Keeping the pesky squirrels out of my bird feeder!

I've never noticed too many squirrels in my yard but when I put up the bird feeder, they showed up. On the first day, a squirrel just sat on the fence and starred at it most of the day then left and I didn't see him for a few days. I figured he gave up. I was wrong because when he came back he went right over to the feeder and climbed right up the pole and sat on my birdfeeder and helped himself. I wish I would've had my camera handy for that shot! Off I went to search the net for a solution. When I was about to head off to the local garden shop to buy one, my husband, being the craftsman that he is informed me he had all the supplies he needed to whip up a quick baffler himself. This is how he did it...

Cut some sheet metal...

Bent the edges in so they wouldn't be sharp...

Crimped the edges together to form a cone...

Formed a piece of wood to fit snuggly under the cone, around the pole...


Some screws to make it adjustable...

The finshed baffler looks like this...

So far it works like charm!

Grabbing some nesting material

I was sitting under my tree and a little house finch and her mate stopped by to grab some nesting material from the old robin's nest. I'd like to think it was the finch couple from my gutter making a new, hopefully better located nest :)

So sad, the nest is gone :(

Well, I was really hoping the rain would hold off until the nestlings fledged but no such luck. We had a fairly heavy rainstorm Saturday night while I wasn't home and I was worried how the nest would hold up. To my surprise, she was still sitting up there the next day. This picture was taken to show how her nest is damming up our downspout and all the water is spilling over the edge.
Unfortunately later in the afternoon we had extremely heavy thunderstorms move across the state. Again, I wasn't home but was very concerned about how the nest was holding up. When I got home late that evening, I shined a flashlight up there and there was no mama bird so I knew it wasn't a good sign. I didn't see her at all the next day, either. At one point I saw the male finch land on the gutter about a foot away and look around as if he were wondering what had happened (maybe he knew) and it was sad. That evening we got more heavy rain and since we were sure the nest had been abandoned, we had no choice but to clean the nest out of our gutter before damage was done to our roof (if it hadn't already). Sure enough, 2 nestlings and one egg had perished. It is so heartbreaking and I'm hoping mama has found a safer place to build her next nest. :(

Easing my concern for the nestlings

Although I can't see them, I think I can hear them but I know they're up there! The nestlings in my gutter have hatched! I see mama finch feeding something and dad finch feeds mom. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I'm a little concerned that if a nestling falls out of the nest pre-maturely, it is a long fall to a concrete patio. To ease my concerns, I keep my umbrella underneath just in case. I figure it will at least break the fall halfway down. Now if I can just keep it from raining too hard and drowning them :)

Here's dad after he stopped by to feed mom...

I found two more House Finch nests!

I saw some twigs up in my satellite dish a few days ago and thought a bird had tried to make a nest but didn't finish. When I checked again, the nest was complete and you can see the mama house finch sitting in it :)


I have a little pine tree, more like a pine bush in my front yard. When I was doing some yard work a bird flew out of it. I took a peak behind the branches and this is what I found! Now I have a total of 3 house finch nests in my yard that I'm keeping an eye on!

As I was taking a picture of this nest, the mom and dad were on my neighbor's roof keeping and eye on me. I took this picture of them and then I was lucky enough to get a photo of the dad feeding mom!

Recent fascination with birdwatching!

I decided that my recent fascination with watching the birds of my backyard warranted a blog all of it's own. I love taking pictures of birds and wanted to share them in a place other than my digital scrapbooking blog because I realize not everyone enjoys reading about birds or looking at pictures of them. For those that follow my Project-365, you may have seen a few of these pictures before but with less of a story with them.
A little history about my encounter with birdwatching or birding as it is also known...Up until this spring I spent my whole life (42 years) not really paying any attention to birds and never understood why anyone would want to birdwatch as a hobby or even have a bird as a pet...I'm a dog person all the way! One day in late April I was in my backyard and I noticed a nest in my tree. I thought this was kind of exciting because this is the first time this tree has ever had a nest and it's the only tree in my yard. I watched for awhile to see if the nest was being used. Sure enough, I photographed this American Robin putting the finishing touches on her work of art. Just to give you and example of how much I didn't know about birds a few weeks ago, I didn't even know this bird was a Robin!

I can't remember if this is the male or female Robin but I couldn't resist taking this photo complete with dirt on his/her beak from grabbing worms!It didn't take long after finding this nest for me to become obsessed with the idea of watching this bird raise a family right in my yard. I envisioned all the great photo opportunities I would get as the nestlings beame fledglings and took their first flight. I immediatley got online and learned all there was to learn about American Robins. I could tell when she was laying her eggs and I knew when she was done because she rarely left the nest and when she did it was for a very short time. I became very curious to see how many eggs she had so I waited patiently for her to fly a safe distance away and I climbed on the shed roof and quickly took this photo on May 7, 2009 ...

I watched this robin sit on these eggs for 3 more days and on Mother's day I didn't see the robin anymore. I was so worried something may have happened to her and I kept an eye on the nest most of the day and still no robin. Finally, my husband went out to investigate. Much to our disappointment, the eggs were gone and there were a few blue eggshells scattered on the ground beneath. I was heartbroken over this and immediately needed to know what happened so I could prevent it from happening again...was it a cat, raccoon, squirrel? I'll never know for sure but I have an idea about what may have happened. I still need to do more research but I feel strongly that maybe it has something to do with this male House Sparrow that's guarding a nest on my neighbor's roof...I noticed as the robin was building her nest, when she would leave this sparrow would come and steal nesting material from her. I also noticed that after her eggs were gone he was at her nest quite a bit. I climebed up ther one day and noticed the nest is all filled in with twigs and grass as to make it unusable for another bird. Well, I guess it's one of those mysteries that will never be solved.
As I was missing my robin, I quckly noticed a little bird fly up into my gutter. After watching this little bird for awhile, I realized she had a nest up there. At the time I first noticed her, I had no idea what kind of bird she was as I'm so new to this stuff. She was fast and I could never get a good look at her. This is the picture I took the day I noticed her...

At first I was thinking she was a House Wren but it seemed that her beak was too short. After spending some time watching her I noticed her mate and he was more identifiable due to his coloring. I did a search to find common birds for my area and came to the conclusion that thay are House Finches. Here a pic of the male and I fianally got a better pic of the girl when she landed on my neighbor's roof...

Here's another peak at her watching me. She's getting use to all the time we spend in the yard and doesn't seem quite as skittish as she first did.
Although it's way to high for me to see, I know she has eggs in there as she hardly ever leaves the nest and I saw the male come and feed her once.As I was sitting on my patio one morning, I saw that house sparrow from next door come and try to get in her nest twice but she (and I) scared him away. I'm a little concerned about her choice of a nest sight. As you can see it's in a gutter and right above it is a downspout. As if that's not bad enough, it's about a 15 feet drop to my concrete patio. I fear the thought of a heavy downpour and if they survive that, it will be a long drop if a nestling falls out or when the fledglings try to take their first flight. We shall see!
I decided now that I enjoy watching the birds in my yard, I may as well get a bird feeder and a birdbath so they will stay around awhile. Here are some pics I took:

So that's about it for now. I'm hoping to have some exciting pictures in the coming weeks as the eggs hatch and hopefully there will be some successful fledglings taking flight! Thanks for stopping by!