Bird Friendly Yard

We’ve been spending a lot of time outside these days. It’s been so beautiful and cool. Along with general yard clean up Lily and I have been working on making it bird friendly thanks to some ideas in a book from Grandma.

We found a bird seed feeder for a crazy price we couldn’t pass it up and filled it with a millet and nyger seed mix and added some black oil sunflower seeds. We bought a cage for a block of suet which of course is an excellent way to help keep birds healthy and replenish fat reserves on the colder days. Cam and Lily built two nesting or bird houses. One was a single home which we put up on a south facing wall and the other was a bird condo which we put up on an east facing wall. We also put some of the leaves that I had raked up and piled them under the small trees and shrubs growing in the yard. This mulch pile creates an ideal habitat for critters birds like to eat as well as offers shelter if they need it.

I still need to figure out some sort of bird bath that is easy to replace the water on a regular basis. It’s actually really hard to figure out where to put feeders and baths because you have to keep in mind where the birds will feel most comfortable and safe from predators like cats. We’d also like to be able to watch them eat and bath but it’s not safe to put these things near windows and the birds may not enjoy being watched as much as we’d like to. We’re also planning on building a few more feeding platforms but I’m hoping to find a few shallow dishes at the thrift store first that we can build them around. Having a removable dish will make cleaning it and replacing food a lot easier.

Here are some recent pictures:

Can’t believe this is the only picture I have of Leif. It’s not a good one.

Bird condo. It was heavy!:

New swing dad put up. Too much fun if you ask me:

A deer skull. The red is my dog’s blood. He found it under a bucket in the garden and was trying to chew on it. It’s under the bucket to discourage the dogs and encourage the maggots to clean them up.

Also under the bucket in the garden are these bear skulls: