Peggy’s Feeders

While watching the Cornell Bird FeederCams, it got me to thinking about the very creative set up my mom Peggy has in her backyard in Michigan for feeding birds. She’s been watching and feeding birds for as long as I can remember, and I owe her for passing on her passion for nature and gardening to me. Although I often feel as though something has been “lost in translation” when I look at my yard, I always know who to turn to for an answer.

I love sitting on her back porch and watching all the different birds come to the feeders. It’s really a party out there. She gets all kinds of interesting birds that either live in the area year round, or just seasonally. Some even visit every year while passing through on migration. I think they know she’s there every year for them. She changes things up a bit from summer to winter based on who is in town for the season and she recently sent me some pictures of her feeders this winter.

Do you have feeders in your yard? Do you have someone that you’ve learned your passion for gardening or nature from?

Looking for feeders and birding supplies? Check out Amazon, The Bird Shed, Wild Bird Unlimited, Gardener’s Supply Company.

Merry Christmas

From our Stephi Gardens family to yours,

Stephi, Peggy, Emily and Steve

Our Family Christmas Tree

Our family room Christmas trees is like a trip down memory lane. It’s a true hodge podge of ornaments and lit with my favorite colored lights. Some years, when I have more time, I have a smaller tree I put in the living room that has the white lights and “pretty” ornaments on it. While it is a beautiful tree, it’s just not the same.

Every ornament has a story, so opening the ornament boxes always sparks lively conversation about a place we’ve been to, the places we’ve lived, a favorite childhood ornament, or what may have happened that year. Here’s some of what’s on our tree:

We have a year ornament with our names on it for every year. Started out as just the 2 of us, now we are 5 and a dog.

I try to remember to get an ornament from all the places we’ve visited and vacations we’ve taken. Brings back memories!

The kids’ each got one of these the year the White Sox won the World Series.

Remembering placers we’ve lived. Sorry Philadelphia, we missed you somehow.

Of course, when you get a pet, there’s all kinds of ornaments to collect now.

There are gifts from the kids, knowing my favorite things…

…and handmade gifts from friends.

Childhood ornaments of the kids’ favorite things that year.

Lastly, there’s the anticipation of what this year’s ornament additions to the tree will be.

Here’s hoping your Christmas is also filled with wonderful memories.

Birdfeeder Cams

From my computer, I can’t really see much outside. Even if I did, my feeder (yes, only one right now) doesn’t usually attract a wide variety of birds. I do enjoy watching the Goldfinches, Chickadees and Juncoes, but they are often overrun by the usual suburban fare. So, I’ve taken to watching the bird cams that have popped up the last few years. Many watch nests, but those are pretty quiet or off-line right now. Instead, in the winter I mainly watch the bird feedercams run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds. They have 2 feeders that have cameras on them. One in Ontario, Canada, and the other at the Cornell Labs in Ithaca, New York. The Ontario site is in a large, diverse, residential backyard in northern Ontario and is only on during the day. (update: this feeder is no longer art of their live feed, but there’s many others to choose from). The Cornell Labs site is located on the edge of Sapsucker Woods, right near a pond. It’s supported generously by Wild Birds Unlimited and runs 24 hours a day. Both are great locations for attracting birds and they get a variety of visitors. If you have some time to watch , it’s a nice diversion, especially when your own yard isn’t all that interesting. It’s also nice sometimes to just have it open in the background. You can hear all the visitors and it makes you feel like you are there.

Here’s what I saw today:

Ontario was a little quiet today, probably due to snow and wind. The Chickadees did venture out, though. I love the holiday theme!

The Cornell labs location was quite busy today. Lots of Chickadees, the Tufted Titmouse visited for a while, and ducks swam in the pond. There were also some sparrows that were a little tricky to identify, but the consensus from watchers was that they were American Tree Sparrows. I have to admit I am not very good at identifying LBJ’s (little brown jobs).

I visited quickly this morning before my post was scheduled to go out and the Ontario feeder was a having a gathering of Grosbeaks!

Do you watch any Feedercams?

Sunday Feature: Golf Course Gardens

One of the most interesting places I’ve found to admire gardens is out on the golf course. Most try very hard to create a very natural, beautiful setting to enhance the experience, which I definitely appreciate. The gardens and landscaping also work to integrate the courses into their surroundings, which make them a perfect haven for wildlife (see previous post: Wildlife on the Golf Course ). It seems as though the course gardeners often put as much energy into the gardens as they do into the actual course. I’ve found that the gardens can be very calming, the blooms and scents can cheer up a dismal game, or in some cases, they can make you laugh when you come across a random pumpkin patch. Enjoy some of the photos from the courses I’ve been on this year.

South Carolina

Illinois

And then there’s the pumpkins. We watched these grow all summer, not quite sure what we were looking at. Perfect conditions, the pumpkins were huge!

(I do have to give a shout out to all my golfing partners who tolerate my running off to take a quick picture. Can’t always do it, but try to when it doesn’t interfere with the “pace of play”. When I think it might, those pretty scenes just have to be tucked away in my memory 🙂 )

Winter Beauty

Look closely, beauty is all around you in the winter.

Photos by Peggy

How Much Rain Did We Get?

I am forever trying to figure out how much rain we got during a storm. I don’t know why, it’s just one of those things I want to know. And not in general, like somewhere in the greater Chicago area, or at one of the airports, but in my backyard. have discovered Weatherbug and Weather Underground, but it’s still not “my backyard”. So, I put a ridiculously over engineered Stratus rain gauge on my wish list and one day it showed up as a birthday gift (thanks Steve!).

It sat in the box for a while, until I figured out where and how I was going to put it up. There’s lots of instructions as to how far away from houses, structures and trees it should be, and in a suburban backyard, that can be tricky. So I picked the best spot I could that was not too obtrusive, easy to get to, and sort of fulfilled all the location requirements. Then, I was supposed to attached it to a 4×4 post solidly planted in the ground, but until I was sure it was a good spot, I needed a different way to put it up. I decided trying one of those metal 36″ green fence posts and attached it using zip-ties. Not official, but so far it’s working beautifully.

The first weekend I put it in, it was really put to the test. It turned out to be the really bad weather weekend that led to tornadoes south of here (see previous post, “Ominous Weather“). We got 1.07 inches of rain that day.

When my mom saw a picture of my new rain gauge, she reminded me that my dad had the same one, and had been a weather watcher for CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. This is a volunteer group that is a “unique, non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together to measure and map precipitation (rain, hail and snow)”. There’s all kinds of great information on their website; well worth checking out. I don’t think I’m quite ready to sign up yet, but we’ll see in the spring. But, now I know where I got the “need to know” from.

Once I got everything set up, I needed somewhere to log it. Of course, there is an app for that, Rain Log. I decided to record my 24 hr rainfall at 7:30 am, like CoCoRaHS suggests. So, every morning, Daisy and I traipse into the backyard to see how much rain is in the rain gauge. Here’s what my reports look like so far.

I need to figure out what to do for the winter. There are ways to measure snow, but you need to be careful not to crack the inner measuring tube in freezing temperatures. I may need to just take it inside. Do you measure rainfall in your yard?

It’s a Great Day to be Red: Part 2

After my last RED post, my son’s cross country team went on to win the IL State Championship for the first time in team history. And when it comes to sports, I am one of those weirdly superstitious people who think that, somehow, something I’ve done makes a difference in the results. So, I figured I had better do another post in support of their trip to Portland for the Nike Cross National (NXN) Championship Race. They made it to the Championship Race as an at-large team, so there was a lot of nervous waiting the last two weeks until the committee decided who those teams would be. We couldn’t be more excited for them. This is such an honor and hopefully not a “once in a lifetime event” for the team. So, to offer my support again, here’s some more fabulous RED pictures.

And even snowmen and Starbucks are in the act!
Cheers to you, boys!

Credit for first five photos are to Photos by Peggy

Grocery Store Cheer

Who knew a trip to Meijer’s could cheer up such a dreary day?

Photos by Peggy

New Bird Feeder

I was lucky enough to recently attend a program, “Amazing Birds“, by some local, passionate birders. Among learning quite a few “amazing” bird facts, they briefly mentioned their favorite thistle (nyjer) feeder to attract goldfinches–a sock feeder. I forgot about this little tidbit, until I was doing some other bird shopping and I came across this Nyjer Finch Sock and it was quickly added to my cart.

As soon as it came, I rounded up one my many shepherd’s crooks in the yard and found a spot for it closer to the house. Ideally, it’d be near some brush or shrubs to offer protection for the birds I was attracting. I found just the spot and almost immediately had goldfinches. Not the pretty yellow males, but the motley looking fall males that are molting into their winter colors and the always drab, but still charming, females. Despite their winter colors, I find these to be cheerful little birds flitting about the yard.

As a bonus, the juncos are enjoying the dropped seeds. All seem happy and I look forward to visitors all winter. I’ll definitely be buying more.

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Category: General

Peggy’s Feeders