What a year this has been! Lots of birds. Around Labor day, we started getting reports of Red-Breasted Nuthatches. That is early for our area. They don't usually show up-if they are going to-until around December. We do have them occasionally, but we were getting a lot of reports! Sure enough, about mid-September we noticed them at home. They are the cutest little bird! Very friendly. I had several encounters with them as I was filling feeders. They just did not want to leave so I could put more seeds in the feeders. Well, if the Red-breasted Nuthatches are here, we now need to be on the lookout for the Common Redpoll. They showed up about the first week in December. Another bird that shows up when the Redpolls' and Red-breasted Nuthatches are here is the Pine Siskin. Sure enough we have been getting reports of them too. No wonder we are selling bird seed like crazy. Our daughter lives on the third floor of an apartment building and she got this great picture of the Common Redpoll sitting on her planter box.

Make sure you have plenty of Nyjer (thistle) feeders out and a heated bird bath available when you have an invasion of the winter finches at your house! Yesterday was Christmas-our only day off in a month-and we finally got to see all the birds that have been devouring our seed on a daily basis, and saw just why the heated bird bath is usually fairly dry when we go out to fill feeders. It is always amazing to see them lined up along the edge and drinking and then flying back to the feeders to eat some more.

After a few weeks of severe cold and snow, we are in a February thaw. It has been beautiful, with sunny skies and temps in the 30's to low 40's. What a change from highs in the single digits just a week ago! We had a customer call from Israel a few days ago wanting some hummingbird feeders as quicky as we could get them to them. They had some snow and were worried about their Sunbirds. We checked into the quickest means to get them out and mailed them right away. They received them yesterday and they emailed us some pictures of the birds eating from the feeders. WOW!! I have never seen this type of bird before, they are beautiful.

We are in the middle of one of the worst storms we have had in about 4 years. It is snowing and blowing so hard that the weather people have us under a blizzard warning. It is definitely lake-effect, the sun has peeked in and out quite a few times. Our birds have been ravenous! I feel so bad for them, but they are real troopers. Our poor little squirrels are having a tough time finding food too. They keep checking under the feeders, but it has been snowing and blowing so much that they have to dive down under the snow to find anything. I put out peanuts and seeds on a tray feeder on our deck for them, but the snow has drifted over it and covered it all up. The birds are so happy we have our heated bath out and running. The snow built up around the edges and they were having trouble with that, but once the Cardinals knocked the snow off the finches were right there! It is just bitterly cold out and I worry about all the poor critters and birds that don't have feeders nearby. I know that we have had bird at our feeders at the store the entire day, and that is really unusual. We're due for around 5 inches today and more tonight and tomorrow. I think it's time for SPRING!!

This year we decided not to totally depend on our small pond for open water for our backyard birds. We put our heated birdbath on our deck off our kitchen almost as a test to see which one they preferred. Well, I can tell you that they definitely prefer the heated birdbath. Now that the weather is much more frigid the small trickle of water coming down the pond is not enough to attract them to it, but the steam vapors from the heated birdbath definitely attract the birds to it. We have a daily ritual of putting out peanuts in the shell onto a tray feeder right by the heated birdbath and then we eat breakfast and watch the Blue Jays and Tufted Titmice fly in to retrieve the peanuts! It is so fun to watch it makes it difficult to leave for work especially if there are still some peanuts left! We call this routine "Breakfast with the Blue Jays".
We also put seeds on the tray and occasionally a Cardinal, Goldfinch, Junco, Nuthatch, or House Finch will fly right in after the Jays have flown off with a nut. I sometimes wonder why everyone doesn't have at least one birdfeeder in their yard to watch the antics of their birds!!

It's almost Christmas and still no snow!! The birds are starting to eat with gusto again. We have the Squirrel Buster Plus up at home, and the birds just seem to flock to it. It holds about 4-5 pounds of food, but they like it so well that I am always filling it. The nice thing about the Squirrel Buster Plus is NO SQUIRRELS!! We have had a problem with the Red Squirrels-small little things with a white tummy. Most of the squirrel-proof feeders don't work effectively in keeping the red squirrels off, but the Squirrel Buster Plus does. It has an adjustable spring that allows you to even keep off Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds. We like the Red-winged Blackbirds. They are the true harbingers of spring. We are so happy with our Squirrel Buster Plus that we highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to defeat the squirrels. It has turned in to our most popular selling feeder at our store, and we see sales climbing on the website as well. We are expecting snow to fall soon-that's what the weathermen say. One thing is for sure. Our area always gets 50-60 inches of snow a season, and we surely haven't seen that yet. We are expecting it to come any day.

It is a beautiful day. It's the kind of day we missed in September and October. It was so cold and rainy, and snowy those 2 months it was almost impossible to get those yard things done. We have had some new visitors to our feeders outside the store. Tufted Titmice showed up last week, and a Downy Woodpecker was finally eating from our suet log, and today I went out to refill the tube feeder with Safflower seeds, and there were 2 Chickadees busy eating, and I didn't notice one of them and grabbed the feeder to take it down and he screeched and flew off. It is so interesting to have all this wildlife at our store. We miss all the activity at home, but get to see things down here. Our cat Joy is at the window every day when we come in to work, watching what's going on in the yard. I'm sure we would have many more birds if she wasn't lurking just inside the window. Gearing up for the Holidays has taken up much of our time. A new store brings about challenges as to how to attach the lights to the windows, and just where will the Christmas tree go. It will be here before we know it and boom it will all be over.

It just seems like winter wants to get here too fast! It has been COLD!! We have had quite a bit of snow to boot. Nothing that is accumulating, but a couple of days ago we had lake effect and white-outs most of the day. This kind of weather makes the birds extremely HUNGRY! I am having trouble keeping my feeders full at home, and they are eating quite a bit at the store. We would have more activity at the store, but our cat (Joy) has discovered she can lay on the window ledge and enjoy the sun-what little we have had-and see birds in the yard too. We have placed a thistle feeder on a suction cup hook on the window and the finches would love to eat from it but there lies a big gray cat on the other side staring at them, and they just seem skeptical to dine. It seems nice to have feeders out and have the birds show up during the day, we miss all that activity at home. A few days ago we had a pair of Tufted Titmice show up at the store, and we were so excited. That is a new species for our feeders at the store. Our squirrel(s) haven't been around in a couple of days either. It seems like they would be around more often, as there is a free supply of food for them just outside our door. They probably have a feeder in the neighborhood behind us that they have been eating from for years, and only need to dine at our place when the other feeder is empty.

The one thing we need to get done at the store is figure out a way to provide water for the birds when it freezes. We have heated bird baths, and heaters for bird baths, but we need an outlet for those. We'll get it figured out before too long.