Reminder to those who feed birds.

[Booswalia]

IMPORTANT!

Please remember to clean you feeders in a 1:9 bleach:water solution, preferable once a month, and hope your neighbors do too.

It's so easy to start spreading salmonella, conjuctivitis and other diseases.

I saw a couple of finches last year with their eyes glued shut and just saw one this year. NOT a pretty sight, and NOT something YOU want to be causing.

http://my.pclink.com/~rlovgren/disease.htm

http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/publications/fact_sheets/coping_with_diseases_at_birdfeeders.jsp

[canonloader]

I have quit using dedicated tube feeders with perches for just this reason. I now spread the seeds and peanuts around in several open places that are in direct sun most of the day. The UV kills all those diseases. It must work, cause I have not had a sick bird since a year ago last spring.

[jgrussell]

IMPORTANT! Please remember to clean you feeders in a 1:9 bleach:water solution, preferable once a month, and hope your neighbors do too.I actually clean mine more like once a week, especially since I saw a finch early this spring with conjunctivitis.

[Booswalia]

I have quit using dedicated tube feeders with perches for just this reason. I now spread the seeds and peanuts around in several open places that are in direct sun most of the day. The UV kills all those diseases. It must work, cause I have not had a sick bird since a year ago last spring.

That's not a bad idea. Do you feed niger seed to the finches that way? What sort of places do you use?

[canonloader]

I use a very heavy duty nylon niger seed sock. They are cheap and I buy the seed in bulk, maybe 3-4 pounds at a time, which lasts a couple months. When I need more seed, I just buy a new bag and sock and throw the old one away. Works out pretty good and it's painless. I have not seen any diseases since a year ago last spring and that was a juvie female cardinal, who came to the yard with avian pox. No other birds caught it.

The other places are an old heavy duty work table we moved out into the yard. It sits near the Lilac bush and in the sun. Then I have two large slabs of bark off some firewood rounds, they are turned bark up and holds the smaller seeds from rolling off. They are laying right in the grass and the birds just love them.

Then I have a round slab of wood from a tree trunk about 4 inches thick and screwed to a 4x4 tamped into the ground. I put seeds for the little guys on that and they all just love it for the little stick perch I have stuck in a small rot hole in the center of the slab.

I also have two open platforms with roofs on them and mounted on PVC poles. They are open and in the sun and have no dedicated perches. The cardinals, woodies and grosbeaks use these a lot, cause they are in the open yet covered, and they can see a distance and feel secure.

I think the dedicated perch things are what causes a lot of disease. It means it's the only way to get to the seed, so by default, every bird, healthy or sick will take his turn on that perch, to either spread or catch any germs left on them. Becasuse they are so busy, there is no time for the sunlight to work on killing the germs, like bigger areas get. Either way, my birds are healthy now for two summers while that first year with the tube feeders and other hanging things, I had a real bad conjunctivitis problem and several birds got the pox. Probably from those feeders. Cleaning those things seems like a chancy thing at best. Clean once a week and an hour after you clean, an infected bird could land and rub his eyes on the seed hole, then have another week to infect more birds before it's washed again. The math is just against washing feeders once a week or once a day even, and expecting that to work all the time.

[Booswalia]

How about some photos of your "feeding places". :)

[canonloader]

OK, here are two shots with the Ultra Wide.

1. While the view is distorted, the old work table is in the background by the Lilac bush, then close is that little slab on the blue 4x4. That is only 4 feet outside the window with the AC in it, for those really close shots when the AC is out of the window. To the right are two sunflowers grown up from dropped seeds and will make excellent perchs when they are full grown and I can shoot with the window open again.
http://www.picturelacrosse.com/uwa/homes/yard-feeders-1d2n5985-071209.jpg

2. Here are the two platform feeders on poles in among the sunflowers. And if you look at the little perching stick, follow it out to the end, then look behind in the grass, you might make out those two slabs of bark I put seeds on. I like to let the grass grow long before cutting, cause I have a number of native sparrows that run around in there after the bugs. They like it long. And the bird bath and in the background is my new boat under the tarp. I will get some better shots of it in the coming days. ;)
http://www.picturelacrosse.com/uwa/homes/yard-feeders-1d2n5986-071209.jpg

[Booswalia]

Thanks Mitch. I think I will try out some of your ideas. It seems more natural than feeders and certainly makes for better photos.

[canonloader]

Further to the right of the second shot, on the far side of the window I shot these out of, hangs my hummer feeder. I can shoot out the window at that in the morning, when it's still cool enough to have the window up. :)

The table and slab are not natural, but there are plenty of sticks around for them to perch on that I can shoot them on. I use the table and everything else, cause the sun keeps them germ free. That started out as a test after reading about it somewhere. So far, it does seem to work and the birds like it. :)

[Cyclop]

Wow, that never occurred to me with my bird-feeder in the backyard! I will certainly take your advice to do the appropriate cleaning. That would be upsetting to me to see all the regular birds that frequent somehow contract an inadvertent illness from my hanging smorgasbord...

[Flo]

Sits ontop of a core trellis.every day it gets cleaned off by the birds.I lift it down, hose it off, and start all over again.daily. 35% of the seeds falls to the ground where the birds and hens clean up.lol...


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/emmaloudawg/birds/IMG_4073.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/emmaloudawg/birds/IMG_2110.jpg

And loads of these....http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/emmaloudawg/birds/IMG_3300.jpg