What to do about blackbirds?

Is this scene similar to what you've seen in your backyard recently?
It must be spring when the "blackbirds" return, right? Many people are trying to deal with this problem right now and I wanted to do this blog post to give you some ideas and solutions that have worked in my backyard.

Blackbirds are generally lumped into one group, but usually consist of several different types of birds: common grackles (iridescently colored black feathers and yellow eyes), brown-headed cowbirds (as the name implies, they have a brown-ish colored head--most easily seen in bright sunlight), European starlings (mostly black with lighter colored speckles and a long yellow beak), and red-winged blackbirds (I think you can figure that one out!)

Except for the non-native European starling, I believe it's illegal to kill the other 3 species as they are considered native, migratory songbirds and I believe in most towns and cities, it's probably illegal to discharge a firearm anyway -- even a BB gun. So here are several solutions that you might want to try in your backyard.

If you're really desperate, you can just stop filling your birdfeeders or take them down and eventually the blackbirds will move on. Of course, you will deny yourself the pleasure of seeing all the other spring and summer feeder birds, like rose-breasted grosbeaks, indigo buntings, chipping sparrows, etc., but that is the best alternative for ridding your yard of black birds.

If you decide to leave your feeders out, one of the seeds you can fill them with is safflower seed. This seed looks kind of like a small, white sunflower seed.

It's a little more expensive than sunflower seeds, but you should be able to find it easily wherever you normally purchase your birdseed. It also has the added benefit of discouraging squirrels (they don't like the bitter taste either).

You will find that many other birds will still eat safflower seed, including house finches, mourning doves, cardinals, and rose-breasted grosbeaks. Oh yeah, it doesn't discourage all blackbirds either......I spotted this one silly red-winged blackbird eating it last week!

I like red-winged blackbirds, so I don't mind these guys hanging around the feeders close to the house.

Another technique you can try is to buy a less expensive seed or seed blend and put that in feeders farther out in your yard in an attempt to keep the less desirable blackbirds away from your house. This blend I use contains cracked corn, white millet, black sunflower seeds, and safflower seeds. This seed blend runs me about $19 for 50 lbs.

I put this seed blend in my open trays and ground feeder trays which are placed farther away from the house. Lots of different birds enjoy this seed blend including mourning doves, bluejays, cardinals, sparrows, juncos, and even indigo buntings. (Sophie isn't eating the seed, just checking out all the interesting bird scents around the feeder.)

You might find some possums or bunnehs partaking of the bounty in your ground feeder trays too!

This picture was taken last Sunday morning after our overnight snowfall.

Another alternative to discourage blackbirds from your feeders is to put your tube feeders inside "cages." I have my good "cardinal blend" seed in these tube feeders and the cage works for keeping the big, piggy birds and squirrels out. Chickadees, goldfinches, downy woodpeckers and other small birds can still get to the seed. The downside of the protective cages is that it also keeps the larger birds you want to feed (like cardinals and rose-breasted grosbeaks) away from the feeders.

Starlings and grackles also really like peanuts (shelled and in-the-shell), so if you're going to offer peanuts for your backyard birds, it's best to put them in a feeder that doesn't have perches. Grackles and starlings don't have good clinging abilities, although they may be able to hold onto a feeder like this for a few seconds or long enough to knock out a peanut or two.

Their love of peanuts also extends to suet with peanuts or peanut butter in it and I've seen them devour an entire block of suet in a day, so I generally put my suet away or inside a protective cage (like you've seen in past pictures I've posted on this blog).

Another reason we have so many common grackles in our yard is the habitat. When I planted hundreds of evergreen trees 20+ years ago, I was only thinking about how great they would be for windbreaks and sound barriers when they got big. What I didn't realize was that common grackles LOVE large evergreens for nesting in. And boy, do we have large evergreens now!

So for the next couple of months, I'll just have to deal with having a bunch of grackles hanging around the yard.

The nice thing that I've noticed for the past several years is that generally once the grackles have raised and fledged their first batch of babies, many of them depart the backyard in early July. I don't know if this is due to the fact that there are more food sources available for them in the countryside (oats and corn fields starting to ripen) or if they just begin their migration early, but I'm not sorry to see them go. A few will still hang around the backyard, but it's nothing like the huge numbers I'm seeing now in the early spring.

I hope this post has been helpful for you. Dealing with blackbirds takes a little bit of patience and perseverance, but if you make the choice to leave your birdfeeders up over the summer months, you will be rewarded with seeing a good variety of our spring and summer migrants and also the joy of seeing the young birds coming to your feeders and being fed by their parents.

Happy birdfeeding!

Bohus Stickning (Knitting)

OK, so normally I don't post knitting projects this frequently, but I wanted to show you this hat I finished yesterday. This is the Northern Lights Bohus Hat from the book Homespun Handknit (published by Interweave Press).

I was looking at the Minnesota Knitter's Guild website on Sunday afternoon and I saw some information there about a recent bohus knitting exhibit at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis (unfortunately, the exhibit ended on Sunday!) Anyway, I was intrigued as I continued to read the story and clicked on some of their other links for bohus knitting.

A little bit of history here: Bohus knitting was pioneered in Sweden in the 1940's by Emma Jacobsson and the Bohus Knitting Cooperative. The bohus style of pattern knitting uses purl and slip stitches along with color stranded patterns to give the effect of more than two colors in a row. In the close-up photo below you can see how this effect is achieved.

Like the other stranded knitting projects I do, the designs are worked from a chart and there are never more than two colors used in a row. This hat is my first attempt at bohus knitting and I'm really pleased with the results. I'm planning to try this pattern again with some different color combinations and the first one will be taking these same colors and using them in reverse order (starting with the yellow and ending with royal blue).

I'm going to donate the hat in this post to the silent auction being held at the Minnesota Master Naturalists conference in May. The silent auction raises scholarship funds to help people who want to attend this conference but might not be able to afford the full registration fee. I was fortunate to be a recipient of one of these scholarships which will enable me to attend the conference this year, so I'm going to "pay it forward" by donating several of my knitted items to help raise money for next year's scholarship fund.

If you're interested in seeing more examples of bohus knitting, please check out Solveig Gustafsson's website for some inspiring and amazingly beautiful designs. (I believe all of the designs are available as kits, but I like them all so much it would be hard for me to pick just one that I wanted to knit.)

Caption Contest #2

It's time for another Nature Knitter Caption Contest. I hope that one of you can come up with a clever caption for this cute pair of House Finches (photographed in my backyard).



Please leave your caption in the "Comments" section of this blog. Entries should be posted by 8:00 PM (CDT) on Thursday, April 9th. The winning caption will be chosen by totally impartial judges (appointed by me!) and the winner will be announced on Saturday, April 11th.

The contributor of the winning caption will receive this copy of "1,029 Backyard Birding Secrets" published by our friends at Birds & Blooms magazine.

Good luck!

Some Finished Knitting Projects

I've finished a few knitting projects in the last week and thought I would share them with you today.

Now that winter is almost over, I finally finished Sophie's sweater. This is the Biscuits and Bones Dog Coat - a free pattern from the Patons yarn company. If you really love your dog and also really love to knit cables, you'll really love this pattern!
I had this sweater half done and found that it was way too large at the first fitting session, so I ripped it all the way back to the "armholes" and started over. As you can see in the photo below, it's still too big around Sophie's chest, but it's done now and she's just going to have to wear it that way (because she's just a dog and none of her friends are going to laugh at her at school anyway).

Here's one more picture, just because I love tormenting her with the camera! Silly dog--why is she so terrified of the camera?

Here's the completed "North Star Scarf" that I started a few months ago from the Donna Druchunas book called "Arctic Lace." This scarf is one of my "pay it forward" projects, but I can't send it to the recipient until the end of May because I'm going to enter it "photo/art/crafts contest" at the upcoming Minnesota Master Naturalists conference. I thought this might be an appropriate entry because Minnesota is the North Star State.

This scarf is approximately 8.5 inches wide and 64 inches long. It was knitted on size 2 needles with a fine laceweight yarn called Kinair. The fiber content is nylon and superfine goat hair. Because the entire project was worked from a chart, I know for a fact that there are 32,508 stitches in this scarf! Amazing! The other really amazing thing about this scarf is how light it is. And to prove it to you, I put the scarf on my postal scale -- it weighs only 1.3 ounces!

as compared to this kiwi fruit which weighs almost 3 times as much at 3.1 ounces! I have quite a few balls of the Kinair left in my stash and next time I use this yarn I'm going to knit something for ME!

Here's something I did knit for me--a ribbed beanie. This is just some Red Heart acrylic yarn, but I really liked these earth-tone colors and since it's machine washable yarn, I can wash and wear this hat for everyday. And it sounds like I'm going to get the chance to wear it for a few weeks yet this year!

This is the "Bobbles & Leaves" tam-o-shanter, from another Paton's pattern book called "Where Did You Get That Hat?" I've never tried this pattern before and it's knitted circular from the center out. I think it turned out really pretty and because it's a tam, I got to put my dinner plate to use again as a blocking tool.

I have another knitting book that has dozens of charts for Fair Isle knitting designs, so I took one of the basic "96 stitch" stocking hats and created my own design for this hat. Hats are a good way to try new patterns, use up those leftover skeins of yarn from other projects and they go pretty fast (all of the hats in this post took me about 6 hours to knit).

I'm starting to notice a "nature" theme in many of the things I've been knitting lately, either with the yarns (earth tones or natural fibers) or the patterns (leaves, stars, snowflakes). When I started this blog, I called it Nature Knitter because I was a knitter and spent a lot of time out in nature, but now it seems that even my knitting has taken on a nature theme. Hmmmmm, what's it all mean?

Oh yeah, here's one more thing......you remember this little shawl I finished back in November and then I decided I didn't like the way it hung off my shoulders and I was going to try and fix that with some beads or something? Well, that's exactly what I did! I found some pretty, clear glass beads in the shape of a leaf (nature again!) and sewed one to each point on the edge of this shawl. The weight of the bead is just enough to give the edge of the shawl a little more weight and this makes it hang much nicer, plus the colorless beads don't clash with all the other colors in the shawl.

So anyway, that's the latest on the Nature Knitter scene. I'm looking forward to another weekend of marathon knitting to take my mind off the "winter storm" the weather service is predicting for us (6 inches of snow?? unbelievable!)

A Movie Recommendation

By now, you've probably figured out that I'm a little bit odd and I like to read different books and watch different movies than what might be considered "mainstream." I usually find these books and movies through "recommendations" at my Amazon and Netflix accounts. Here's a great documentary I watched on Monday that I found at Netflix.

"Pucker Up"

From a New Jersey poultry guy to a nerdy corporate exec, the folks profiled here have one thing in common: they're serious about whistling. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner traveled to Louisburg, NC -- site of the International Whistling Competition -- to make this joyful movie about the no-nonsense business of competitive whistling. Presenting a year in the lives of several competitors, the film culminates with the event's nail-biting finale.

Are you a whistler? Or maybe you know somebody who likes to whistle? My mom is a really good whistler, but we used to tease her about it when we were kids, so I haven't heard her whistle for many years. Anyway, this is a really fun movie and there are plenty of references to birds in it too. (and it made me wonder, how do birds whistle without lips??)

The whistling is phenomenal and since the movie's only 76 minutes long, you're not stuck in front of the TV being bored for hours. It's definitely a family-friendly movie and I think people of all ages would enjoy watching it. And if the whistled version of the Star-Spangled Banner doesn't bring a tear or two to your eyes, then you have a heart of stone.

If you're a Netflix subscriber, add this one to your queue or check with your local public library to see if you can borrow a copy of this DVD from them.

Baltimore Oriole Nest

Remember last December when I showed you pictures of an oriole nest hanging from the branches in my weeping willow? (if you don't, click here to see that post). Anyway, we've had some horrific winds again this winter and I found that beautiful little oriole nest on the ground in the backyard this morning. This is the first time I've ever gotten the chance to hold or see an oriole nest up close and I thought you might enjoy taking a closer look at it too.

Remember it was so easy to spot because of all the blue threads from a plastic tarp? Isn't this amazing how the tarp threads are completely incorporated into the outside structure of this nest? I think that little stick on the left side is one of the small branches the oriole used to help hold this nest in the tree.

Here's a look at the inside. It's mostly long pieces of fine grass (2-3 inches long) and some other material I couldn't identify (it actually looks like needles from a white pine, but I pulled a piece out and it was just too fine for that). I could just barely see that there had probably been some kind of light-colored and fluffy material in the bottom too. There was no dried poop that I could see, so Mrs. Oriole was a conscientious mom (just like Mrs. Bluebird) about keeping her home neat and cleaning up after her babies.

To me this nest seemed really small--I couldn't even fit my entire hand inside of it. I really wondered how Mrs. Oriole and 4 babies managed to fit inside of here!

Here's the bottom side of the nest. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you may be able to see the little pieces of light-colored, fluffy fibers incorporated with all the plant materials.

I turned this nest round and round in my hands, marveling at how a bird is able to create such a perfect little home using only it's beak. I've woven baskets before, but there's no way I would be able to create an oriole nest like this--even using 2 hands!

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Despite the fact that the weather forecasters are telling us to expect several more days of wintery weather, the weather this morning was quite lovely when Sophie and I took our walk and I was happy to hear the song of an Eastern Phoebe in the woods up the street.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Even though it doesn't feel much like spring here yet with our below freezing nights and a windchill of 9 degrees this morning when we took Sophie for a walk, there are plenty of spring birds in the backyard, looking for food and doing lots of singing and pairing up.

You've always heard that robins don't eat birdseed, right? Look at this goofy robin who's been hanging out in the tray feeder on my deck. I watch him and he's definitely eating something from this tray, but I can never see what sort of seed he's got in his beak.
When I worked at Wild Birds Unlimited, we learned from one of our customers that his robins really chowed down on whole sunflower hearts when they got back in the spring. The seed blend I put in this tray feeder contains whole sunflower hearts, so I'm guessing that's what this robin is picking out. Watching this robin brings a big smile to my face!

This is a short post tonight and I'll leave you with this little video I shot out the dining room window yesterday afternoon.

Have a good week everyone!

Birdie Friday

So, I'm happy to report that I started back to work this week. It's only part-time (Tuesdays and Thursdays), but that's OK because the State of Minnesota also finally got my unemployment problems worked out and I got my first deposit yesterday--almost 1 month after I got laid off. So, with money in the checking account finally, it was time to head over to Fleet Farm to re-stock my critter food inventories: corn for the deer, dog food for the possums and foxes, dog food and treats for Sophie, and some safflower seed to discourage grackles at my birdfeeders. It was a nice morning (a little cold with a definite windchill in the air), so I bundled up and did a little birding on my way to Fleet Farm. My first stop was the Willow Creek Reservoir because I've heard that people are starting to see migrating waterfowl in the area. There wasn't a lot of activity at the reservoir (aside from the usual Canada Geese), but I did see Common and Hooded Mergansers, Pied Billed Grebes, Lesser Scaup, Herring Gulls, and one Canvasback. I was hoping maybe for some Tundra Swans and/or White Pelicans, but maybe later on next week.

I stopped to check on the Bald Eagle nest that's just up the road from our house. Mr. and Mrs. Bald Eagle were both present, so I got this nice shot from the truck window. You can just barely see Mrs. Eagle's head over the left edge of the nest. It's so neat to have these birds nesting nearby!

Here's my backyard lawn aeration team in action. This is a mixed group of "blackbirds"--mostly starlings, with a few grackles and cowbirds mixed in. Since the snow has all melted, there have been huge flocks of starlings roaming around and pecking on the ground. I don't know if they're finding seeds on the ground or actually pecking deep enough into the ground to find some insects or grubs.

Anyway, I've been letting them roam around and here's what they're doing--aerating the lawn! Can you see all the little round holes in the photo below? As much as I don't like starlings, I really appreciate them aerating my lawn and they can eat as many bugs and grubs as their little tummies can hold.

The Downy Woodpeckers must be getting ready to start their families soon too--this is the first time I've seen a male and female sharing the suet log. Normally only one woodpecker is allowed there at a time.

And just for size comparison, here's a female Hairy Woodpecker enjoying the suet log too. The downies can get to the suet log by going through the wire, but the hairies are too big and they have to fly in from the bottom. (you can just see the head of a male Downy in the background waiting outside for Mrs. Hairy to depart)

Here's a pair of House Finches. I've been waiting for this feeder to go empty so I can fill it with safflower seed to discourage starlings and grackles.

This is the feeder that hangs right outside the dining room window and I still want to attract the bigger birds like cardinals and rose-breasted grosbeaks (once they come back), so I don't put a cage over it and switch over to straight safflower seed in the spring.

I hope you all have a chance to get out and enjoy some birding this weekend.

King of the Forest

In the fall, our white-tailed deer bucks with their beautiful antlers are the undisputed kings of the forest.

But in spring, the bucks have lost their antlers and a new king reigns supreme in the forests of southeastern Minnesota -- the Eastern Wild Turkey!

The colors in this photo haven't been edited--his head really was that blue!

We went on an early morning turkey scouting adventure today and arrived as this big tom was just waking up and gobbling his turkey head off before flying down from roost. After he landed on the ground, we spent close to 30 minutes watching him parade around in full strut, trying to attract a hen. I was wishing for one of those nice long lenses for my camera as this is the best I could photograph from about 200 yards away.

In Minnesota, the turkey hunting licenses are chosen on a lottery system. For shotgun hunting, there are 8 different 5-day seasons that you choose in December for the zone you want to hunt in. If you're lucky, you will get chosen for the season you pick, or if you don't get chosen, shotgun hunters then have the option to choose any leftover zones or seasons. We didn't get chosen for the shotgun season we applied for, but fortunately there is also a bowhunting option that doesn't depend on the lottery system. So this year, for the first time, we will be trying to get our turkeys in the bowhunting season which starts May 15th and lasts 10 days. There are several advantages of bowhunting the last 2 seasons: by the middle of May the weather should be pretty decent, we can hunt in any zone (so hopefully we'll be able to find a hunting spot closer to home), and that late in the season a lot of the hens are already sitting on eggs, so we might have a better chance of calling in a big tom to one of our hen decoys. Neither of us have ever shot a turkey with a bow and arrow before, so we're really looking forward to this. Mr. Johnson has been shooting at the turkey target since January and I pulled out my bow this morning to practice shooting for the first time since last November. It felt good to shoot that bow again and I did pretty good hitting the targets even after 4 months.


The picture below shows a flying turkey Mr. Johnson shot a few years ago. (He had it "stuffed" and it now hangs on one of our living room walls.) This should give you somewhat of an idea of what a turkey would look like when it's flying. I think the tail is probably flared out a little bit more than usual (for display purposes). The wingspan on this huge tom is about 5 feet and if I remember correctly, this guy weighed around 22 lbs (27 lbs! Mr. Johnson set me straight on this!).....a pretty huge bird!

Bluebird House Makeover

Most of the bluebird houses in my backyard are the Peterson houses. I like this style of bluebird houses and so do my bluebirds. There's only one thing about these houses I really don't like and that's the fact that the sheltered area underneath the nesting platform is the perfect spot for wasps to build their nests (see blue arrow in photo below).
A couple of years ago at a Bluebird Recovery Program conference, I learned about a modification to the Peterson houses that the folks at Bluebirds Across Nebraska were having some good success with eliminating wasp nests on these houses. The ideal thing, of course, would be to build your bluebird houses using this modified plan, but you can also make over your old style houses with just a few cuts of the jigsaw. In the picture below, you can see where I've cut away a triangular shape at the bottom of the house.
This eliminates that dark, sheltered area where wasps loved putting their nests (the orange-ish colored wood on each side shows where the sidewalls were cut away.

I also had to cut a couple inches off the bottom of the door to complete this makeover (pink arrow below shows how much of the door was cut off). This makeover is purely cosmetic and affects only the outside of the house. There is no reduction to the nesting area inside the box.

It was beautiful outside this afternoon and a perfect day for working on this task, however it takes a lot longer than I thought it would and I only managed to complete makeovers on four of my bluebird houses. But I did get those completed houses put back up and while I was putting the houses on the poles where the bluebirds nested last year, I could hear Mr. Bluebird singing over in the neighbor's backyard, so I'm hoping I got these houses ready in time for him to find a mate and start moving in.


Check out these beautiful California strawberries we found at the grocery store today--super sale priced at $1.48 a pound. These were the two biggest ones in the container, and boy were they yummy!

Some Cool Podcast and Blog Stuff

I got an e-mail from Larry at the Brownstone Birding blog this morning letting me know that he and I had gotten a mention on one of Steve Moore's BirdwatchRadio podcasts. Steve also mentioned talking to Dawn and Jeff (of Dawn's Bloggy Blog) at the recent Space Coast Birding Festival. You can listen to the podcast at this link: http://www.birdwatchradio.com/podcast.htm
If you're an iTunes subscriber, you can listen and subscribe to all of Steve's BirdWatchRadio podcasts, or listen on-line at his website (posted on my sidebar links under "Podcasts I Enjoy"). Steve always has interesting and fun programs and you never know when he's going to interview a birder or blogger you might know!

Several weeks ago Jennifer Schlick invited me to contribute a blog post on white-tailed deer for her "Animals of Western New York" blog (I think it's a pretty sure bet that white-tailed deer in western New York look and behave the same as our Minnesota deer!) This week I finally got my pictures and story ideas together and sent everything off to her. Here's the link to my post on Jennifer's blog. Thanks Jennifer for giving me this opportunity to contribute to your blog!

Miscellaneous Thursday

Signs of spring are becoming more frequent here in SE Minnesota. I'm happy to report that I saw and heard the first Eastern Bluebird in my backyard yesterday morning.....he was truly the "bluebird of happiness!"

I saw that the Common Grackles and Red-Winged Blackbirds had arrived last Monday when I got back from California. Those grackles are pigs and will become more annoying once all the babies have fledged, but I only have to tolerate them until July sometime. I could take my feeders down, but I don't want to deprive all the other backyard birds, so this is the first and last time you'll hear me complain about grackles (for this year anyway).

I saw this different looking grackle the other day. I desperately wanted it to be something like a Brewer's Blackbird or Rusty Blackbird, so I took this picture to check it against my field guides. Alas, I believe it's only a juvenile common grackle (sigh). I will keep checking these flocks of blackbirds in the hopes that I might see something unusual one day though.

Bluejays do not have good "clinging" skillz!

Crows love possum food!

Here's a picture of a couple hats I knitted this week.

My Master Naturalist class started last night. I think it will be a fun course and the students are a pretty diverse group of people. One of the young guys at my table is retired from the Army--after 2 tours in Iraq. We also have an electrical engineer, a ski instructor, a chemist, and a guy who readily admitted to the whole group "that he loves his dog too much." Oh yeah, I think he's going to be my favorite classmate!

On another positive note, official testing sources have confirmed that I am neither a criminal nor a drug addict, so I will be starting my new (part-time) job next Tuesday! And not a moment too soon as I still have not seen a single dime from the Minnesota Unemployment Insurance. I could launch into a good rant here, but will spare all of you dear readers with the sorry details. Back to the job.......it's going to be very similar to what I did in my previous job, only in a different area. The other good thing is that I'll be working with most of the same people I worked with before, so I'm happy that I'll be working with people I already know and like. For now it's only 2 days a week, but with a pay increase over my previous position, hopefully I'll be able to cover the majority of my expenses. It will be nice to be working but also have days off for gardening, lawn mowing, and other fun spring and summer activities.