Jazz Up Your Birdhouse With Some Birds

One of the collection of front porch birdhouses my wife hung from the eaves attracted a hive of hornets. After I  So I plugged up the holes with some of that green styrofoam floral block cut to fit in the holes. The only problem was that we didn't get birds anymore. So we bought some.

Stuff You Need:

1. You need a staple gun and some 1/2 to 3/4 inch staples
2. You need some fake birds. 
3. You need some bird houses

Where You Can Get the Stuff You Need:

1.  Staple gun and staples can be obtained at the hardware store if you have a male person about the house who is worth a flip, just look in the garage or the tool box on the back of his pickup.
2. The "Everything's a Dollar Store" or almost any one of those dollar stores or arts & crafts places have them. I  bought 4 nice little birds made with real feathers and only paid a buck a piece for them.  They come with a spring clip on the underside where the feet go.
3. If you are a proper householder, you should already have a birdhouse hanging about somewhere. If not, Hobby Lobby and Michael's probably have some good starter birdhouses.

How to Mount the Birds:

1. Find a nice spot on the wooden birdhouse and tap in a staple. Leave a gap so that the space between the staple and the perch or roof of the house or wherever you mount the bird is wide enough for the clip on the bird to slide through.
2. Clip the birds to the staples on the houses. 
3. Voila' you've got birds that don't poop sitting on houses that aren't full of hornets.

How cool is that?

© 2016 by Tom King

Identifying Birds - An Experiment

I've had a couple of bird families begin showing up at my bird feeder that I can't identify. I'm from Texas where everything at the feeder is pretty much a house sparrow or a chicadee, a squirrell or a blue jay. Here in Washington, we've got a new set of feeder birds.  The first I was able to identify was a dark-eyed Oregon junco. It took me verifying it with the Seattle Audubon Society website, but I was able to get a positive ID.  With these guys, not so much,

I think they are a pair, male on the left and female on the right. The female is striped all over. The male is striped on the belly with yellow bars on his wing.  You can see this more clearly on the pictures below. 

So here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to ask friends on Facebook if they can identify the birds.  I'm also going to send a link to this page to a volunteer Master Birder at the Seattle Audubon Society and see if they can identify it.  It's the yellow markings on the male that are throwing me. The female looks like a common song sparrow. I haven't got a sample of their song yet, but if I do, I'll post it too.  I'll let you know how my search for the identity of these two is coming along. In the meantime, my poor little junco is outnumbered and having to slip in to the feeder while the new guys are off at the nest.




You can see the markings on the male's head and the striping on the belly and shoulders of the female.



You can see the yellow bars on the male's wings in this photo.