I love the birds as well. We've lived at this house for 2 summers now, and we
have far more birds this summer than last.
Just 3 weeks ago, we put up a few feeders to encourage all these beautiful
birds to stay, and they love them. We put a 4x4 post in the ground right in
front of our living room picture window (the window all of our cats loved to
look out of), with a bird feeder on top, and another hanging off the side. The
feeders are constantly busy, mostly with gold finches. There must be dozens of
gold finches hanging out in our yard. We also have a pair of doves, a few
nuthatches, chickadees, bluejays, and various types of sparrows.
We mainly just feed sunflower seeds as all the birds like them. My 2 remaining
cats enjoy watching the birds as well, though they mostly seem interested in
the hummingbirds (we put up a couple of hummingbird feeders as well).
Cassandra
----- Original Message -----
From: Susan Dubose
To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2007 7:22 AM
Subject: OT: Birds
When I moved to this new house, a few months back, I was determined to make
it as wonderful for my cats as I could.
They deserve it.
Below is an email from a client of mine that has a bird sanctuary in his
backyard, as well as a Koi pond that I tend to when he & his wife are out of
town.
There are some good tips to attracting birds for my cats to enjoy, plus it
helps the birds.
Being this is Texas, hopefully some of the info will help anyone on this list
who would like to attract more birds........
Dear Susan,
I get my stuff at Wild Birds Unlimited:
Westwoods Shopping Center
3267 Bee Caves Road, Ste. 121
Austin, TX 78746
When Isabelle was alive I did not try to attract birds into the yard
because she was such an efficient killing machine.
After she died I started to try to attract birds into the yard. The basics
include food, water and cover along with sustainable gardening. A few years ago
Kay started to deliberately plant varieties of flowers, bushes and vines on
which butterflies nectar and lay eggs. The commonest plants for eggs are
passion vine for Gulf Fritillary and pipevine for Pipevine Swallowtails. She
continues to add other varieties as she finds them in nurseries and we have
over 30 species of butterflies in the yard on a casual count.
We have always had nesting titmice, cardinals, mockingbirds, Carolina
wrens, jays along with hummingbirds in the summer. I have plenty of cover,
being adjacent to the woods next door, along with the Agarita bush and all of
the perimeter plantings of youpon and boxwood.
I have several sources of water which is always moving. I have a small
sprayer which drips into a cup about a foot off the ground, and an Indian
metate into which water constantly drips. These are surrounded by plants
affording some protection. I have the large disappearing fountain that seems to
be favored by the goldfinches although others bathe in it. The birds like
shallow water which is moving and they like the little splash in the urn which
I had disconnected when you were coming to lessen water loss from splashing.
They like to get in the wet boxwood leaves from the splashing of the urn and
bathe too.
I get food at WBU. The wrens like the meal worms and so do the titmice. I
have then in an exclusion feeder so that the mockingbird cannot get in; he has
a tendency to run everyone else off. He makes a good meal out of some of the
butterflies and caterpillars. The thistle seed in a yellow capped feeder
attract specifically the goldfinches. I first saw them here when some of the
flowers would go to seed. With the feeder they are here year round and have
raised babies which depletes the thistle seed at a rapid rate. The green feeder
is used by the jays, cardinals, titmice and house finches. The spring is set to
discourage the white wing doves and squirrels. I note that the ruby throated
hummingbird prefers blooming flowers over the feeder. This past winter a
rufuous hummingbird showed up at the green sunflower feeder when we had the ice
storm. That is when I got the hummingbird feeder and put it out. At first I
thought that I was too late, but a few days later he came back and stayed about
a week before going back to the northwest for the spring. He usually winters in
south Austin, so I was pleased to have him here. During the spring we had a
chipping sparrow, a magnolia warbler, an orange crowned warbler and a yellow
warbler.
.
So, with food, water and cover I believe you can increase the number of
birds in your yard; it the cats are a problem try butterfly gardening; cats are
not much of a threat to them.
g
Susan J. DuBose >^..^<
www.petgirlspetsitting.com
www.tx.siameserescue.org
www.shadowcats.net
"The storm can't down the castle,
it can only shift the stones."
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