More birds are venturing into our yard lately. We are seeing many starlings at the suet feeder (above), robins, red wing black birds, blue jays and chickadee's. We have sunflower seeds out in the backyard and suet feeders in the front. We went for a long walk in the woods across the street to see if our Lady Goshawk had arrived yet and we found her nesting area but no sign of her yet. She should lay eggs in April so we will go back and check on her in about two weeks.
This is Sid by the Goshawk nest. She wanted to leave sticks and things to help Mama G. rebuild her nest. This provided the perfect opportunity to introduce something I saw on Child In Harmony's blog http://www.childinharmony.com/2011/03/make-nest-helper.html, a nest helper!
We collected dried grass, wool roving and batting, yarn, twine, dog hair, cat hair (oh the irony!!) and even some human hair from a hairbrush. We then filled a suet cage with all the goodies and hung it out by the bird feeder to offer to the birds as nesting material. Sid wrote a list of all the items we put in the suet holder and in a May we will check it to see what they took and what they left.
Within thirty minutes we saw chickadee's flying over and pecking at bits of fluff. It will be really great if we can locate a couple of nests that have some of the colourful yarns and wool in them. Happy nesting birds, can't wait to meet the new additions to the neighbourhood.
Genius! What a wonderful idea : )
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