We had an American Goldfinch visit our thistle/nyjer feeder! Yes, I know that American Goldfinches visit thistle bird feeders throughout the U.S., but they are uncommon in our area. Our bird feeders usually are visited by the Lesser Goldfinch.
Tomorrow we participate in the Portal Christmas Bird Count. We will post the results when we get them.
Coffee mugs are filled. The curtain in front of the sliding glass doors is open. Bring on the birds! Oh oh some of the bird feeders are not completely full. It seems that the Pine Siskins and Lesser Goldfinches have about emptied the thistle feeders. The quail have very little bird seed in either platform bird feeder. The tube bird feeder is only about half full.
I look at Tom and he gives me a pained look. We had talked about it being time to clean all of the bird feeders. With most of the feeders close to empty today is the day.
It really is not that big of job. The oriole feeder and one platform are made out of recycled material so we simply brush all loose material off, spray them down with a mild bleach solution, rinse with the hose and wait for them to dry before we refill them.
The tube bird feeder had a bottom that comes off. Again just take the feeder apart, spray with the bleach solution, rinse with the hose and let dry.
The cedar platform feeder takes a little more time, The perforated bottom comes out so that gets the usual spray, but the cedar had to be brushed with a soft wire brush to remove the bird waste.
Our hummingbird feeders get changed about every three days, so we can skip them today.
Cleaning bird feeders may not be the most fun part of feeding birds, but it is a very important one. Cleaning all of these different bird feeders only took about a half an hour. Cleanliness is important even to birds. After all would you rather eat at a nice clean restaurant or one that might not have such high standards?
Mother Nature must have read my blog about watching the snow flakes. Yesterday morning she graced us with a dusting of snow that stayed until about 9:30 before melting.
You can see snow sticking to our cedar platform feeder, our recycled platform feeder, our recycled oriole feeder, our stainless steel thistle feeder, our triple tube feeder, the plants and ground.
OK, Ok, I know that everyone up north would not consider this really snow. I was born and raised in South Dakota so I do know what a real snow storm is and I apologize to all of you who now live in South Dakota. I understand that you had to have the National Guard called out to help with the storm about a month ago.
But that being said, we had snowflakes in the air this morning while we enjoyed our ritual of full coffee mugs in front of the sliding glass doors. The flakes melted seconds after hitting the ground. While I was enjoying the snowflakes, Tom said “look what came in for the first time this winter”.
I checked the cedar platform feeder to find the large flock of White-crowned Sparrows. On the recycled platform feeder there were Lincoln’s, Black-throated, and Brewer’s Sparrows. On the oriole feeder the Cactus Wren was enjoying the PB and J. All of these had been coming in on a regular basis.
Then the flash of yellow caught my attention. There on the stainless steel thistle feeder were nine Pine Siskins! They were the first for this winter. Welcome Back! We will now have to hang the thistle socks so there is plenty to share with the Lesser Goldfinches.
