in winter and early spring, then water well to mimic desert rains.

Some large agaves such as the century plant may take 20 years or more to bloom.

Altruism

Birds look out for each other in fascinating ways. A covey of quail usually posts a lookout bird, who alerts the others if danger threatens. The sentry may choose an elevated perch, the better to see its surroundings. Although this conspicuous watch post increases the danger for the individual bird (from hawks, particularly), it provides safety for the flock. Doves and pigeons, too, may keep watch for others of their kind when feeding.

Jays and crows act like the police officers of the bird world, alerting all within hearing when a predator threatens. Of course, jays aren't above using their raucous alarm call to clear a feeder area so that they can have it all to themselves.

During nesting season you may see one of the most amazing acts of bird altruism in action. Tree-climbing snakes and squirrels, which have a hearty appetite for bird eggs and nestlings, often run into a full-bird defense when approaching a nest. Usually the nest owner raises the initial alarm, and every nesting bird in the area quickly joins in the attack. With loudly flapping wings and dive-bombing threats, the birds try to deter the snake, and they are often successful. This is an example of reciprocal altruism: The adult birds, no matter what species, vigorously defend the endangered young, and should the need arise, their young will also be guarded by this band of protective parents.

Learn to recognize the alarm calls of your local birds, and hurry to the scene when you hear them. You may witness a fascinating life or death struggle or even help deter a predator in search of avian prey.

Adult birds will band together to protect nestlings--even of other species-- that are in danger. Amaranth

Attracts juncos, tree sparrows, and many other seed eaters

Bird brains never have to worry about making grain into flour, which is why amaranth remains a favorite food crop with our avian pals. When a beak is your main utensil, tiny amaranth seeds will do just as well as fat kernels of wheat. (Humans have a different perspective, which is why ancient amaranth, once a widespread grain crop in hot, dry places of the world, lost favor to easier-to-handle grains.)

Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) is perhaps the most well-known amaranth. Tough and hardy, it pops up everywhere--much to the delight of small birds that feast upon its prolific seeds all winter long.

You're likely to spot pigweed sprouting near your bird feeder, thanks to deposits from your feeder guests. If you let a few plants grow, you'll find they're as popular with birds as your feeder. And the tough, densely branched plants make great shelter for small birds, all the way through winter. Let frost- killed pigweed stems stand and you'll see juncos, tree sparrows, and other seed eaters amid the plants.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0875968341
• ISBN 13: 9780875968346
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 384