Feed the birds this winter--and year around for fun--Part 4

Seriously, that water is clean, not muddy like it looks in this picture.

One last thing in this birdfeeding series, and this could be the most important thing we tell you:
OK, we’ve discussed where to feed the birds, what feeders to use and what to put in those feeders.
That’s all there is to it, right?
Well, no. When you eat, you like to have something to drink, don’t you? And you like to have something to bathe in, too, right?
We don’t bathe in our drinking water, but some creatures do, and they need a plentiful supply of it.
It’s up to you to provide that necessity, H2O, along with the food.
In fact, my good friend, Mike Doyen, who I believe is the state’s leading birding, for he devised the Great Missouri Birding Trail, told me that providing water at times is more important than providing food. They can usually find a little food in nature, but sometimes, water is so scarce that they can’t find it.
We’re heading into one of those periods, winter. Water turns to ice in winter, and sometimes stays that way for days, weeks, maybe more than a month. Oh, heaven help us, if it gets that cold and stays cold.
Mike showed me his watering trough, an big old skillet out back that he kept filled with water.
My wife had a concrete birdbath when we married, so we use that at The Ozarks Almanac. I even went to The Family Center a few years back when we got real serious about the birds, and I bought a heater that stays warm enough to keep the water thawed in the birdbath.

OK, that does it for our series on bird feeding and watering.
You can buy whatever blend of food you can afford and want to buy. You can do whatever you want about watering. There are all kinds of contraptions to buy, and I’m not opposed to doing so, I just don’t have the money for all that. I’ve seen a mister for hummingbirds. It isn’t expensive, but I’m on city water here, and I don’t want to add on any more gallons that I have to.
You do what you can afford and like to do. Or do nothing. Let the birds fend for themselves this winter. I hope, though, that we’ve created some interest in most of our readers to try caring for the birds. They can use the help, but most of it, it is just fun to have them around to look at.

Feed the birds this winter--and year around for fun--Part 3

Here is what we've been feeding the birds lately.

Yesterday, we talked about what feeders we use. Now here's what we put into those feeders each week.
For years, we bought and fed black oil sunflower seed only that we got from Sands Farm and Home, but Sands shut down. It was a great little store.
Then we started buying a mix from The Family Center, as well as thistle seed for the finches. We fed that for a few years.
Last year a new farm and home supply store opened here, Dickey Bub, which is a funny name that is combination of family names. It is a good store, and the price is right for wild bird seed. It is a True Value store, and we buy a 40-pound mix that contains cracked corn, milo, white millet, sunflower seed, calcium carbonate, white, vitamin A supplement, vitamin D3 supplement.
I know you’re going to tell me that is a lot of fillers, and perhaps so, but they eat it. They congregate in here and eat it. I fill the feeders on Saturday or Sunday and have to refill them in the middle of the week.
I told my wife that I thought we needed to go back to the black oil sunflower seed, so we bought a 50-pound bag of it. I put the sunflower seed in the cylindrical feeder and the mix in the red barn/schoolhouse feeder. The birds preferred the mix.
So I added sunflower seed to the rest of the mix, and they liked that. I think I will try to convince my wife to continue buying both, fortifying the mix with several scoops of black oil sunflower seed.
We still buy the thistle seed for the finches at The Family Center, because they sell it by the pound, and we bag it ourselves. My wife prefers that, so I do, too.
You can do a lot of research on what to feed. Go online and you’ll see all kinds of seeds that birds like including something called, of all things, rapeseed. What in the sam hill is that?
For The Ozarks Almanac, it boils down to this: What is available here? What can we afford? So far, we have found affordable seed that the birds eat, so that’s about all we care about.
The suit cakes we buy as we can find them on sale. You can spend a lot of money on suet cakes if you want to. We don’t want do and won’t. The birds eat what we place before them, unlike some children.

Tomorrow: Wrapping it up with the most important thing to do for the birds

Feed the birds this winter--and year around for fun--Part 2

Throw a scoop or two on the ground for the ground-feeders.

Today, we're going to tell you about the feeders we use at The Ozarks Almanac. You can see a picture of three of them in yesterday's post, which was Part 1 of this four-part series.

We want to appeal to the range of birds, so we have a range of feeders. I’m just missing one that I want, but I’ll have to build it, and I haven’t found the time yet.
For the finches, we have tube feeders and sock feeders that dispense the tiny seeds they like.
For the woodpeckers, we have suet feeders that hold the suet cakes.
For the cardinals, blue jays and others, we have a large cylindrical feeder with a perch around the bottom and holes that give access to the seeds. We also have a large feeder shaped like a red barn or a red schoolhouse, I’m not sure which. It has spring-activated perches on both sides that are supposed to keep squirrels out of the food.
We also use the ground to feed birds like large and beautiful mourning doves. They feed on the ground as do some other birds. I usually throw a scoop or two of bird food on the ground when I fill the feeders. Then as the birds feed on the feeders, they move them and knock down more seed to the ground.
What I’m missing is a platform feeder. All I need to do is sink two posts and then nail or screw a 1-by board  across the top. I’m not sure how wide it needs to be, 1x8, 1x10, 1x12. Not sure. Simple to put up, just haven’t got around to doing it, for I work another full-time manual-labor job and a half-time reporting job in addition to my sporadic writing here at The Ozarks Almanac.

Tomorrow: What we put in those feeders

Feed the birds this winter--and year around for fun--Part 1

Three of the feeders we use at The Ozarks Almanac, located next to a hedge.

We feed birds year-round at The Ozarks Almanac. I don’t know if that is good or bad for the birds. Is it making them dependent on us, raising up a generation of birds expecting handouts from us birdwatchers? I don’t know, but right or wrong, that’s what we do.
If you don’t feed the birds at your place, think about doing it this winter. Get started on it now, in fact. They are fun to watch, and they probably need the food in winter.
I am no expert on birding, but here’s what we do at The Ozarks Almanac.

Location

The bird feeders are on the east side between the house and the neighbor’s hedge that he doesn’t take care of very well. That may be a good thing, for birds like to have a refuge they can fly to after eating. They go back and forth from the hedge to the feeders at feeding time.
If there’s a problem with too much vegetation in the yard, it is probably from our side, not the neighbor’s hedge. We’ve got a big Nine Bark bush. It’s something my wife likes, but it has grown unruly. That and the Golden Currant bushes provide refuge for the birds during feeding, but they also provide shelter for the neighborhood cats.
We’ve got one cat that is ours, Buddy, but there are four feral cats that hang around The Ozarks Almanac, too, because they know they’ll get a free meal from time to time. I’ve found some feathers and twice I’ve seen a feral cat with a dead bird in its mouth, so I guess our bird sanctuary is a banquet hall for the ferals. I’m going to have to get out and trim back the Nine Bark, the Currant and some of the neighbor’s hedge so the birds have a clearer viewing range.
Despite all that, I think the location is good, for it is sunny the biggest part of the day, protected from the prevailing wind and provides good protection, as long as the birds stay out of the range of the cats.

Tomorrow: The feeders we use