*** I may have neglected my blog this year, but not my bird friends! ***
​Project FeedWatch started in November and I have once again purchased a winter's supply of chili pepper suet. If you enjoy feeding the birds, but not the challenge of outsmarting squirrels, you will be delighted to find out that birds have evolved to eat chili pepper seeds and they are a harmless deterrent to suet-loving squirrels. 

Project FeederWatch
 100 common feeder birds have been cross-referenced on what they like to eat and where they like to eat it;  explore your region to see what you might be able to attract to your feeder this winter:
Common Feeder Birds

Seven Simple Actions to Help Birds
Small changes in the way you buy groceries and products, drink coffee, and garden will yield great rewards for your local ecosystem, as well as promoting fair-trade farmers across the world.
Nurture Nature.

It feels like autumn here in Seattle, and even though we most likely will have another round of warmish weather, it is the time of year when people are getting busy raking and tidying up for winter. This year, I would like to invite you to consider taking a less vigorous approach to cutting back your grasses and raking and composting leaves and fallen branches. Check out these tips from Audubon on how to enhance your backyard this fall to encourage more wildlife action.

Backyard birders: be sure to sign up for Project Feederwatch, This year's poster is a limited edition poster of backyard Hawks and Falcons of North America.  

If online learning is one of your passions, I suggest one of these Cornell Lab of Ornithology self-paced courses. Or, for a free quick fix:, check out their videos.

Wishing you lots of daydreaming and playtime in your backyard and neighborhood this fall!

"The birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees"...
Ah yes, spring! One of the questions many people have is how exactly do birds make babies?

Bird sex: to begin--most male birds do not have a penis
There are almost 10,000 species of birds and only around 3% have a penis. All of our male songbirds, eagles, hawks, gulls, cranes, owls, pigeons, hummingbirds and woodpeckers do not have a penis. Flamingos, penguins, and albatrosses have also completely lost their penises. Birds with penises include ducks, geese and swans, and large flightless birds like ostriches and emus.

In the kingdom of aves, 97% of male and female birds have what's known as a cloaca; the cloaca is a multipurpose internal chamber that ends in an opening used for discharging sperm or eggs. It is the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts.

Springtime antics of songbird mating may include the male showing off his clever dance moves,  singing repertoire, and feather displays, along with loop-de-loops, gifts of food or trinkets, and general lovebird tom-foolery. If the female is receptive, eventually she will land, shift her tail feathers to the side, and the male bird will swoop in for a swift tail-to-tail "kiss" as their swollen cloaca bump together for the transfer of sperm (above photo). If you have ever been lucky enough to witness the cloacal kiss, you know that if you blink you will miss it.

Our backyard birdhouses have housed many families of songbirds over the last 20 years, and this year we have a birdhouse full of tiny chickadees. YAY!

Chickadees usually lay 6-8 dime-size eggs in a soft downy nest constructed by the female. Mother birds sit on their eggs for 12-13 days, and then for two weeks after they hatch, both parents work long hours to feed the voracious nestlings. We enjoy watching the adults fly in with a beak full of food, perch in the Stewardia tree and call, wing in to the "bee-peep" of the babies to deposit the grub, and then leave with a white fecal sack-keeping the downy nest clean and tidy. 

Kristen Martyn, from Wild Birds Unlimited reported that "Research by Doug Tallajmy (entomologist at the University of Delaware) found that one pair of chickadees delivered food once every 3 minutes to their nest. Estimating that they forage during the hours of 6 am- 8 pm (entirely realistic during nesting season) means they make approximately 390-570 trips with insects to the nest each day. Hatchlings are in the nest for approximately 14-18 days. This number does not include the insects required once the young ones fledge, but are still cared for by their parents for another 1-2 weeks." That is a lot of worms, bugs, berries, and seeds! No wonder the parent birds are looking raggedy. 

I am guessing that our nestlings are almost two weeks old, as we can see their tiny black heads as they peek out of the birdhouse. They will be fledging soon. 

Can you spot our birdhouse nestled in the bay laurel?
Chickadees prefer a home that is 65% shaded and has an unobstructed flight path to the entrance. 

The Twelve Days Of Christmas is an English Christmas carol that was originally published in a book called Mirth Without Mischief in about 1780. However, the song is believed to be much older than the printed version and there are at least 3 French versions known to exist.

It seems that the original version was a love song to the birds that were often found not only in the backyards and woods, but also on the holiday tables of feasting families.

You will be familiar with the first seven choruses/courses, as they are the usual fare ; ^)
Cheers!
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On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me A Partridge in a Pear Tree
The partridge is a member of the pheasant family and has been a traditional game bird in England for centuries. The partridge referred to in the carol is most likely a Grey Partridge (Perdix perdix) or English Partridge. Partridges are usually ground birds who feed on seeds and insects so we are not sure why it would be sitting in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me Two Turtle Doves
The Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) is a common summer visitor to England. It is a dainty dove, smaller and darker than most other pigeons but would have been featured in banquets in medieval times just as today we eat pigeon.

On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me Three French Hens
There are a four well-known breeds of French hens; Faverolles, La Fleche, Crevecoeurs and Marans. Faverolles have superior egg-laying ability during the winter months so would make an ideal gift for someone's true love at Christmas.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Four Calling Birds
Most people interpret a calling bird as a song bird. However, the original song referred to "Four Colly Birds". The word colly means "black as coal or soot" so it is likely that the gift was four blackbirds (Turdus merula). We know that blackbirds were eaten in the past from the children's nursery rhyme "Four And Twenty Blackbirds Baked In A Pie".

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Five Gold Rings
The gold rings are not in fact pieces of jewelry as the literal meaning would have you believe but are actually ring-necked birds. These are most likely to be Common (Ring-necked) Pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) which were introduced to England from China in medieval times. Pheasant is still a popular game bird eaten today.

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Six Geese-a-Laying
The geese in this verse are probably domesticated birds so are likely to be the Greylag Goose (Anser anser), the ancestor of our domesticated geese. The Greylag Goose is a large, native British bird and is still traditionally eaten for Christmas.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Seven Swans-a-Swimming
Nowadays Mute Swans (Cygnus olor) are protected birds but there are many surviving medieval recipes for swans. One such recipe says that "Swan was quite often served as an ordinary dish, without the head......". Swan was roasted along with peacocks, storks and other birds that we would never consider eating today.

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eight Maids-a-Milking
Cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis) are small birds with yellow or greyish legs and a yellow beak. As their name suggests, cattle egrets tend to live near cattle as the animals' hooves disturb invertebrate prey. They are visiting the UK in increasing numbers and we think they are an appropriate bird to represent the maids in the carol.
 
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Nine Ladies Dancing
Many birds perform dances particularly during courtship rituals. Although regarded by some as black, sinister and greedy, cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) have a distinctive bobbing stance when dancing which we think looks quite ladylike.

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Ten Lords-a-Leaping
Grey herons (Ardea cinerea) are tall, with long legs, a long beak and grey, black and white feathering. To take flight a heron must leap into the air and when standing, hunched with their neck bent over their chest they look just like old men.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eleven Pipers Piping
Sandpipers (Actitis hypoleucos) make a distinctive three-note piping-like cry as they take off. It is a smallish wader with contrasting brown upperparts and white underparts. Sandpipers habitually bob up and down, known as 'teetering', and they have a distinctive flight with stiff, bowed wings.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Twelve Drummers Drumming
We think the best contender for the drummer is the great-spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major). They spend most of their time clinging to the side of tree trunks and branches trying to hide from observers and predators although they will venture into gardens to feed at bird tables and feeders. The presence of a great-spotted woodpecker is often announced by its loud call or by its distinctive spring 'drumming' display.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Project FeederWatch begins November 10th.
Join me this year as a Citizen Scientist?

In the meantime, enjoy these comics from Bird & Moon. See you outside!

Hmm, I had no idea-really. So...googled it, and the first answer came from "Ask an Entomologist"

This second image is a still-shot of a really cool gif created by Seattle's Eleanor Lutz (and if I ever figure out how to embed the gif, I will update this post!) Meanwhile:

I will have more interesting bug research for you soon, but wanted to lead with some fun facts. Enjoy!  (and be sure to check out Tabletop Whale for additional awesome science illustrations!)

This juvenile Cooper's Hawk swept into our bird feeder to pluck an unlucky finch (?) out of the air; we were sitting at our kitchen table with coffee and were in awe at how quickly it happened. I was able to get these shots from a perch in my upstairs studio.

In the twenty years that I have been feeding birds, this is the first songbird snatching I have witnessed. I must admit that I would much rather know that wild raptors are catching an urban songbird on occasion, as it is part of the natural order of things--unlike the pervasive devastation wrecked upon backyard birds by feral cats in the US.

Thanks for keeping it wild on the hill Cooper's Hawk!

It was crazy!  We had blue sky and sunshine for an hour today at lunch, and I had probably over 100 birds and at least a dozen different species visiting my bird feeders, eating grass seeds, pecking bugs in the garden, sipping the borage and pineapple sage flowers, and bathing in the birdbaths.

In the backyard flock we had a noisy and voracious round of robins, a flutter of bushtits, a banditry of black-cap chickadees, a crew of dark-eyed juncos, a lone Stellar's Jay, one Yellow-rumped Warbler, the first goldfinches of the season, plus a melody of song sparrows,  a shimmer of Anna's hummingbirds, a host of purple finches, a drumming of Northern Flickers, and an (unwelcome) chattering of starlings. (No-show regulars: crows, Bewick's wren, and Spotted Towhee sweethearts.)

Hot Tip: one of our newest additions to entice birds is chili-pepper suet. Yes, that is "Sizzle n' Heat Suet" in our feeder, and guess what? The squirrels won't go near it = YAY! Since birds evolved to eat and spread capsium annuum seeds, they get to enjoy a squirrel-free dining experience.

We also have a couple squirrel-proof seed feeders with weight-activated seed ports, and I highly recommend them. It is so satisfying to feed birds without having to outsmart those pesky squirrels, and they still have PLENTY to eat in the yard with all the berries and seeds to keep them happy.

Bonus Bird: a Cooper's Hawk near the corner of Thomas and 11th Ave...
Check it out if you are out and about on Capitol Hill. I saw him twice: first as predator, attacking a worried flurry of chickadees at a feeder, and the second time as prey, hassled by crows.
I love seeing hawks in the city!