The Joy of Feeding Birds

Autumn bird migration brings many beautiful species south to spend the winter in North Florida. These birds come to warmer climes joining others that stay with us year ‘round. The easiest way to attract and view these interesting birds up close is to offer the correct types of bird food.

Most ordinary mixed birdseed is loaded with red millet which has actually been bred to be distasteful to birds, but is included in some mixes because it is cheap. Chipping sparrows and white-throated sparrows, both winter migrants, along with resident rufoussided towhees and brown thrashers, prefer white proso millet. These four birds are ground feeders, often preferring flat, platform type feeders.

You cannot go wrong with black-oil sunflower seed for cardinals, bluejays, chickadees, titmice and white-breasted nuthatches. If you offer these birds standard mixed seed, they will throw out 90% while looking for the 10% sunflower. Use a tube feeder for sunflower distribution; you may want to spring for a squirrel or raccoon baffle to protect your investment in quality food.

Goldfinch and orioles may require special foods and feeders. Though goldfinch eat sunflower, they love nyjer seed, sometimes called thistle. Nyjer is a very small seed dispersed from a special feeder with small openings. An inexpensive goldfinch feeder is a nylon sack called a thistle sock. Orioles prefer four unique foods – sugar water, grape jelly, oranges and suet cakes made from beef fat. Some oriole feeders can dispense sugar water, jelly and an orange at the same time.

Suet cakes are also favorites of yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets and orange-crowned warblers, all winter migrants. These are some rather exotic names for some very small birds! Resident pine warblers and yellow-throated warblers seem to partake of suet only in winter when insect populations are down. These two species are strikingly beautiful and are always a joy to watch outside our window on the suet feeder.

The other dimension to attracting beautiful birds is the vegetation in your yard. Having a variety of trees and shrubs is desirable. Your yard should have both overstory trees like pines and oaks and understory trees such as dogwoods and redbuds. Lots of shrubbery is also desirable, offering cover from predators. Many shrubs and trees provide berries and seeds that sustain birds through the cold winter months. To attract robins or cedar waxwings, you must have berries on plants like holly, dogwood, cedar, pyracantha or Oregon grape.

Being aware of bird migration makes the changing seasons more interesting and enjoying the beauty and antics of birds at our feeders is a great way to spend a cold winter day. Providing them with a consistent and clean supply of food is rewarding, knowing it makes their search for sustenance a little easier.

Winter Hummingbirds

Banding a Calliope Hummingbird, Photo by Fred Bassett

Every January Fred Bassett or Fred Dietrich, licensed bird banders and volunteers for the Hummer/Bird Study Group (HBSG), speaks at Native Nurseries. They begin their talks by telling us that only one species of hummingbird – the Ruby-throated – is shown to live east of the Mississippi in older field guides. This is the hummingbird that is most familiar to us; they usually show up in our yards in March after wintering in Central America. They visit our feeders, feast on nectar and insects, and nest here in the summer. By mid-October most have migrated across the Gulf of Mexico to Central America.

However, through winter banding activities, HBSG has documented thirteen other hummingbird species east of the Mississippi. Most common in winter in Tallahassee is the Rufous Hummingbird, but they have also banded Calliope, Buff-bellied, Ruby-throated, Black-chinned, Costa’s, Broad-billed and Allen’s. In one Killearn yard alone, six different species of hummingbirds have been banded over the years.

Much to his surprise, a female Rufous Hummingbird banded by Fred Dietrich in Tallahassee a few years ago in mid-January was recaptured in Alaska on June 28th the same year. This is the longest documented migration of a hummingbird, 3,523 miles. She weighed 4.1 grams in Alaska, signaling that she was putting on weight for the southward migration. A normal weight is approximately 3 grams.

The western hummingbirds have probably been coming here for many years, but were not usually observed because feeders were taken down in September. Also, people are planting their yards with hummingbird plants that they can see from their windows and are noticing the birds more.

What did winter hummingbirds feed on before feeders and perennial gardens? Hummingbirds are frequent visitors to sapsucker wells. The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a winter migratory woodpecker that drills into trees to extract sweet sap. Hummingbirds also eat lots of insects.

Some folks in Tallahassee leave their feeders up all winter to attract hummingbirds, but December and January are the most likely months to see them. They will feed on sugar water from feeders, insects, nectar from perennials that overwinter due to recent mild winters, natural winter blooming plants and sap from sap wells. Just remember that if you decide to leave a feeder up over the winter, you will need to clean it regularly, though not as often as a summer feeder.

The Hummer Bird Study Group encourages people to keep their hummingbird feeders up in winter. If you have a hummingbird after November 15th, contact Fred Dietrich at fdietrich@gmail.com and he will try to coordinate a visit to your yard to identify and band “your” bird. This is a fascinating experience. Fred always photographs the homeowner holding and releasing the banded bird. He says some people are moved to tears by the experience of holding such an exquisite creature in their hands. Fred started the winter hummingbird season off this year by observing three Black-chinned Hummingbirds, one in Killearn, one in Betton Hills and another near Raa Avenue in late October.

Homegrown taters!

To me, all homegrown vegetables taste better than store bought. A few, however, taste so much better homegrown that I almost never bother buying them from the store. Tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli and cucumbers all fall into that category. I never thought that potatoes would be included until I finally grew them at home for the first time five years ago. A spud was a spud, I assumed, and they were so inexpensive in the grocery store anyways. The whole process of growing and “hilling” potatoes also intimidated me.

Indeed, I was wrong. I grew Red Pontiacs that first year and have ever since. Garden-fresh potatoes are so creamy and smooth, they truly taste as if they’ve already been buttered-up for you. My favorite recipe for them includes fresh garden sage leaves, and is so simple, easy and delicious, it has become one of my favorite dishes (I’ll include the recipe below). I love this recipe so much; I tried making it after I ran out of potatoes one year and substituted them with store-bought. Well I learned my lesson. The homegrown potatoes were what made the dish so delicious. Those grocery spuds tasted like wax in comparison. How disappointing. Potatoes are also pretty easy to grow. Here in Tallahassee they are traditionally planted around Valentine’s Day, and harvested by May. My friends Katie and Aaron, who run Full Earth Farm in Quincy, have a traditional Valentines Potato-date every February. There are many ways to plant potatoes, but I’ve been most successful with the following technique;

Make a trench 10 inches wide and 4 inches deep on level ground. Place a 2 inch layer of compost in the bottom. Cut Seed potatoes in halves or quarters, making sure there is at least one sprouting ‘eye’ in each piece. Allow cut potatoes to air-dry and callus over for a few days. Press each, cut side down, into the compost in the center of the trench to form a hill about 7 inches above the ground. I like to then cover them with mulch to prevent weeds.

By the end of April, the green tops will start yellowing and dying back and that means those little taters are sizing up underground. I use a garden fork to lift up the tubers with the least amount of damage. This is my favorite part of the growing process, because it feels like you’re digging up buried treasure. It’s a great activity for kids (of all ages). So set a potato-date and save this recipe for your harvest!

---

Roasted Sage Taters

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. 
2. Scrub and dry the potatoes. 3.Pour the oil into a heavy oven-proof skillet, preferably of cast iron, and spread evenly. Lay a thick bed of sage leaves flat on the oiled surface, completely covering the bottom of the pan.
4. Sprinkle the salt over the sage. It may look like too much salt, but it’s not.
5. Cut small potatoes in half or large ones in quarters and arrange, cut side down, on the sage.
6. Bake, uncovered, until the potatoes are tender and the cut sides are crusty brown, usually about 35 min.

Ingredients:

2 lb. Red Pontiac potatoes
2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
20-30 fresh sage leaves
1 tsp. coarse sea salt 4 servings