On a morning so chilly your breath blew out in little smoke rings, and your fingers turned red en route to bright numbing white, Tim Joyce, bird man, traipsed into the yard I call my own and pronounced it “Mecca.”
Where I heard a cacophony of leafy-town sounds, Joyce — bespectacled, bearded, gentle — heard distinct chirps of a vast ornithological symphony. There was the junco, the jay and the cardinal. He heard nuthatch and white-breasted sparrow.
But then, as he looked around, he saw things he didn’t quite like: the feeder, too close to the pines; the ferocious striped cat (“I would so beg you to leave your cat inside,” he implored, noting that each year hundreds of millions of birds are felled by cats on the prowl).
“This is what birdscaping is about,” said Joyce, who is something of a bird encyclopedia, spilling facts, figures, legends with dizzying acceleration. “I come to your yard, I see the neighborhood. I can hear what’s going on. I can tell you what you can attract.”
He spotted an old white-birch branch most anyone else would write off as dead. But not Joyce; he called it a gold mine. Bring on the red-bellied woodpecker, he practically warbled.
We brought it on, all right. A mere two weeks and $87.79 after Joyce traipsed into the yard we now call Mecca, my plot on the map is now home to dozens and dozens and dozens of birds on a daily basis.
He set me right. Imagined a tube feeder spilling with peanuts and a sunflower seed that birders call oilers. Set me up with a tray feeder the cardinals perch at each dawn and each dusk. Reminded me water is the No. 1 thing you can do for your birds, especially when temperatures dip below freezing.
This birdscaping is the latest wrinkle in America’s obsession with feeding the birds. For a price (in the case of Joyce, who runs the Wild Birds Unlimited shop in Glenview, it’s one penny shy of a flat 30 bucks), folks in the know about birds will schedule a house call (or would that be a bird call?).
They’ll come to your yard, look around, take a listen. Tell you what birds you might attract, choose just the right feeder in just the right spot, and then even prescribe just the right seed for the winged things of your fancy. Heck, if you so desire, they’ll come fill your feeders and scrub ’em down once a month, or whenever your flocks so demand.
What to watch for
Joyce, though hardly alone in hot pursuit of new birders, might be out on the, um, wing of this trend. He’s been at it for nearly two decades. And he’s only 33.
“Tim has taught me what to watch for,” says Ann Flick of Lincolnshire, who has known Joyce since he was a kid down the block, a kid who was cuckoo for birds.
He’s picked out the shrubs and the trees for her yard, and to this day, comes to fill her feeders with the seed he deems right for each of her four post feeders. He even got her to put in a pond five years ago. “I sit in my chair here, where I read the morning paper, and I look out on the birds,” Flick says. “They’re fascinating to watch. I like to see the birds squabbling.”
Far, far from Lincolnshire, or Glenview, or my own personal Mecca, in a place called the Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary, the place where the esteemed Cornell Lab of Ornithology makes its home, the term “birdscaping” is only recently making the rounds; that is, as a business for bringing on birds.
“Fantastic idea,” says David Bouter, the lab’s project leader for the continent-wide Project Feeder Watch, in which some 15,000 bird-watching citizens send in data on what is landing and when at their feeders. “To make your yard and your neighborhood more like a natural system, more like what it would have been like had we not altered the landscape.
“We’ve gone too far, otherwise, in sterilizing the world out our windows. A lawn is essentially a biological desert for most birds.”
He calls birdscaping “a brilliant re-tasking” of landscapers who until recently were hell-bent on turning lawns into faux emerald carpets.
Feed responsibly
“If you’re going to feed, do it in a responsible way,” says Bouter, who then ticked off a list of bird-feeding essentials (see accompanying story for a compilation of the best of bird-feeding wisdom).
Since little in the realm of birding is without at least a few ruffled feathers, Steve Kress, the National Audubon Society’s vice president for bird conservation, finds bird feeding something to at least moderately grouse about.
Kress, author of the last year’s “The Audubon Society Guide to Attracting Birds: Second Edition” (Cornell University Press, 472 pages, $24.95), says, “I always think of bird feeding as the least important part of this. First of all, it’s a small list of birds that eat seeds and suet. Compare that to the huge list of birds that don’t use feeders.
“There are real conservation issues about bird feeding. It’s fine to be part of a back-yard project, but the issues of feeding are huge.”
Window collisions, he says, are one of the big ones. “A billion birds a year hit glass and are injured or die,” he says, citing national studies that took into account commercial and residential windows. “Feeders feed into that, if the feeder isn’t placed close enough to the window.” (He recommends 3 feet from the window so a bird, taking flight, won’t build too much momentum before noticing the panes in its path; squirrel-battling birders would counter that, saying 10 feet from a window is the optimum spot.)
And, Kress adds emphatically, there are disease issues if the feeder isn’t cleaned. “The bottom line is, feeders primarily serve to educate the public. If people are only thinking about feeding the birds, they’re missing the bet.
“Birds need water, shelter, nesting places and singing perches. Year round.”
(Birds do not, however, need feeder seed 52 weeks a year, the experts tell us. Contrary to myth, birds actually get 80 percent of their food from natural habitat, not from your little ol’ back-yard filling station. No need to fear that once you start feeding you can never stop. The birds can fend mightily for themselves, say the bird folk who know best.)
Up in Fox River Grove, on the border of McHenry and Lake Counties, at a little shop called the Wild Bird Center, David Johnson thinks birdscaping is swell, but stops flapping his wings when it comes to filling and cleaning the feeders.
“Far as I’m concerned, if you’re going to feed birds, enjoy the birds, you need to participate. We’ve had people inquire, and we just say no. We’ll deliver for free, we recommend the right seed.”
But you, you bird-loving people, you must dump seed all on your own. “Filling the feeder,” says Johnson, “that’s crossing the line.”
That’s not to say, though, that getting into people’s back yards is any kind of bird-brained idea.
“People can stand at the counter and describe their property, but there’s so many things they don’t think about that we notice as soon as we get there,” says Johnson. No. 1 on the list, often, is what to do about squirrels. And No. 2 would be placing the feeder so the poor birds aren’t at risk of becoming lunch for some other critter.
And that’s why, since 1996 when he took on his first official birdscaping customer, Joyce has been out there poking around his birders’ back yards. He takes it all in, his eye keen for dead wood, on the lookout for cover. Before you can set your sight on that swift-darting cardinal, he’s plotted just the right spot for your fancy new feeder. He sees things, frankly, just like a bird. Finds a spot too far for a critter to leap. But one that a bird flying high in the sky might look down on and think: roadside cafe.
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For the birds
Here are five spring projects for attracting more songbirds from Stephen W. Kress, National Audubon Society vice president for bird conservation.
1. CREATE A SONGBIRD BORDER with: native plants (put several of each species next to each other); a mix of plants (tallest at the edges of the property, shorter species tiered toward your home); at least one thorny tree; evergreens; and berry-producing shrubs.
2. REMOVE INVASIVE PLANTS. With no natural predators here, they can form monocultures and crowd out natives that provide a mix of foods for migrating birds and offer better nesting sites.
3. REDUCE LAWN BY AT LEAST 25 PERCENT to favor meadow plants and taller grasses, which provide seeds and nesting places. Take the “healthy habitat pledge” to avoid lawn pesticides and wasteful sprinklers (www.audubonathome.org/pledge).
4. PUT OUT A BATHING AND DRINKING POOL FOR BIRDS. Clean it frequently with a stiff brush to prevent algae growth, and replace water every few days to eliminate mosquito larvae.
5. CLEAN TUBE FEEDERS with a bottle brush and 10 percent solution of non-chlorine bleach. Rinse and dry in sun before refilling
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10 things all would-be birders should know
This list, put together by Tim Joyce of Wild Birds Unlimited in Glenview, tells you what you need to know about bird-feeding essentials.
1. Black oil sunflower is the one seed that attracts the widest variety of birds.
2. Safflower seed is disliked by grackles and starlings. Yet cardinals, house finches, chickadees love it.
3. Thistle (a.k.a. niger or nyjer) seed is adored by goldfinches and pine siskins. Thistle seed should only be dispensed from a tube finch feeder or mesh finch feeder.
4. For cleaner feeding use a No-Mess Blend or straight sunflower meats (hulled sunflower). These are seeds with no shells. Birds consume virtually everything, dropping little on the ground.
5. Not all birds eat bird seed. Fruit- and berry-producing trees and shrubs are hugely attractive to songbirds. Robins, waxwings, catbirds and cardinals thrive on fruit when available. Soak currants and raisins in water; once bloated, scatter on the ground for robins.
6. Squirrels enjoy most types of bird seed. Squirrel baffles work to protect some hanging feeders and most pole-mounted feeders. Remember, once a squirrel is baffled from a feeder, they will jump. Some squirrels can jump straight up 5 feet and can jump sideways 8 to 10 feet. Contrary to popular belief, there are effective squirrel-proof feeders available, many of which come with lifetime guarantees.
7. All birds need water. Birdbaths can and should be used in all seasons. In cold weather, dirty feathers are a bird’s worst enemy. They are poor insulators because they trap less heat. The colder it is, the drier the atmosphere and the thirstier they become. With each breath, they are losing moisture. Heated birdbaths are available, as are de-icers for existing baths; thermostatically controlled heaters can be found at home and garden centers for $30 to $50. Wintering robins are extremely fond of ice-free water. A bird-friendly bath should have a gradual slope and not be too deep. Most songbirds prefer to bathe in 1/2 inch of water. If the bath is too deep, the birds will drink but not bathe.
8. Birdhouses should be kept away from feeders. A busy birdfeeder near a nest box will send the birds elsewhere for lodging.
9. Bird feeders should be cleaned monthly. Birdbaths should be cleaned weekly — twice a week during hot weather. Use a 10 percent bleach solution or 50-50 solution of vinegar and hot water to clean. Rinse thoroughly.
10. Bird feeders should be placed no closer than 5 feet from protective cover. Any closer allows cats to ambush the birds.
— Barbara Mahany
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bmahany@tribune.com
