Stop the Mess - Install Seed Catchers

Feeding and enjoying the wild birds in your backyard is supposed to be fun and relaxing. However it can become a chore to clean beneath the feeders. 

On the ground seed husks collect along with discarded bird seed. You may have noticed our feathered friends pick through the seed for their favorite morsel. Some of the seed is actually meant to be chucked to the ground by the songbirds for the ground birds to eat. These include gains like millet and corn. If you let this pile of seeds and husks collect too long you'll have a mess that must be cleaned up to prevent diseases. 

There are two easy fixes to avoid cleaning up the mess. These are:

1) Use a no-mess seed like the PatioWise we sell here at the Wild Bird Center of Johns Creek. This product only uses delicious seed with no hulls. Basically, everything gets eaten, even if it gets thrown to the ground!

2) Another simple solution is to add a seed tray, or seed catcher like the two shown below. Notice in the picture there are two small plates attached to the feeders. These catch all the seed before it hits the ground. You can simply tip the plate to collect the seed in the plate and put it back in the feeder!

Seed trays come in many different shapes and sizes. We have some in the store over 22" in length. There are large round ones and square ones. There are hanging trays that attached with hooks to your feeders and ones that mount to your shepherd's hooks. In other words there is probably one for you. 

So don't despair, let nature relax you while keeping your ground under the feeders clean. Buy a seed catcher and stop doing a least this one little chore.

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David Peterson is the owner of the Best Nest of Georgia, Inc. which includes in its corporate family a retail store called the Wild Bird Center of Johns Creek Georgia. The Wild Bird Center focuses on bringing nature to your backyard using bird seed, bird feeders, mealworms, and bird houses to attract wild birds to your yard. You can reach the Wild Bird Center at 770-418-1990 or by contacting David via email: david@thebestnest.net

Habits of Eastern and Western Monarch Butterflies

I found this article in phys.org. Interesting mating habits and possible ways to save the western monarch which is currently in steep decline.

Interesting article on habits of Western and Eastern Monarch Butterflies.https://t.co/BHMHwtKEuD

— The Best Nest of GA (@TheBestNest_GA) August 3, 2020

Nectar Guard Tips

Here's a real quick Pro Tip:

If you have bees around your hummingbird feeder, or worse bees and flies floating in your nectar there is an easy fix for this. At least with the line of Aspect Hummingbird Feeders.

I like the window feeder pictured below. However as soon as I put it up I found flies floating in the nectar. I know what the issue is... the holes for the Aspect Jewel Box feeder are too big thus flies and bees can get to the nectar. Luckily Aspects created a product to solve this problem.

The product is a set of Nectar Guard Tips. Basically you put these small rubber tips on the inside of your feeder. The underside, beneath the ports, have little pieces of plastic ready to receive the tips. I simply squeezed the tip onto the plastic. Done: No more floating flies!

Enjoy the hummingbirds this year and change your nectar often.

Hummingbirds and Colors

I just had to pass this along. Fascinating!

ScienceAlert: Hummingbirds Can See Colours We Can't Even Imagine, Experiment Reveals.https://t.co/p5vof6Wcaf

via @GoogleNews

— The Best Nest of GA (@TheBestNest_GA) June 16, 2020

Contaminents in Western Milkweed

Interesting article on contamination of the western milkweed varieties. Even though we are on the east coast we probably have the same issue.

Milkweed, only food source for monarch caterpillars, ubiquitously contaminated https://t.co/PnirO73CxA via @physorg_com

— The Best Nest of GA (@TheBestNest_GA) June 11, 2020

Millet Gets a Bad Rap

When you own a wild bird seed store (like I do) you gain a preference to particular seeds and seed blends. On the other hand you develop prejudices for others. Preference vs. Prejudice = Seeds vs. Grains.

In the layman's world, in which I live, the difference between a seed and a grain comes from its shell. Seed tend to have shells that can be removed, think sunflower, and grains have an outer coating that is difficult to remove, think corn.

Also in the layman's world seeds are relatively expensive compared to grains. Almost by a factor of 2x. So you can immediately tell by price if your seed blend has a lot of grain in it. The more expensive the wild bird seed blend the more seeds and nuts in that blend. The less expensive wild bird seed blends will have mainly corn, millet, wheat, etc.

One such grain that gets a bad rap is millet.

Male and female cardinals enjoying millet.

Millet is a very small round seed that is plentiful in the world. It is basically a grassy weed. There are several different varieties but all are inexpensive. Many birds will eat millet (and many humans as well, it is considered a "cereal grain"). Cardinals, Chipping Sparrows, Mourning Doves, Cowbirds any many, many more will eat this grain. I throw about 3 large handfuls on the patio everyday.

Chipping sparrow eating millet

The bad rap with millet stems from its ability to grow quickly. The issue for most low end seed blends is that the bag is fill with so much millet and other grains that there are not nearly enough birds to eat it all. Thus... The "grassy weed" begins to grow and prosper!

I did this video years ago to show just how fast millet can grow. In about 5 days it's time to mow!



So, inconclusion, millet does get a bad rap. It's not that birds will not eat it, in fact many, many wild birds love it, it is the fact that if it is NOT eaten it will immediately germinate (i.e.: Produce Weeds).

My advice, if you want more birds, particularly ground birds that don't come to feeders, due to their size or other factors, is to purchase millet separately.  Just take a handful or two everyday and throw it on the ground. You can get a pound of it at my store for way under a $1 and a pound of millet is a lot of grain.

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David Peterson is the owner of the Best Nest of Georgia, Inc. which includes in its corporate family a retail store called the Wild Bird Center of Johns Creek Georgia. The Wild Bird Center focuses on bringing nature to your backyard using bird seed, bird feeders, mealworms, and bird houses to attract wild birds to your yard. You can reach the Wild Bird Center at 770-418-1990 or by contacting David via email: david@thebestnest.net

A Brown-headed Cowbird Invading a Bluebird's Nest

There is a black bird out there called a Brown-headed Cowbird. You can easily spot the bird. They're about cardinal sized with a jet black body and a head that is completely brown. The cowbird is native to the US but a lot of folks consider it to be a problem child.

Brown-headed Cowbird

The cowbird is considered a problem because it is also a "brood parasite." This means the female cowbird takes NO responsibility raising it's own chicks. In fact it will enter a nest box, remove one egg from the box and then... lay it's own egg.

The interesting part is the actual birdhouse owner (think bluebird, nuthatch, etc.) will raise the cowbird as part of its own brood. Most birds can't recognize that a different bird's egg is in its clutch. Thus it will raise it until it fledges and learns to feed itself.

If you are in your backyard and you see a bluebird feeding a cowbird you now know why.

Yesterday I was taking a picture of one of my nesting boxes and this brought up this blog post (see pic below). The cowbird egg is in the top right. I left it there. There are rules to native birds, even though the brown-headed cowbird is considered a pest, it is native and cannot be destroyed. (Not that I would destroy any of God's work but that another story.)

3 bluebird eggs and 1 cowbird egg

Nature is beautiful. Bringing nature to your backyard is the goal of our retail store "The Wild Bird Center of Johns Creek" Let nature bring peace to your hectic life.