Tom's Bird Feeders and Reptile Supplies

We are going on vacation!  Tom’s folks live in Gillette, Wyoming and are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.  There will be family reunion and all 7 of Tom’s brothers and sisters will be there. I think it will be the first time all 7 will be together since we celebrated the folk’s 50 anniversary.

After the family reunion we will head to South Dakota to visit our daughter and her family.  She and her husband have their hands full.  They recently added twin girls to their family.

Tom has volunteered us to babysit so our “kids” can have a night out.  When Sena, our daughter, heard the offer, she let out the type of squeal we have not heard since she was in high school and the right boy called to ask her out.  We may want to set a curfew.

Speaking of anniversaries, Tom and I celebrated our 33rd on October 11.  People have asked us how we knew we had chosen the right mate.  I think any last minute jitters were squelled when he asked me if I would mind stopping at a sewage lagoon on our honeymoon.  There had been Black-necked Stilts spotted there and it would be a lifer for both of us.  This was a match made in heaven!

We have often heard the comment “I don’t feed birds because I travel and I don’t want to make them dependent on our feeding.”  Often we are asked about this at our booth at various birding festivals and trade shows.  For the longest time I really didn’t have a good answer based on facts.  Now I do.  Margaret Brittingham at the University of Wisconsin’s Wildlife Ecology Department conducted a three year study, tracking 576 Black-capped Chickadees and found no difference in the rates of survival of feeder visitors to wild foragers.  Her study indicates that feeder birds obtained only 20 to 25% of their daily energy requirements from feeder food.  However, when temperatures dropped below 10 degrees Fahrenheit the chickadees increasingly turned to feeder seeds.  The goal of Brittingham’s study was to learn whether birds become dependent on feeders and loose the ability to forage in the wild.  Her study did not support that premise.  The specific citation for this study is Journal of Field Ornithology, 63(2):190-194:  Does Winter Bird Feeding Promote Dependency, by Margaret C. Brittingham and Stanley A. Temple.

With this said, let’s get out there and put up the bird feeders.  Birds are colorful and interesting.  They provide a wonderful link for both children and adults with the natural world around us.  Studies show that relaxing and enjoying the birds coming into a feeder reduces stress.  These are good things for you and your family.  The food does help the birds out so it is a win-win situation.  And you will not make them dependent on your feeding in the process.

This last week-end we were vendors at a craft and hobby show in Elfrieda, AZ.  It was a one day show, but was fairly close to home and gave a chance for us to display our thistle feeders, hummingbird feeders and all the rest of our bird feeders.

We noticed an older gentleman standing back away from our booth and just listening to us answer questions about the bird feeders and help with identifying some species.  He would wander away, but always seemed to return.

After the  crowd thinned out a bit, he walked over to the thistle socks and picked one up.  When I asked if he had any questions he started to tell me that he wasn’t really a bird watcher, but had just “kinda noticed the birds in his yard a few weeks ago”.

I asked a few more questions and the whole story came out.  I just have to share it with you.

It seems that “Country Grandpa” has always lived in a rural area and has retired from a large ranching operation to just keeping a few goats and chickens.  His son had recently married a woman with a young girl and they came to visit for the first time last summer.  His new granddaughter “City Girl” was born and has spent her life in the Philadelphia area.  Country Grandpa’s wife had died recently and he was worried what he would do with a “City Girl” for a week.

His son reassured him that he would bring things for her to do, but to just treat City Girl like you would any other child that came to visit.

The first morning Country Grandpa took City Girl to help him feed the goats.  The goats bumped into City Girl, nibbled at her fingers and smelled funny.  City Girl returned to the house with tears welling in her eyes and needing her mommy.

The second morning, after assuring City Girl that she would not have to enter the goat pen, County Grandpa took her to help feed the chickens.  City Girl got chicken poop on her Hanna Montana shoes.  That was apparently the worst thing in the world.  County Grandpa has struck out again.

That afternoon after plying City Girl with Kool-Aide to come out on the porch and the promise of a shopping trip to town to buy her favorite food for supper, City Girl noticed that there were birds in the trees in the backyard.  She said that they were smaller than the ones at the park at home, but people liked to feed them popcorn.  She asked County Grandpa if he fed the birds and could she help him do that?

Country Grandpa and City Girl headed to town to buy a bird feeder and seed.  They put the bird feeder up that afternoon and the next morning City Girl noticed some brown birds coming to the feeder.  She asked County Grandpa what kind they were.  The wise and wonderful daughter-in-law said that the birds were the same color as City Girl’s Brownie troop’s uniforms so they should call those birds Brownie Birds.

The next bird that came in had yellow eyes and a bill that turned down like he was frowning.  He also scared the Brownie Birds away.  He became known as Bully Bird (curved-billed thrasher).

County Grandpa then saw a bird that had a feather sticking out funny on his head and some red, but not enough to be a cardinal, it was just kind of a dull looking cardinal.  County Grandpa named him “Arizona Cardinal” (pyrrhuloxia) because some times watching the Arizona Cardinal football team om TV was dull. (Opinions expressed by Country Grandpa are not necessarily those of Tom’s Bird Feeders.)

The next bird was named “Mrs. Liby” (cactus wren) because she always sat up in the top of the tree and scolded everyone and sounded really bad.  It seems Mrs. Liby was the playground supervisor at City Girl’s school.

Country Grandpa had stopped by our booth to see if we had a used bird book so he could learn the name of the birds before City Girl came for her next visit.  I helped him identify the birds he had seen, but after looking through the book he decided that he liked the names he and City Girl had picked out.

He said that he was sure we thought it was silly, us being biologist and all.  I reminded him that my husband’s name is Thomas but I call him Tom.  It was his nickname, and in Country Grandpa’s yard the birds just used their nicknames.

After a rough start, I think City Girl and Country Grandpa are on their way to a great relationship, all because of some sparrows sitting in a tree.

As dedicated bird enthusiasts, Nancy and I do about anything we can to attract more birds to our property.  A couple of years ago we put up one of our recycled oriole bird feeders which has two bowls for grape jelly and a couple of pegs to impale orange halves which our orioles love.  We have three oriole species, the Bullock’s, Hooded and Scott’s and all three are common here in Portal during the summer.  However, as summer waned and the orioles headed further south for the winter, visitors to this particular feeder waned also.  Many of our winter residents like the grape jelly we put in the bowls, but numbers were still down.  Then a thought crossed my mind (they don’t always cross there).  When we lived in South Dakota, many species used to come into our suet bird feeders with peanut butter flavored suet.  Would they come into peanut butter placed in the second bowl in our oriole feeder?  The answer was a resounding yes!!!  The setup with peanut butter in one bowl and grape jelly in the other has a steady line of birds of many species lining up to partake of these goodies.  Lovers of the peanut butter include our Cactus Wrens, thrashers of all species, chickadees, woodpeckers, titmice, warblers, bluebirds, towhees, White-crowned Sparrows and juncos.  Grape jelly lovers include the wrens, catbirds, flickers, mockingbirds, orioles, tanagers and warblers.  As you can see, both are quite the bird magnets. 

Over the last couple of years we have tried some variations on these items and we have found that creamy peanut butter mixed with dried bread or cereal crumbs and grape jelly work the best for attracting birds.  We have tried other forms of peanut butter, but this has worked the best for us, attracting more birds to our property.  We have also tried various other jellies, jams and preserves.  We have also tried various flavors of strained fruit flavored baby foods.  Some birds tried each of the variations, but, in the end grape jelly was the overwhelming favorite of the most species. 

Since prices for bird feed is going up with all of our other prices, we economize by buying our peanut butter and jelly at our local Dollar Store.  We pick up as many 32 ounce jars of grape jelly as we need for $1.00 each.  Peanut butter comes in 18 ounce jars for approximately $1.50 a jar.  At our feeders we go through a jar of jelly in about 10 days and a jar of peanut butter much faster, especially in the winter.  As we complain about the price of things in general, the beauty and wonder of the birds these items attract to our yard makes it all more than worth while and now our oriole feeder gets year around use.

It seems that peanut butter and jelly aren’t just for sandwiches anymore!!!