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ENTERTAINMENT BOOK

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Keep your backyard birds healthy this winter

Set up your feeders early to prepare for winter. Choose sheltered areas of your property, hanging feeders under eves and beneath boughs of evergreen trees to protect feeding birds.

Water is important for bids during the winter as well. There are electric and solar heated bird baths and water bowls for birds during freezing weather. Check with your local bird supply store.

Keep suet, fruit, nut and seed feeders filled throughout the winter. Make a point to check your feeders daily. If you plan to travel, arrange for someone to care for your feeders while you are gone.

If the seed gets wet, it is important to replace with clean, dry seed. Old seed, or wet seed molds quickly and can poison birds. Feeders should be cleaned periodically with a bleach solution to avoid spreading disease.

Consider installing a seed catcher beneath your feeder. Many birds, such as Cardinals and Doves will use these trays to feed from.  Sweep or rake beneath the feeders regularly to clean up moldy seed or bird droppings.

 By following the steps mentioned above, you will enjoy watching many birds from the comfort of your warm home.

Eagle Scout Provides Flight Cage
Eagle Scout Ryan Holstad recently deconstructed Wild Bird Rehab's rehabilitation flight cage from Whitecliff Park in Crestwood and reconstructed it behind the Center across from the new flight cage. Having the flight cage close to the Center helps us monitor the birds' progress and insure volunteer coverage for the care of our recovering birds. This procedure included replacing rotten wood, reinforcing posts and rescreening.

Ryan and his crew, which often included his parents and other Eagle Scouts, spent more than 100 man hours on this project.  We appreciate Ryan's attention to detail and care involved in getting this just right for our birds.  The results are spectacular. 

Eagle Scouts donate time to initiate, plan and complete a service project for a charity as part of mastering scouting requirements. 
 

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. .

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