Happy New Year Bird Watchers!

Hope you had a happy holiday season and got lots of great bird stuff! If you are like many of our customers, you got a great new bird feeder or birdhouse, but you have no way to mount it. If that is the case stop by one of our stores and let us help you figure out what kind of hanging arm or pole system you’ll need. We have lots of hardware to choose from. You can mount it on a deck, from a tree, on a yard arm or on a straight pole. We can also recommend a squirrel or a raccoon baffle if you need one!

Also, with the colder temperatures, don’t forget to add a heater to your bird bath. Bird bath heaters defrost the ice so your birds can continue to drink and bathe all winter. The heaters will also protect your bird bath from cracking as ice forms. Every January 1st, we like to start a few new bird lists. One is for the birds that we see in our yard, and another is for birds that we see when we do some birdwatching around the state. We are always very proud of our yard list. It’s quite rewarding to see so many species coming to the bird feeders, bird houses, birdbaths, fountains, trees and shrubs we’ve put in our yard to attract birds.

Our favorite yard birds for 2007 include migrants like Pine Siskin, Purple Finch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Fox Sparrow, Gray-cheeked Thrush, Veery and several species of warblers, but we love our resident E. Bluebirds, Brown Thrashers, Tufted Titmice and Carolina Wrens too. It’s really too hard to pick a favorite.

It’s also a lot of fun to see how many species we can get on our state lists. We usually tally about 275 state birds for the year, if we can get to the coast a few times and put in a little work at some sod farms and sewage treatment plants ( both are great places to find shorebirds and waterfowl).

One of our good friends and a frequent photo contributor to our newsletter, Bob Zaremba of Marietta, has just broken the record for seeing the most bird species in a calendar year in Georgia. He recorded 331 state birds in 2007, beating out the old record of 323 that he and two others tallied several years ago. Bob has documented his birdwatching adventures on his website and has many excellent photos.

Check it out at http://www.georgia-birding.com/GA2007-yearlist.htm .

Congratulations, Bob!

Julia and Karen have been banding wintering hummingbirds all over north Georgia, from Locust Grove to Dillard! So far they have banded a Black-chinned, several Rufous and a Calliope Hummingbird. Please keep those feeders up and let us know if you see a hummingbird between November 1st and March 1st. We appreciate your help in documenting these amazing little birds!

Make sure to also keep your seed feeders and suet feeders full. Birds will really flock to them! Our Downy Woodpeckers and Yellow-rumped Warblers are squabbling over our suet log even as I’m typing this!

Bird Watcher has some great sale prices on overstocked Christmas items - stained glass, ornaments, figurines, holiday candy, Holiday Specs and more! Stop by soon, they’re going fast!

Have a very birdy New Year!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 10:12 am and is filed under Newsletter Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.