Claire -
I must tell you that your birding excitement has finally motivated me to set out some feeders with my kids. We found a simple feeder model at a website I think you pointed me to, made from juice cartons, and they now hang around my yard with black sunflower seeds in them. We have cardinals, black-capped chickadees and house sparrows, along with squirrels, visiting in abundance! Thank you for getting us started -- very simply, but it's still exciting....
Best,
ML

ML:
That's great to hear - the important thing is just noticing the birds and other wildlife, the technology is a different level.

It's hard in cold weather to give them water, but they do appreciate it. When it warms up you and your kids would enjoy watching the birds splashing happily in a bird bath. The most successful ones I have are just big plastic plant saucers lying on the ground filled with water. They're not very deep; just right for a little bird.

In the winter they freeze up quickly, so I turn them over and stomp lightly on the bottom to get the ice out. There's a bit of an art to the stomping - I haven't quite mastered it and I've cracked a few saucers.

But this afternoon I was inordinately pleased to refill the saucer and after I went inside I saw a robin (my one resident robin) immediately hop over to it and stand there for a long time sipping and gaziing around like a colleague at the water cooler.

And don't get me started on the mourning doves roosting under the osmanthus....

Claire

I just got a reminder email about the GBBC:

"Project FeederWatch Electronic Newsletter
February 12, 2007

The tenth annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is coming up February 16-19. Help create a mid-winter snapshot of where the birds are by counting birds at any location for at least 15 minutes on one or more of the count days. Last year, participants recorded more than 7.5 million birds of 622 species across the United States and Canada and submitted 60,503 checklists, just a few hundred shy of an all-time record! Help put your birds and your community on the map. Enter your tallies on the Great Backyard Bird Count web site to share your results and to be automatically entered in a prize drawing for binoculars, bird books, bird feeders, and more. Visit http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc to see the results, view the photo gallery, or enter your counts.

If your Project FeederWatch (PFW) count days fall during the GBBC, you must send your tallies to the GBBC web site in addition to PFW if you want to see your numbers to appear in the GBBC results for your locality and state.

The rules for counting for the Great Backyard Bird Count are a little different than for FeederWatch. For the Great Backyard Bird Count
you can report any birds you see, even those birds flying overhead that don't count for FeederWatch. You can also submit a separate checklist for each locale on every day that you count.

Thanks for your help in letting us know where the birds are during the GBBC weekend!
**********************************************************
"

Claire

Thanks for the tip, Claire. I had seen the article in "Birds and Blooms" but had forgotten to go to the website. I don't have a big variety, but I think mine deserve to be included!

Results are posted as the counts come in. Watch the red dots spread across the country.

Great Backyard Bird Count

Claire

The GBBC is over but the results are still being posted. More than 70,000 checklists have been submitted to date!

It's fun to check the state tallies. Did you know that there are northern cardinals in Hawaii?

tally of northern cardinals in Hawaii

Maybe they're New Englanders on vacation?

Claire

Thank you for reminding me of this. I did tally birds and just posted my results a couple hours ago, you have until Feb. 28 to record your results. It is interesting to see what birds are in your neighborhood. The site is full of statistics. It was funny, as I was watching the birds at my feeder, two mute swans flew overhead to visit the pond near me. Hey, I included them in my tally, also the red-tail keeping on eye on things from high.

That's one of the nice things about the GBBC - if you can see it they want you to tally it. FeederWatch is more stringent: you can't count fly-bys; they want to know which birds are actually attracted to your feeder area.

Claire