Tag Archives: bird feeder

Something to Do in November!

November seems like the month of NO. No snow. No leaves. No sun. No fun. November.

But, let’s face it. We’re not completely at the mercy of the elements. We can still find ways to enjoy ourselves.

Sooooo, what CAN we do? Hmm.

Our museums have inside activities. Rockwell Museum and Arnot Art Museum are each hosting a portion of a show that explores Crafting Identity. We saw the foreign works at Arnot, and found them thought-provoking. We also enjoyed again seeing the permanent collection, heavy with 19th-century representational works, but we like to expand our horizons. We’ll soon be catching the domestic pieces at Rockwell, too.

Glenn Curtiss Museum is having a “First Across” centennial exhibit on the US Navy’s 1919 expedition that made the first transatlantic flight, in a Curtiss seaplane. (Eat your heart out, Charles A. Lindbergh.) National Soaring Museum opens its dollhouse and miniatures show on November 16… always worth a drive up the hill. And Corning Museum of Glass has a special exhibit on the role of glass in our first moon landing, fifty years ago. Yates County History Center in Penn Yan has a special exhibit on Groffdale Mennonites… their faith, their customs, and their lives among us.

Off-Monroe Players in Rochester does a free Gilbert and Sullivan production every November… this year it’s Ruddigore, with six performances between the 15th and the 24th. OMP performances are always a load of fun.

Clemens Center in Elmira is presenting productions that range from Disney Holiday Party on Tour to The Diary of Anne Frank.

Our region has deer, bear, and bobcat hunting seasons on some dates in November, along with squirrel, pheasant, ruffed grouse, and various small predators.

On the other hand, that can put a crimp into your hiking. But minimally you can still walk, and let’s face it – even though it’s snowing as I write this, that doesn’t have to keep us immured inside, and on top of that there will be PLENTY of nice days this month (along with some bad ones). Take a walk down the Main Street in Naples or Canandaigua… follow the audio tour of Bath… hike the rail trail through Elmira, which has just installed new mileposts.

When you get a half-way decent day, visit the marinas or waterfronts at Penn Yan, Geneva, Hammondsport, Canandaigua, Watkins Glen. They’re a very different world, and a much quieter world.

Go, not necessarily to the mall, but just to your local supermarket. Stroll through, taking the time to EXPERIENCE your visit. Take in all the Thanksgiving decorations, and get yourself into the season a little bit.

If you’re out on a walk or a drive, especially with kids, see how many decorative turkeys you can spot along the way. If each of you takes one side of the street, you can make a little contest of it.

Make sure you get your Scouting for Food bag out. And/or make a gift to the Food Bank, or to your church’s food pantry, to help those who are hungry as the year gets cold.

Put your bird feeders back out! Thanksgiving to Easter is a good rule of thumb here in bear country. Our juncos are back, here in Bath, though in reality they only go up to Mossy Bank Park – they’re pretty much altitude migrators, rather than latitude migrators. Birds in your yard are a promise of spring!

Woodpeckers at the Bird Feeder!

Now that the bears are safely tucked up asleep hibernating, and now that snow lies deep on the ground (some days, anyhow), many local thoughts turn to bird feeders.

*Thanksgiving to Easter is a good feeder schedule here in bear country, and we’re doing the bruins a favor if we don’t lure them in. Bears are dangerous just by virtue of their size, and habituating them to human dwellings as a source of food spells tragedy… a fed bear is a dead bear.

*But as this stage, we can feed the birds safely. I find that they love three foods above most others: suet; peanuts; and black-oil sunflower seeds.

*I also provide nyger or thistle seed, though they mostly ignore that until the sunflower runs out.

*Even in the cities and the villages, feeders can bring in an impressive array of species. Have you ever noticed the woodpeckers?

*They seem to go especially for the peanut and the suet, though of course they’ll also take seeds.

*Maybe the most-seen woodpecker at many feeders is the downy woodpecker. It’s largely black, with a white back, white underside, and some white speckles on the wings. It has a small red spot on the back of its head, but this is often hard to see.

*Downies are about six inches in length. I have a hard time estimating size, so I measured a couple of prominent points on the feeder, six inches apart. Then I always have an exact comparison to check the size of the birds.

*All the woodpeckers have relatively long sharp beaks, which they use like chisels or jackhammers to break into trees after insects. Watch a downy at the feeder and you’ll see that he attacks the seed the same way, darting his whole head forward in attack.

*Most woodpeckers have feet constructed such that they usually don’t perch on twigs or branches, as most of the songbirds do. Instead of keeping their feet under themselves they swing them forward, sinking their talons into the trunk of the tree. They hang there upright, using their tails as a prop against the tree.

*But we also have a larger woodpecker, the flicker, that spends a lot of its time on the ground, hunting for insects there. Flickers have speckled breasts, with dark “gorgets” at their throat. There’s no crest, but they do have “mustache” stripes running back from their long beaks. (These are often hard to see.) A flicker is bigger than a downy woodpecker, even noticeably bigger than a robin. It shows a white rump when it flies.

*Although generally groundfeeders, at this time of year flickers will often come to your feeding station.

*Red-bellied woodpeckers are easy to mistake for flickers… they have the same general size (about like a robin, in this case), coloration, and ground-feeding behavior. But the red-belly has a striped “zebra back,” and white wing patches when it flies. The male red-belly has a red “helmet,” while the female has red only on the back of the neck.

*What neither one of them has, particularly, is a red belly, at least not so as you’d notice it from your window. A lot of these names were originally given by guys with magnifying glasses, studying carcases in dissection pans.

*We also have two other woodpeckers that are fairly common, but not too often seen, since they prefer to hang out deep in the woods. The hairy woodpecker looks much like the downy, but is half again the size. The pileated woodpecker is as big as a crow, with an impressive crest and white wing undersides when it flies.

*We could also mention two other feeder guests who, like the woodpeckers, prefer the trunks of trees to the branches. These are the nutchatches… one of them white-breasted and the other… less common, and about a third samller… the red-breasted. They hunt for insects on the surface of a tree trunk, usually starting at the top and working their way downward… the “upside-down bird.” They’ll often hang on your feeder head-down, stocking up for these cold winter nights.

Backyard Bird List

On our refrigerator is a yellow slip with a long list – all the bird species that we’ve seen on, from, or over our place just outside Bath village.
We started keeping a Backyard Bird List maybe thirty years ago, when the kids were little and we lived outside Allentown, Pennsylvania, and we still keep it up today. I tot up over 30 species on our list, without our having made any really vigorous efforts. We do keep up bird feeders in that Thanksgiving-to-Easter bear hibernation season, and we also have a little pond across the road from us.
Because of the pond, our “backyard” list includes the great blue heron, a four-foot wading bird that stalks about the pond seeking whom it may devour, then darting its spear-like beak for a fish or a frog. Great blues are beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Then, also thanks to the pond, there are the ducks: mallards, buffleheads, ring-neckeds, goldeneyes, and American wigeons. If I really spent some time with my binoculars, I imagine I’d turn up black ducks as well.
That little pond certainly gives us a head start on waterfowl and wading birds, but just about everybody in our region could add Canada geese to their own lists. These beautiful birds pass over in dozens or in hundreds. If we were sending audio files to extra-terrestrials, and we wanted one single sound to define North America, we would send the cry of the Canada goose in flight.
Where we live, we’re also treated to regular flights by flocks of rock doves… or, as most of us call them, pigeons. They fly from the barn a quarter-mile up the road to the silo a quarter-mile down. And back. Again. And again. And again.
Their cousins the mourning doves graze around under our bird feeders, content with whatever droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place below.
We put out thistle seeds, peanut halves, suet, and black-oil sunflower seed, bringing in the usual feeder crowd for our part of the country. Goldfinches come in little flocks, and we watch the passage of the seasons as their yellow plumage wanes and waxes. Tufted titmice come in small groups, while chickadees dart in and out from the foliage. Juncos, like the mourning doves, tend to stay low. So do flickers.
We get the house finch and the purple finch, the house sparrow, chipping sparrow, song sparrow, white-throat sparrow. Cardinals come in pairs, blue jays in twos or threes. Starlings, of course, may show up in flocks at almost any time. Did you know that they have a beautiful song? Every once in a while, though, they throw in a grawk, just to remind you that they’re starlings. Crows flap all around, of course.
Our suet and peanuts bring in both the red-breasted nuthatch and the white-breasted nuthatch. These cute little guys like working their way down a tree trunk upside down, hunting for bugs in the bark. They tackle the suet the same way, clinging to the cage and eating away head down.
Woodpeckers like the suet too, but they prefer to say upright. We get the downy with its black-and-white coat, and the red-bellied, with its dramatic red head. (The names were made up centuries ago, by guys who shot the birds and then studied them in dissection pans with magnifying glasses. You can’t really spot the red belly in the field.)
We’ve enjoyed some specialty sightings, too, of birds who aren’t really regulars, at least with us: the bluebird, the northern oriole, and the ruby-throated hummingbird.
And of course we have our hawks and their cousins. The kestrel is a small darting bird, and the harrier a larger creature with more deliberate movements. Both of them hover when they’re zeroing in on prey. The sharp-shinned hawk is between them in size, while the big turkey vulture soars lazily, often in big creepy flocks, sniffing out carrion miles away.
And all that’s just from the yard, with no more effort than some bird feeders and a pair of binoculars. If we put in some time after dark, no doubt we’d score some owls, while with five minutes of driving we could pick up bald eagles, osprey, swans, and wild turkeys.
Apart from kangaroos, birds and us are the only creatures that go on two feet. And they’re ALL around us! Anytime we step outdoors… anytime we look through the window… we’re with the birds. In apartment blocks… or office blocks… birds remind us that we’re only barely keeping nature at bay. Which, when you think about it, is one of the best things about our lives.
*****
Join us 4 PM Friday, March 7 for the illustrated talk SPRING MIGRATION: BIRDS OF STEUBEN COUNTY, by Dr. Randy Weidner — Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture Series, free and open to the public at Bath Fire Hall.