Setting the Breakfast Table

Shovelling slush in the rain at 6:30 in the morning isn’t insanity - it’s setting the  breakfast table! 

We’ve been doing it all winter, even when the snow gets a couple of feet deep. 

We have two suet feeders, two tube feeders for black oil sunflower seeds, one tube feeder for nyger seed, and one tray feeder for a gourmet mix of the black oil sunflower seeds mixed with unsalted dry roasted peanuts and peanuts in the shell. There are also two other feeding stations on the property for emergency overflow.

It’s all part of “Project Feeder Watch”; a Citizen Science program run by  Bird Studies Canada in conjunction with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. The program ran this winter  from November 16/15 to April 4/16. This season, we made 21 online data submissions and had a total of 19 different bird species at our feeding station. 

While we had our old standby birds - Chickadees, Hairy and Downey Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, White Breasted and Red Breasted Nuthatches, this year we added American Tree Sparrows, Purple Finches, and Pine Siskins. The American Tree Sparrows and particularly the Pine Siskins do a lot of ground feeding. Hence the reason for the early morning shovelling!

This year was phenomenal across this part of Ontario with an irruption of Pine Siskins. To give you an idea of what that means, we had a flock averaging 100 Siskins that was here daily; for one half of the winter! And they eat a lot of food - Black oil sunflower seeds and Nyger seed. On March 28/16, we submitted a count of 154 birds to the Lab.

Many of the other birds are returning to the area - Herons, Gulls ( they are hanging out on the big island cliffs for now), Grackles, Juncos, Red-Winged Blackbirds, and of course Robins.

Watching and feeding birds during the winter is perhaps one of the most fascinating experiences one could have while living in this part of Ontario. Not only are you helping birds survive, but if you participate in Project FeederWatch, you are gathering scientific data that is used to help perpetuate the different species. 

As an activity, winter bird feeding certainly keeps you busy as well as immersing you in nature. Birds all have individual personalities and it doesn’t take you too long to realize there’s a lot more to the being involved with them than you could ever imagine. You learn and you certainly communicate with them - and you get trained quickly!

After a while, it’s more than appropriate to say that winter birds sort of become your extended family!