The way to attract a pretty bird for a pose is through its stomach – very cute Barbara! Is that at your friend’s place with her feeders? I know you have featured some birds and feeders in the past there if memory serves me right.
Thank you, Linda! I’m lucky when they stop moving for a second or two so I can get a picture. 😊 These pictures were taken here at home at my own bird feeder, through the sliding glass doors. Hours of viewing pleasure for me!
That’s great that you can look through the sliding doors and admire and photograph your birds – lots of viewing pleasure. I miss having the birdfeeders, but they’d have to go in the backyard and there is no easy viewing access at all from my windows as they are too high. I’m trying to decide whether to put the hummingbird feeders up this year at the side of the house … I only had the one female and put out two dish feeders and with no tree or shady areas, with last year’s extreme heat, I worried the nectar would spoil even with the “nectar defender” drops so I never put the feeders out. I am hearing we will have another hot Summer to rival last year’s.
Yesterday my daughter-in-law was talking about all the trouble she had with ants and her hummingbird feeder. They do seem like a lot of work to maintain! Back in Connecticut we tried attracting them with petunias and it worked like a charm, we’d see them every day. But, the petunias required a lot of deadheading. Even though I don’t do anything to attract them here, I often get hummingbirds at my windows, collecting spider web silk for their nests, which tells you something about the spider situation down here!
Yes, you may have just solidified my decision Barbara. The ants are a big problem and I sure didn’t want to bring them in the house when I took the feeders downstairs to wash them out. Maybe I will skip it then – the idea of the hot weather nearly boiling the nectar factors into that decision too. Maybe petunias are an idea although I was going to just stick with the silk flower baskets … mine are just a couple of years old and I didn’t put most of them out last year as I thought the landscaper was going to come and do the job.
That is very cool that the hummingbirds are by your window getting nesting materials. You have a great view from your window – I think I mentioned I have no windows as the blinds are permanently shut and can’t be opened. My back bedroom window I can see out, but I have to kneel on the bed. Not great viewing for any period of time. Marge, my neighbor/friend, had lots of hummingbird feeders around the house her last few years. She would watch them at the front room window and on her back deck. After she passed away in 2017, her son (who lives there now), took away all the feeders and shepherd hooks, but told me they would come to the living room window and look in as if to say “hey, where’s our feeder?”
If you’ve told me before I have forgotten – why can’t your blinds be opened? I think I would go bonkers if I couldn’t see outside and let the sunlight come inside. Living here is ideal for this stage of my life as the homeowner’s association takes care of the trees and bushes and maintains the feeling of living in the woods. All I need to do outside is replace the seed cylinder when needed, and refill the bird bath, and keep enjoying the show. I wish you could see out your windows!
That sounds like an idyllic set-up you have there Barbara. I do envy you for that.
My parents got metal roll-up blinds in the late 1960s – they were touted as good for keeping the house warm in Winter, cool in Summer and no one could raise them from the outside, so good for crime prevention. But, they were problematic in Winter if they would freeze from a wintry mix/freezing rain. My mother would leave them in a half-down position, in the living room, as the lacy curtains covered the bottom half, then she’d close the drapes, so people could not see into the house. She did not like the closed-in feeling. She did the same for the kitchen where she spent most of her time. We had some strong Summer storms the year she passed away (2010) and the front window is fairly large, it has a double-sized blind and I saw it moving back and forth and did not want to incur the expense to replace the blind. My mother’s bedroom blind was replaced and was expensive – I want to say $800.00 for the blind, then there was additional charges for labor and that was a few years before she passed away. The bathroom, a tiny blind was about $600.00 before labor. I decided to close them all up tight and not worry about damage – I had been laid off at the time, so I shut them all Summer. When I went to open/raise them in the Fall, every blind but one (my room, back window) had seized shut. I left them shut and every year I consider getting the blind company to take them down, fix them or replace them. The original blind company is out of business. Now you can have push-button blinds, even program them to open/close by a smartphone if you are on vacation, but I think too many bells and whistles would cause more breakdowns. Another thing I don’t like is if you raise/close them every day like we always did, if we went to my grandmother’s house, it would be obvious we were gone for four days, even though we used a timer. I don’t know how closely people pay attention, but I think of crime, etc. constantly in this day and age.
So I live with it … as to crime prevention, it is great as they cannot be opened from the outside, so with steel doors, a dusk-to-dawn pole light, a sensor light at the side of the house and the blinds, I feel safe … not so much in the case of a fire.
Thanks for telling me the story, Linda. Wow! I hope someday soon you will be able to take the blinds down and replace them with something you can open easily in the daytime and still feel safe. I think I would go crazy without any sunlight coming in.
I think about it a lot Barbara and am mixed – for safety sake (fire), they should be available to open and escape. For crime, they are great. For tornadoes, hail and severe weather, they protect the windows, so no glass shatters. We had a severe storm with large hail once, a long time ago and one of the metal shutters was damaged and had to be replaced, but the window was not damaged. Before I got the instant-on generator, whenever we had a power outage, I had several battery-operated lamps as it would be pitch dark in the house (unless I left the two storm doors open … I am very mindful of crime and don’t do that).
I would love to look out my window and see birds, however, unlike you who can hang a feeder there and see them, we have Cooper’s Hawks. I see their shadow go overhead on a sunny day and not only that, I’ve been outside when the Blue Jays start shrieking like crazy and I look across the street and see a Cooper’s Hawk in the same tree all the time … I even took photos of it once for my blog and it is probably the same hawk that “got” all my squirrels I used to feed at the house and my neighbor never told me as he watched it happen. He has a deck off his kitchen and has said he has seen a Cooper’s Hawk grab a squirrel and take it to the trees. I’ve not seen any action where the neighbor hung a couple of feeders at the beginning of the Winter that I mentioned to you. Either he stopped feeding them, or he does have a large dog and that didn’t work out with feeding the birds.
Two lovely shots, Barbara! I hope you have bluebirds looking to nest near you! I have a pair checking out my nest box for the past week. 🤗
Thank you, Donna! I hope so, too. I see a couple of them almost every day, my very own bluebirds of happiness. 🥰 I hope yours choose the nest box you have offered them!
Thanks! It’s what’s left of a Wild Birds Unlimited no-mess seed cylinder. The ingredient listed are: sunflower chips, peanuts, various tree nuts (such as almonds, pecans, walnuts), cherries, and gelatin as a binder.
Lovely friends! 🤩
Thank you, Eliza! 😊
The birds know Spring’s coming! What lovely creatures — thank you for sharing them here!
They certainly do! It’s been so comforting having so many bird visitors these days. ♡
The way to attract a pretty bird for a pose is through its stomach – very cute Barbara! Is that at your friend’s place with her feeders? I know you have featured some birds and feeders in the past there if memory serves me right.
Thank you, Linda! I’m lucky when they stop moving for a second or two so I can get a picture. 😊 These pictures were taken here at home at my own bird feeder, through the sliding glass doors. Hours of viewing pleasure for me!
That’s great that you can look through the sliding doors and admire and photograph your birds – lots of viewing pleasure. I miss having the birdfeeders, but they’d have to go in the backyard and there is no easy viewing access at all from my windows as they are too high. I’m trying to decide whether to put the hummingbird feeders up this year at the side of the house … I only had the one female and put out two dish feeders and with no tree or shady areas, with last year’s extreme heat, I worried the nectar would spoil even with the “nectar defender” drops so I never put the feeders out. I am hearing we will have another hot Summer to rival last year’s.
Yesterday my daughter-in-law was talking about all the trouble she had with ants and her hummingbird feeder. They do seem like a lot of work to maintain! Back in Connecticut we tried attracting them with petunias and it worked like a charm, we’d see them every day. But, the petunias required a lot of deadheading. Even though I don’t do anything to attract them here, I often get hummingbirds at my windows, collecting spider web silk for their nests, which tells you something about the spider situation down here!
Yes, you may have just solidified my decision Barbara. The ants are a big problem and I sure didn’t want to bring them in the house when I took the feeders downstairs to wash them out. Maybe I will skip it then – the idea of the hot weather nearly boiling the nectar factors into that decision too. Maybe petunias are an idea although I was going to just stick with the silk flower baskets … mine are just a couple of years old and I didn’t put most of them out last year as I thought the landscaper was going to come and do the job.
That is very cool that the hummingbirds are by your window getting nesting materials. You have a great view from your window – I think I mentioned I have no windows as the blinds are permanently shut and can’t be opened. My back bedroom window I can see out, but I have to kneel on the bed. Not great viewing for any period of time. Marge, my neighbor/friend, had lots of hummingbird feeders around the house her last few years. She would watch them at the front room window and on her back deck. After she passed away in 2017, her son (who lives there now), took away all the feeders and shepherd hooks, but told me they would come to the living room window and look in as if to say “hey, where’s our feeder?”
If you’ve told me before I have forgotten – why can’t your blinds be opened? I think I would go bonkers if I couldn’t see outside and let the sunlight come inside. Living here is ideal for this stage of my life as the homeowner’s association takes care of the trees and bushes and maintains the feeling of living in the woods. All I need to do outside is replace the seed cylinder when needed, and refill the bird bath, and keep enjoying the show. I wish you could see out your windows!
That sounds like an idyllic set-up you have there Barbara. I do envy you for that.
My parents got metal roll-up blinds in the late 1960s – they were touted as good for keeping the house warm in Winter, cool in Summer and no one could raise them from the outside, so good for crime prevention. But, they were problematic in Winter if they would freeze from a wintry mix/freezing rain. My mother would leave them in a half-down position, in the living room, as the lacy curtains covered the bottom half, then she’d close the drapes, so people could not see into the house. She did not like the closed-in feeling. She did the same for the kitchen where she spent most of her time. We had some strong Summer storms the year she passed away (2010) and the front window is fairly large, it has a double-sized blind and I saw it moving back and forth and did not want to incur the expense to replace the blind. My mother’s bedroom blind was replaced and was expensive – I want to say $800.00 for the blind, then there was additional charges for labor and that was a few years before she passed away. The bathroom, a tiny blind was about $600.00 before labor. I decided to close them all up tight and not worry about damage – I had been laid off at the time, so I shut them all Summer. When I went to open/raise them in the Fall, every blind but one (my room, back window) had seized shut. I left them shut and every year I consider getting the blind company to take them down, fix them or replace them. The original blind company is out of business. Now you can have push-button blinds, even program them to open/close by a smartphone if you are on vacation, but I think too many bells and whistles would cause more breakdowns. Another thing I don’t like is if you raise/close them every day like we always did, if we went to my grandmother’s house, it would be obvious we were gone for four days, even though we used a timer. I don’t know how closely people pay attention, but I think of crime, etc. constantly in this day and age.
So I live with it … as to crime prevention, it is great as they cannot be opened from the outside, so with steel doors, a dusk-to-dawn pole light, a sensor light at the side of the house and the blinds, I feel safe … not so much in the case of a fire.
Thanks for telling me the story, Linda. Wow! I hope someday soon you will be able to take the blinds down and replace them with something you can open easily in the daytime and still feel safe. I think I would go crazy without any sunlight coming in.
I think about it a lot Barbara and am mixed – for safety sake (fire), they should be available to open and escape. For crime, they are great. For tornadoes, hail and severe weather, they protect the windows, so no glass shatters. We had a severe storm with large hail once, a long time ago and one of the metal shutters was damaged and had to be replaced, but the window was not damaged. Before I got the instant-on generator, whenever we had a power outage, I had several battery-operated lamps as it would be pitch dark in the house (unless I left the two storm doors open … I am very mindful of crime and don’t do that).
I would love to look out my window and see birds, however, unlike you who can hang a feeder there and see them, we have Cooper’s Hawks. I see their shadow go overhead on a sunny day and not only that, I’ve been outside when the Blue Jays start shrieking like crazy and I look across the street and see a Cooper’s Hawk in the same tree all the time … I even took photos of it once for my blog and it is probably the same hawk that “got” all my squirrels I used to feed at the house and my neighbor never told me as he watched it happen. He has a deck off his kitchen and has said he has seen a Cooper’s Hawk grab a squirrel and take it to the trees. I’ve not seen any action where the neighbor hung a couple of feeders at the beginning of the Winter that I mentioned to you. Either he stopped feeding them, or he does have a large dog and that didn’t work out with feeding the birds.
Two lovely shots, Barbara! I hope you have bluebirds looking to nest near you! I have a pair checking out my nest box for the past week. 🤗
Thank you, Donna! I hope so, too. I see a couple of them almost every day, my very own bluebirds of happiness. 🥰 I hope yours choose the nest box you have offered them!
Truly lovely photos, Barbara. Nice that they have the suet to warm their winter stomachs. Your bluebird photo is especially stunning.
Thank you, Jet. I’ve been delighted to have so many bluebird visits recently.
Such beauties!
Thank you, Susie!
Nice! What is on your feeder? Looks like an interesting combination of ingredients.
Thanks! It’s what’s left of a Wild Birds Unlimited no-mess seed cylinder. The ingredient listed are: sunflower chips, peanuts, various tree nuts (such as almonds, pecans, walnuts), cherries, and gelatin as a binder.