Prospective on the Outdoors - the Bird Feeder
I wrote to Marsh and Ellen Young to ask permission to use some of his Prospective on the Outdoors Columns that he wrote for Brown Thompson Newspapers when Allyn Brown was alive and editor of the Union City Times, Waterford Leader, Edinboro Independent, and Cambridge Springs Enterprise. Luckily for Union City, they gave me permission . The Youngs and the Fullers have been an important part of Union City history. This Prospective on the Outdoors column is from a bird feeding time in 1969 when his boys, Richard and Alan, were growing up.)
Prospective on the Outdoors- The Bird Feeder
By Marshal F. Young
In the late winter along about this time of year, as the late winter sun has freed a few patches of ground from the blanket of snow, there are two very special kinds of bird watchers: those who are avidly looking for a robin as that first harbinger of spring and those of us who have been enjoying birds all winter. Our household seems to be in the latter category.
This morning soon after daybreak, it looked like we had about three dozen hungry mouths drop in on us for breakfast. It was the usual gang hopping around in the two catalpa trees. Scratching on the ground and in the snow and inspecting the feeder were chickadees, nuthatches, our two male cardinals, two downy woodpeckers and 18 or 20 evening grosbeaks. They were all lecturing us on our tardiness in serving them breakfast.
We started feeding our winter birds about seven years ago. Our boys were small and the feeder was placed just outside their bedroom window. We enjoyed it from the time it was first installed, but these last two years have been doubly enjoyable. The boys are old enough now to be able to identify the birds as they come to the feeder. It isn’t enough now to have a downy woodpecker feeding on suet. We must know if it is male or female, adult or yearling, was it aggressive or timid? In other words, watching winter birds and their behavior involves more than tossing some seed in the feeder, patting yourself on the back for “saving the starving birds” and then forgetting about them.
Probably our winter birds do not need to be artificially fed through the winter. Any of us that are in the woods through the winter can attest to the number of healthy chickadees, nuthatches and other winter birds we find that apparently thrive on our winter cold. Nature is a stern taskmaster so only the fittest survive. How the law of “Survival of the Fittest” is affected by artificial feeding remains mostly a mystery.
Some observers seem to think the lovely and aggressive evening grosbeak has extended its winter range because of the greater number of winter feeding stations. I know we are seeing more evening grosbeaks this year than ever before. Whether this is a permanent pattern this year or it is just the result of a temporary factor largely remains unknown or whether this change, if permanent will suit the evening grosbeak or become for this beautiful olive yellow and black migrant, a disaster.
The worst thing a potential bird watcher can do is to start feeding in the early winter and then break faith and stop feeding. When birds learn that you place food for them every day, they become very dependent on that source of feed. Then, if you stop feeding suddenly during the winter, they are forced to look elsewhere, and if they don’t succeed in a time of highest completion, they died and that type of death is so unnecessary.
A little bird like the chickadee may lose one and a half grams of weight during a long winter night. That weight in the little bird would be equal to twenty pounds in a 150 pound person. A person or a small bird could not endure that kind of loss many days and live. Daily the chickadee must regain this loss.
The boys made up a list of our winter birds that we have seen this winter. It probably is representative of what anyone in our area could expect to see in an average winter season: downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker, tufted titmouse, blue jay, black capped chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, white breasted nuthatch, pine siskin, cardinal, junco, evening grosbeak, tree sparrow and house sparrow.
Feeding birds can be divided into two classes – seed eaters and insect eaters. The woodpeckers and creepers are insect eaters; all the other birds are seed eaters and in most cases the seed eaters also eat suet. The sparrows, cardinals and evening grosbeaks apparently eat only the seeds. The chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and blue jays eat most anything. Besides feeding suet, sunflower seeds, mixed seeds, wheat, cracked corn, bread, we serve a “specialty of the house,” the chickadees and nuthatches approve of. We have an old corn cob with a nail driven into the end that we tie in one of our catalpa trees. Twice a day I spread peanut butter over the cob. In the morning the boys quite often take a pint of different seeds to the feeder, their young Labrador pup goes along so she can proudly carry the empty can back to the house.
The birds cluster around and as soon as the boys dump in the seed, the birds swoop in and feed, all except two little chickadees, who are busy in the catalpa tree hopping around the old corn cob anxiously waiting for me to spread some peanut butter for them to eat.
I have always had a picture of the bird watcher as the classic old gent wearing plus-fours, goatee, and pince-nez, peering around a tree with binoculars, pointing at a “tweety bird” innocently sitting on a limb staring at the bird watch in shocked disbelief.
Somehow that cherished picture is moderating.
I, who a couple of winters ago couldn’t tell a chickadee from a red-breasted nuthatch am finding a little sympathetic ground on which to stand with the local bird watchers society.
The crowning achievement of my bird watching winter came two weeks ago as we were watching the birds at the feeder. That evening with a voice shaky with emotion, nose pressed against the window, I announced to one and all I saw a pine siskin. Everyone ran to the window, bird books in hand; my find was confirmed. There sat that beautiful, timid, little brown barred siskin. How dainty it looked as it carefully examined and then ate a few kernels of wheat before flying back to the woods. How good it felt, my first find. I had just joined the club.
Later, seven year old Alan came over and said, “Gee, Dad, how did you know that was a pine siskin? I thought it was a tree sparrow.”
Well, I’ll tell you, I grew six feet that day.
Prospective on the Outdoors- The Bird Feeder
By Marshal F. Young
In the late winter along about this time of year, as the late winter sun has freed a few patches of ground from the blanket of snow, there are two very special kinds of bird watchers: those who are avidly looking for a robin as that first harbinger of spring and those of us who have been enjoying birds all winter. Our household seems to be in the latter category.
This morning soon after daybreak, it looked like we had about three dozen hungry mouths drop in on us for breakfast. It was the usual gang hopping around in the two catalpa trees. Scratching on the ground and in the snow and inspecting the feeder were chickadees, nuthatches, our two male cardinals, two downy woodpeckers and 18 or 20 evening grosbeaks. They were all lecturing us on our tardiness in serving them breakfast.
We started feeding our winter birds about seven years ago. Our boys were small and the feeder was placed just outside their bedroom window. We enjoyed it from the time it was first installed, but these last two years have been doubly enjoyable. The boys are old enough now to be able to identify the birds as they come to the feeder. It isn’t enough now to have a downy woodpecker feeding on suet. We must know if it is male or female, adult or yearling, was it aggressive or timid? In other words, watching winter birds and their behavior involves more than tossing some seed in the feeder, patting yourself on the back for “saving the starving birds” and then forgetting about them.
Probably our winter birds do not need to be artificially fed through the winter. Any of us that are in the woods through the winter can attest to the number of healthy chickadees, nuthatches and other winter birds we find that apparently thrive on our winter cold. Nature is a stern taskmaster so only the fittest survive. How the law of “Survival of the Fittest” is affected by artificial feeding remains mostly a mystery.
Some observers seem to think the lovely and aggressive evening grosbeak has extended its winter range because of the greater number of winter feeding stations. I know we are seeing more evening grosbeaks this year than ever before. Whether this is a permanent pattern this year or it is just the result of a temporary factor largely remains unknown or whether this change, if permanent will suit the evening grosbeak or become for this beautiful olive yellow and black migrant, a disaster.
The worst thing a potential bird watcher can do is to start feeding in the early winter and then break faith and stop feeding. When birds learn that you place food for them every day, they become very dependent on that source of feed. Then, if you stop feeding suddenly during the winter, they are forced to look elsewhere, and if they don’t succeed in a time of highest completion, they died and that type of death is so unnecessary.
A little bird like the chickadee may lose one and a half grams of weight during a long winter night. That weight in the little bird would be equal to twenty pounds in a 150 pound person. A person or a small bird could not endure that kind of loss many days and live. Daily the chickadee must regain this loss.
The boys made up a list of our winter birds that we have seen this winter. It probably is representative of what anyone in our area could expect to see in an average winter season: downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker, tufted titmouse, blue jay, black capped chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, white breasted nuthatch, pine siskin, cardinal, junco, evening grosbeak, tree sparrow and house sparrow.
Feeding birds can be divided into two classes – seed eaters and insect eaters. The woodpeckers and creepers are insect eaters; all the other birds are seed eaters and in most cases the seed eaters also eat suet. The sparrows, cardinals and evening grosbeaks apparently eat only the seeds. The chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and blue jays eat most anything. Besides feeding suet, sunflower seeds, mixed seeds, wheat, cracked corn, bread, we serve a “specialty of the house,” the chickadees and nuthatches approve of. We have an old corn cob with a nail driven into the end that we tie in one of our catalpa trees. Twice a day I spread peanut butter over the cob. In the morning the boys quite often take a pint of different seeds to the feeder, their young Labrador pup goes along so she can proudly carry the empty can back to the house.
The birds cluster around and as soon as the boys dump in the seed, the birds swoop in and feed, all except two little chickadees, who are busy in the catalpa tree hopping around the old corn cob anxiously waiting for me to spread some peanut butter for them to eat.
I have always had a picture of the bird watcher as the classic old gent wearing plus-fours, goatee, and pince-nez, peering around a tree with binoculars, pointing at a “tweety bird” innocently sitting on a limb staring at the bird watch in shocked disbelief.
Somehow that cherished picture is moderating.
I, who a couple of winters ago couldn’t tell a chickadee from a red-breasted nuthatch am finding a little sympathetic ground on which to stand with the local bird watchers society.
The crowning achievement of my bird watching winter came two weeks ago as we were watching the birds at the feeder. That evening with a voice shaky with emotion, nose pressed against the window, I announced to one and all I saw a pine siskin. Everyone ran to the window, bird books in hand; my find was confirmed. There sat that beautiful, timid, little brown barred siskin. How dainty it looked as it carefully examined and then ate a few kernels of wheat before flying back to the woods. How good it felt, my first find. I had just joined the club.
Later, seven year old Alan came over and said, “Gee, Dad, how did you know that was a pine siskin? I thought it was a tree sparrow.”
Well, I’ll tell you, I grew six feet that day.