The Best Time To Hang a New Birdfeeder

No birds yet! The dropping level of seeds indicates the squirrels have visited, however.

A common frustration with wild bird feeding is how long it takes birds to notice (and visit) a new feeder. For those first several days, when the only attention you’ve attracted is from the neighborhood squirrels, it’s all too easy to wonder if the birds hold some grudge against you, or if you did something wrong.

In fact, this is totally normal. It can take a while for birds to even notice something new, and then longer before they feel safe venturing closer. Annoying, but typical. When I first put my back yard feeders up, mentioned in this post, it was almost three weeks before I saw many birds on them!

However, there is one trick you can use to get faster attention to a new feeder. The secret is low competition, great advertising, and honestly, a little bit of luck-- because the absolute best time to hang a new feeder is right after a snowstorm.

When fresh snow blankets the ground, the birds’ usual sources of food will be covered up as well. Without their favorite spots competing with your new feeders, the birds should be quicker to try something unfamiliar, to say nothing of desperate for something to eat.

Not much to eat here!

The snow also gives you a perfect opportunity to advertise your new feeder. First, pack down the snow under your feeder by stomping around, or smushing it down with something flat. (Otherwise the seed will just sink into the soft snow.) Once you have a nice dense layer, sprinkle plenty of black oil sunflower seeds on the packed snow. The dark seed contrasting with the white snow should catch the attention of birds searching for food, hopefully leading to your first feathered customers.

These days when I scatter seed after a snowfall, I have birds within minutes! 

You don't need a huge snowstorm for this method to work. Here the snow was only a couple inches deep.

To attract even more birds to your yard in the winter, you could also put out a heated birdbath. The birds' usual water sources are likely frozen or covered with snow, so a source of fresh water will be very welcome to local birds. You might even attract species that don't eat bird seed, like bluebirds or robins. You can buy a bird bath heater for about $40, or you could put out a pan of fresh water each morning just until it freezes, then bring it back inside to thaw. I recently ordered a heater for my birdbath, so while it didn’t arrive in time for our first snowstorm, I should have it in use before the end of the winter. (Stay tuned!)

In order to survive, birds need the right combination of food, water, and shelter. The more of these that birds can find in your yard, the more likely they’ll show up.  By hanging a new feeder right after a snowstorm, when food is desperately needed, you’ll likely get a faster response than when natural foods are easy to find. Win-win!

I hope you enjoy watching birds in your yard this winter, along with any other animals that might show up, like squirrels, rabbits, deer, and even foxes. I’d love to hear about what you see!

Once the birds are drawn to your yard, they'll soon explore your feeders as well. This Song Sparrow looks pretty cozy as more snow falls.

Wildlife Garden Tools: Native Plant Finders

Want to help wildlife in your yard? Try growing the plants they’re already used to in the wild, also known as native plants. For gardeners who aren’t sure how to start building backyard habitat, there are lots of native plant resources online. I’ve compiled a few that I find useful. Whether you’re hoping to attract birds, butterflies, or bees, these sites can help you figure out what to grow.

This Carpenter Bee picked up both pollen and nectar from the Swamp Milkweed in my yard

The National Wildlife Federation's plant finder has you enter your zip code to see a list of native plants for your area, ranked by how many caterpillar species (butterflies as well as moths) each plant supports. Since most birds rely on caterpillars to feed their babies, this site can also help you support birds as well as butterflies and moths. Yum!

The Audubon Society also offers a native plant finder that is based on your zip code. You’ll get a list of plants for your area that are easy to grow and should be available at native plant nurseries. Beside each plant’s description you’ll also see thumbnails of the birds it attracts. Audubon also lists nearby nurseries (and their web sites). identifying types of birds that may be attracted to each suggested plant, and basic appearance and culture needs for each plant. There’s even a “Buy Now” button for each plant, with options of either “buy local” (nearby Audubon chapters that offer plant services, nearby native plant nurseries) or “buy on Amazon.” Before you click “buy on Amazon,” you can follow a link to read tips about buying plants online.

Monarchs love late-booming flowers like these asters.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Texas hosts helpful resources about native plants on its web site. You can find information about commercially available plants that are native to your state, explore plants that are especially good for bees or for hummingbirds, and even find a list of nurseries that carry native plants. You’re supposed to be able to narrow that supplier list by state or zip code, but that tool seemed broken as I write this. A workaround is just to click “show all suppliers,” and scan the list to find nurseries or seed sources that are near you.

The Mt. Cuba Center, in Delaware, is a native plants botanic garden. While the garden is closed during the winter, the web site has lots of information about native plants for the Mid-Atlantic area. It won’t help you much if you live in another part of the country, but the site does give you much more detail about the specific plants and their culture & habitat needs than National Wildlife Federation’s tool. You can also refine the list by plant type, amount of sun needed, foliage type, and/or flower color, to find just the right plant for your garden.

Lastly, the Habitat Network and Project Yardmap are great resources that unfortunately have just lost funding. All of the articles are still available, and will eventually be moved over to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds web site. Until January 31, 2019, you can still find resources at http://content.yardmap.org/learn/, such as pictures of birds in your area sorted by what kind of food they like. You can click individual birds to find out their specific plant preferences and other habitat needs. 

Goldfinches love seed-bearing flowers like this sunflower. Coneflowers are also popular.

Of course, even better than online plant finders like these would be personal observation and experience. If you’re willing to wait a year or two before deciding, then you could try to find the plants on your list in the wild. That way you can see how it looks through all seasons, and observe how many birds, butterflies, or bees visit.

But you probably don’t want to wait that long. (I know I usually don’t!) So your next best choice would be to ask for advice and impressions from folks who have long experience with the plant. If you don’t have neighbors like this, you could try social media—there are tons of gardeners online who are happy to share our knowledge. You could also ask me in the comments below!

Whatever you choose to do, and whatever plants you select, have fun! Even “failed” gardening still gets us outside and brings us more in touch with nature. So in that sense, there’s really no 100% wrong plant selection.  Just keep planting more, you’ll eventually find the ones that work best.

Achievement Unlocked: My First Mega!

How did you do on your goals for 2018? I managed to complete one of mine in the last few weeks of the year: to spot (and log on eBird) at least 150 different bird species. Yay! My 150th bird wasn’t exactly ordinary, either: a species that’s only been seen in the US one other time. That’s what birders call a mega rarity, or mega. Although I’ve been birding for several decades now, this is the first mega I’ve ever chased.

I’ve seen locally rare birds before, like the Snowy Owls that occasionally make their way south to the mid-Atlantic area. But megas are another level. The American Birding Association (ABA) classifies birds in six levels, or codes, of rarity for the U.S. and Canada.

• Codes 1 and 2: Regularly occurring North American birds.
• Code 1 species are widespread and usually numerous.
• Code 2 species are harder to find because their range is restricted, there are fewer of them, or they are very secretive.
• Code 3: Rare. These species occur in very low number, but show up annually in the ABA checklist area. Some are visitors, others are year-round residents.
• Code 4: Casual. These species are usually not observed every year, but have been recorded six or more times, including three or more in the past 30 years. That way a pattern can be discerned.
• Code 5: Accidental. These are species that have been recorded five or fewer times in the ABA area, or have fewer than three records in the past 30 years. Because of the infrequency of sightings, birds in this group don’t seem to have a pattern of when/why they show up in our area.
• Code 6: Cannot be found. Species in this group are probably or actually extinct or extirpated from the ABA area, or else all survivors are in captivity.

Of course, each bird species has its own range and preferred habitat, and that may not include all of the ABA territory. So a lot of code 1 or code 2 birds would be exceedingly rare outside of their normal territory, for example finding a code 1 Juniper Titmouse here in suburban Maryland. Generally, though, the higher code birds are harder to find.

The bird that put me at 150 species for the year, a Great Black Hawk (Buteogallus urubitinga), is in the coveted code 5 group. The first time one was seen in the US was in April, 2018, on South Padre Island in Texas. After that, one was found in Maine in August, then seen sporadically until it showed up in Portland in late November. At that point it settled into Deering Oaks Park, a small city park with a multitude of very well-fed squirrels. It even turns out that the Texas and Maine birds are the same individual, with an identical pattern of flecks on the underside of the bird’s wings, as described in BirdWatching.  Now that’s one far-traveling bird—from its normal range in central or South America to Texas, and then all the way up to Maine!

I know several birders who drove from my area all the way to Maine just for the chance to see this hawk. Seeing the bird wasn’t my primary reason for going to Portland this winter, though—I was heading up to visit family for Christmas.

Our trip almost didn’t happen, though. A week before we were supposed to drive up, I developed an extremely painful kidney infection. Ow! I had to go to urgent care while visiting my mom in Florida, and got put on some heavy-duty antibiotics. They couldn’t work fast enough for our next trip to Maine, though, I still wasn’t well enough a week later, when we had planned to drive up. I knew I was truly sick when even the thought of seeing such a rare bird wasn’t tempting.

But we did make it to Maine, only a few days late. I owe a huge thanks to my wonderful husband for doing all of the driving. Thanks, hon!

Anyway, we were busy with family celebrations all day on Christmas, but I kept checking the Cumberland county rare bird alerts, following other birders’ accounts of their sightings and hoping the hawk would still be there the next day.

My first try for the bird was not successful. Victor, my sister Cory, and I drove over to Deering Oaks about 10:00 am, late by most birding standards. We wandered the park, peering up into every tree and shrub, but no luck. A few other groups of birders were there too, some with really high-powered scopes and cameras. One birder pointed out a Red-tailed Hawk in some nearby trees, but nobody had found the Great Black Hawk. We decided to go elsewhere, and maybe try for the hawk again later.

I love that the city posted these signs all over the park, helping ensure folks treated the bird respectfully. The numbers to call in case you observed the hawk in distress are a nice touch too.

The second time we looked for the bird, after some lunch with my dad, luck was finally in our favor. The hawk had been found by others by the time we got to the park. It was easy to spot, by the huge cluster of birders admiring it from a short distance away. The hawk was perched in a tree beside the main road, and seemed totally unfazed by cars driving past mere feet away. A jogger even ran right under its perch, and the hawk seemed only barely curious. It probably had just eaten, and was still feeling the food coma. (Who knew birds got food comas like we do?)

Unfortunately, I had left my camera at home in Maryland. Arrgh! However, a very kind birder who was allowing passersby to look at the bird through his scope, also let me take a hasty digiscoped photo with my cell phone. It’s not the greatest, but hopefully good enough for proof.

The famous Great Black Hawk, perched about 15 feet above the sidewalk.

What a cool experience. Nobody knows how long the Great Black Hawk will stick around. Will Maine’s frigid winter weather be too much for this bird? If it decides to move on, where will it show up next? So much mystery still surrounds it.

If you want to see uncommon birds like the Great Black Hawk, you can sign up for rare bird alerts on eBird-- either for the whole ABA range, or just for a particular county, state or province. You'll need a free eBird account, easy to create if you don't have one already. Then eBird will email you daily or hourly (your choice) about any reported rarities in the area(s) you select.  Although I’d never chased a rarity before, I had such fun seeing this one I set myself a goal to see two more rarities this year. Wish me luck!

By the way, I finished my antibiotics a few days after seeing the Great Black Hawk, and am back to 100 percent.