Backyard Birding
Turn your backyard into a bird haven with tips on feeders, habitats, and attracting your favorite species.
Feeders and Food
Backyard Tips: How to Make Your Own Hummingbird Nectar
Hungry hummingbirds sip at a backyard feeder. Photo by J. Quinn. ’Tis the season for hummingbirds! Hanging a hummingbird feeder in your…
What Foods for What Birds?
The experts at Bird Watcher’s Digest have compiled this informative bird food and seed list to help you attract the birds that…
Feeders and Feeding: Peanut Butter Suet
Help birds endure the harsh winter weather with a special treat! This recipe is popular with jays, titmice, nuthatches, chickadees, woodpeckers, sparrows,…
Top 10 Weird Things to Feed Birds
A male Baltimore oriole visits a feeder offering grape jelly. Photo by Tammy Simmons. Sunflower seed may be the hamburger of the…
Cleaning Bird Feeders in Winter
It’s wintertime here in Ohio, and that means keeping an eye on the weather forecast on the regular. As a steady supplier…
Top 10 Foods for Winter Bird Feeding
Winter: ‘Tis the season for feeding birds all across North America, especially in those regions where it gets mighty cold and snowy….
Tips for Better Bird Feeding
American goldfinches flock at backyard thistle feeders. Photo by Randall Sholten. Bird feeding provides enjoyment to millions of North Americans each year….
Keeping Squirrels Off Your Feeders
An acrobatic squirrel reaches for a backyard feeder. Photo by Shutterstock. People often go to extremes to keep their feeding stations squirrel-free….
Common Backyard Feeder Problems (and How to Solve Them!)
Bird feeding provides enjoyment to millions of North Americans each year. However, this hobby we all enjoy comes with its own challenges….
DIY Projects
Do-It-Yourself: Prevent Squirrels from Raiding your Bird Feeder
This baffle prevents squirrels from accessing a hanging feeder from above. Two metal salad bowls, one 10-inches and another 18-inches in diameter,…
Build Your Own: Easy Platform Feeder
Attract Birds and Protect Seed With a Simple and Effective Feeder Design The more places birds can feed in your yard, the…
Do-it-yourself Pipe House
A new use for PVC pipe! by A.J. Hamler, excerpted from the March/April 2011 issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest Many do-it-yourselfers use…
Do-It-Yourself Stovepipe Predator Baffle
Materials: Aluminum electrical conduit, ½-inch diameter, 5-foot length Iron rebar, ½-inch diameter, 5-foot length One hanger iron (two 7-inch strips attached with…
Backyard Tips: How to Make Your Own Hummingbird Nectar
Hungry hummingbirds sip at a backyard feeder. Photo by J. Quinn. ’Tis the season for hummingbirds! Hanging a hummingbird feeder in your…
How To: Woodpecker Box
Build an Easy Box for Golden-fronted, Red-headed, and Hairy Woodpeckers Download detailed plans you can use to build your own woodpecker box….
Build Your Own: Build a Brush Pile
Create a winter shelter for wildlife in your backyard High on the list of important microhabitats you can create for wildlife in…
Build Your Own: Bird Bath Fountain
Birdbath and fountain: sound and motion make for special allure A home-made garden sculpture at a fraction of the retail cost. A…
Do It Yourself: Bird Bath Heater
Keep your birdbath water warm all winter long When winter comes to our farm, the daily ritual of feeding our birds intensifies…
Hummingbirds
Top 10 Things You Can Do to Attract Hummingbirds
1. Add a new native plant species to your garden. You just can’t have too many good hummingbird plants in your garden…
Tips for Identifying Hummingbirds
Identifying a hummingbird is very similar to identifying other bird species—if the hummer is sitting or hovering in one place long enough…
How to Revive a Faded Hummingbird Feeder
Using a shockingly bright red nail polish, I carefully paint a red flower around the feeding hole, being sure to avoid the…
Tips on Choosing Hummingbird Feeders
The very first hummingbird feeders were small glass tubes filled with sugar water and ornamented with a red artificial flower to attract…
An Introduction to Hummingbirds
General Info The hummingbird family, Trochilidae, occurs only in the Western Hemisphere, where it is second only to the tyrant flycatchers in…
Prepare for Peak Hummingbird Season! Here’s How
For those of us who adore hummingbirds and enjoy watching their antics, late July and August are an exciting time of year,…
How to Revive a Faded Hummingbird Feeder
Each spring when I pull my hummingbird feeders out of storage in anticipation of the hummingbirds’ return, the red parts of the…
Hummingbird Behavior – Feeding, Foraging, and Reader Observations
The Avian Nectar Feeders When the words “nectar feeder” come to mind, most people envision hummingbirds gracefully flitting around flowers in a…
Readers Ask: When Should I Put Up My Hummingbird Feeder?
It’s that time of year when we start hearing the perennial question: When should I put out my hummingbird feeder? Here in…
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