OurRiverPlace: Birds, Birds, Birds, all things Birds

For wonderful articles and beautiful pictures of birds, I would recommend this magazine - the website is www.birdsandblooms.com there is especially good articles about hummingbirds and the bonus is that there is great articles about flowers and gardening as well!

A turkey vulture looking for small short legged dogs perhaps. Last year when the bridge was in place!!

Lots more bird pictures to come.....

Already thinking about spring? I am!! Enough with the snow! IF you want a little project to get you in the springtime mood why not build your own birdhouse? I found a great chart that gives you the optimum dimensions for a birdhouse for many different types of birds. So check out my page called "Birdhouse Building Guidelines" taken from my favourite bird magazine "Birds and Blooms".

Birdhouse Building Guidelines

February 19th, 2013
While we were at the property this weekend, we were discussing suet. We really noticed that different birds show up when there is different types if suet put into the feeder. For an example, we had been using a suet cakes purchased at Canadian Tire, called "Nutty Safari" (I know, lots of room for jokes!!). We had been getting woodpeckers (both hairy and downy) like crazy. Well the 'Nutty Safari' ended and so did the woodpeckers!! We then tried a bar called "Fruit and Berry" and it was not a hit. Maybe one or two chickadees. So we raced to Home Hardware in Durham to see what we could get. One of their cakes containing nuts was called "High Energy" and showed a Blue Jay picture on the packaging. Since it said it had nuts (although not very visible) we thought we could coax our woodpecker friends back.
That was Saturday......unfortunately Woody did not show up again while we were there. We had tons of chickadees, they really enjoyed it, and lots of little tree sparrows as well as Junco's. But no woodpeckers.

So I guess its off to Canadian Tire for a `Nutty Safari`!!!

I also found some recipes (in you guessed it.... Birds and Blooms) for homemade suet that I am going to try this year. Previously I have used the pine cone peanut butter balls to great effect - they are dead easy - I used to get my son to make them with me as a nice little winter project. Find this and other recipes for the birds at:

These Recipes are for the Birds!

For your info.........

Food and the Birds It Attracts

Black oil sunflower: Northern cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, grosbeaks and jays

Hulled (cracked) sunflower: Juncos, doves, sparrows, jays, titmice, American robins, grosbeaks, finches and woodpeckers

Niger Seed (thistle): Finches, chickadees and titmice

Suet: Woodpeckers, jays, chickadees, brown creepers and nuthatches

Safflower seeds: Northern cardinals, grosbeaks, doves, chickadees and finches

Wild bird seed mix: Sparrows, juncos, doves, chickadees, titmice, finches, pigeons, nuthatches and jays

Sugar water: Hummingbirds and orioles

Fruit and jelly: Orioles, catbirds, northern mockingbirds, American robins and tanagers

Mealworms: Bluebirds, American robins and northern mockingbirds

February Bird photo's Click here then on the link to view them

April Bird photo's Click here then on the link to view them

May 4th, 2013 we went to visit my in-laws in a new trailer site that they have set up near Copetown, Ontario and they have a little creek behind them which winds it way into a Marshy type area. There was quite a few birds flying around the creek but what really caught my eye was a very large Blue Heron fishing for his supper in the pond area about 100 meters from the trailer - I did get a few great pictures.......