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SAVE IT NOW!

GARAGE SALE

Wanted:  Clean donations for our garage sale on September 13th.  Limited storage is available. Call us for details.

New Habitat Built For Visiting Chimney Swifts at WBR

Have you noticed a little construction going on in our back parking lot at Wild Bird Rehabilitation. Thanks to a grant from the Boeing Employee Community Fund and the work of one of our members, E.F. Porter this will soon be a new home for visiting Chimney Swifts where they can nest and roost.

The Chimney Swift tower will also have an area to display information about these fascinating birds.  Not only do they eat more than 1,000 mosquitoes and other insects a day, they are first-rate world travelers. Each spring they come from areas of Peru, Brazil and Chile to the skies of North America.  Except when roosting at night and raising their young their life takes place in the skies.  They are often referred to as the “Children of the Sky”.  Chimney Swifts at one time nested in old growth trees that were hollow.  As these disappeared they moved into the chimneys which became more and more plentiful as humans moved throughout the country.  Now however, chimneys are often lined with metal and capped at the top, so the swifts are losing there nesting areas.

  This tower will be an effort to add a new nesting site.  If all goes well we will have a camera inside the tower to watch the nesting process.  With a monitor inside the center visitors and volunteers can keep an eye on any resident swifts.  We will try and get this on the web site also.  It should be a pretty exciting reality show.      

If you’d like to build a tower in your own backyard, we have information available at the center, or you can go to  www.chimneyswifts.org. .

Attracting Hummingbirds to Your Backyard 

To attract hummingbirds to your garden, include many species with red, deep-throated flowers with long blooming cycles.  Locate these flowers in predator-free beds, suspend them in hanging baskets or train them up arbors and gazebos for safe feeding. Natural flower nectars are best for hummingbirds.

Use refined sugar-water solution as a substitute for flower nectar. Avoid using brown sugar or honey in the place of refined sugar; they have impurities that can foster bacterial growth and can cause fatal diseases in hummingbirds. Also leave out food coloring, it’s unnecessary. 

Prepare a sterile and safe sugar-water solution for hummingbirds by following these steps:
*Add one part refined white sugar to four parts boiling water
*Mix until the sugar is completely dissolved.
*Cover the solution and allow to cool
*Wash your feeder with soap & hot water. Rinse thoroughly. Fill the feeder with sugar-water mixture.

For best results place the feeder in a full-sun location.

Clean your feeders whenever you fill them to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungi in the sugar solution. Use hot water and soap, removing any residue that clings to the inside of the feeder.  Take special care to wash the tube of feeding holes with a narrow bottle brush.   Also, you can soak the feeder and all of its parts in bleach solution for three to five minutes, rinse it thoroughly, and wipe it dry.  Allow it to air dry for 15 minutes longer before refilling it with sterile sugar-water solution. 

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