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Laura Erickson / www.lauraerickson.com
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Chickadees, like many birds, love black oil sunflower seeds.
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Laura Erickson / www.lauraerickson.com
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A pileated woodpecker enjoys a bite of suet. Bird expert Laura Erickson recommends an inexpensive tray-style feeder at top as healthy for birds.
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Marie Nitke / Grand Rapids Herald-Review
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Ornithologist Laura Erickson
What is the most simple often is simply the best … and that’s the case when making choices for feeding our feathered friends, according to regional bird expert Laura Erickson.
Laura, producer and host of the popular public radio spots “For the Birds,” advises against buying general mixed-seed bags of food because they often contain seeds that birds don’t like. That means both waste for which you’re paying and, if you don’t regularly clean out your feeder, might leave seed to rot.
Stick with black oil or striped sunflower seeds, she suggests. “If you can get that in bulk and you’re only buying one thing, that’s the best thing to buy.”
Sunflower seeds are high in oils and fats, things birds need and appreciate. (As do deer and bears, it should be noted in our part of the world.)
Almost all seed-eating birds will eat sunflower seeds, especially the soft-shelled black oil seeds. Sometimes that also means attracting birds that you don’t necessarily want to “subsidize,” as Laura phrases it. For example, if you find you have too many house sparrows or starlings, which will push other baby birds out of nests, you should switch to striped sunflower seeds. They have harder shells and are less interesting to those two species of birds.
Peter Gravett, executive director and resident bird expert at Hartley Nature Center in Duluth, says that where the seed is going can be as important as the kind of seed. White millet, for instance, might languish in a tube feeder, but scattered on the ground will attract sparrows and other birds.
White millet, as a ground-scattered seed, is also one of Laura’s recommendations. Neither bird expert is strong on red millet, which is often put into the mixed-seed bags.
Seed, of course, is not the only food for birds. Laura also has some good advice about a food popular with winter feathered residents like chickadees, woodpeckers and nuthatches – suet.
Rather than buy the pre-packaged suet, she suggests buying less expensive raw suet in grocery stores. In winter, when the temperatures remain so low, the suet can be put outside and will not spoil. In summer, you can rend (cook) the suet. “Cook it on a double boiler and melt it to get a clear fat. Take out the stuff floating on top (the little bits of meat and stuff). The clear fat itself is like Crisco, it doesn’t get rotten and hardens when it cools.”
Sandwich bags are about the right size for forming the cooled fat to fit a standard suet cage. You can roll it in seed or add seed to increase interest for the birds.
People who go away for part of the winter usually don’t need to worry about leaving birds without a food source. If you’ve noticed that on very nice days you have fewer birds at your feeder, says Laura, it’s because “they are checking out alternative sources in case you bug out to Florida.” (Okay, they may not know you are going to Florida, but they do look for multiple food sources.)
In town, there are usually enough bird feeders, as well as natural food sources, that birds should be fine. However, if you live in an isolated rural area, you might want to have someone fill your feeders if you are gone for a long time and birds are used to frequenting your feeder.
The one species that really does appreciate you regularly filling your feeder is the mourning dove. Doves (and also pigeons) have fleshy feet that can get frostbite. Doves like to fill up their bellies and crops with seed and then sit someplace with “their tummy against their toes” to keep warm, says Laura. If they have to search too much for food, they can get foot frostbite.
Finally, the kind of feeder that you choose can both save you money and be healthier for birds in the long run.
“You don’t need to buy expensive feeders,” says Laura.
Her personal favorite was a son’s Boy Scout project that cost less than $10. It has four wooden strips attached on the bottom to window screen. (See a similar project at www.lakesuperior.com) Because the screen lets seeds dry out after rains and such, the seed is less likely to go bad.
If you use a tube feeder, Laura suggests wadding paper towels into the first few inches where birds can’t get the seed. Otherwise the seed that lies there can go bad.
A New Chapter
Ornithologist Laura Erickson, host and producer of the popular radio spots called “For the Birds,” leaves Duluth in January for a job with Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.
“That place has long been a mecca for me,” an excited Erickson says of this job as science editor and writer at the laboratory for its website, www.birds.cornell.edu, and its newsletter, “BirdScope.”
Laura began producing “For the Birds” in May 1986. She will continue with the program heard in Minnesota on KUMD-Duluth, KAXE-Grand Rapids, KVSC-St. Cloud, KSRQ-Thief River Falls, WTIP-Grand Marais or in Wisconsin on WOJB-Hayward and WXPR-Rhinelander. It is also on WRFA-LP-Jamestown, New York.
Her latest book is 101 Ways to Help Birds.
During her years answering bird questions, Laura has been tapped by (besides Lake Superior Magazine) the researchers for the TV show “Win Ben Stein's Money,” helped in 1992 to identify the carcasses of two Lesser Golden Plovers sucked into an Air National Guard F-16 engine that caused the plane to crash in Duluth (the pilot ejected safely) and explained for the Duluth Public Library reference librarians exactly how birds “‘do it,’ as they delicately put it, so I am apparently considered the ‘Dr. Ruth of the bird world,’” says Laura.
She will keep local ties because her husband, Russell Erickson, will continue to work at the Environmental Protection Agency laboratory in Duluth. The two will “commute” between the two towns.