Bird Haven

06/18/2026

06/18/2026

I have also posted all most the same thing before. I am not a thief. I am not aggressive. And the metallic scream from your oak tree is a warning, not an attack.
I'm a Blue Jay. That flash of cobalt and white through the branches, the one your neighbors call bossy, the one everyone blames for driving smaller birds away from the feeder.
Most of what you've been told about me is wrong. I am not a songbird bully — the smaller birds arrive and leave on their own schedule, and I often share the feeder without incident. The scream you hear is mimicry. I imitate Red-shouldered Hawks and Red-tailed Hawks with startling accuracy, often to warn other jays that a real hawk is nearby. Sometimes I use it to clear a feeder for a few seconds. Usually I'm telling the truth.
I am also the reason oak trees moved north after the last ice age. I cache thousands of acorns every autumn, one at a time, pushed into soil across a territory that can stretch over a mile. I forget enough of them that forests follow me. A single jay can plant 4,500 acorns in a single fall.
I recognize individual human faces. I remember who refills the feeder and who chases me off the porch. I hold the grudge for years.
🌿 The next time I show up in your yard:
- The hawk scream is usually a real warning — the other birds are listening
- The acorns I bury in your lawn are how oak forests walk
- I return to the same yards for generations, and I remember who fed me. My Jays know exactly what time the peanuts in the shell show up at the platform feeder and who is putting them there.
I am loud. I am also planting your woods. 🐦

06/18/2026

I have poster about this before ...Moving water is like a flashing neon "OPEN" sign for thirsty migrating birds. You don't need a fancy expensive fountain—a slow, steady drip works absolute magic! Who is scrubbing out and setting up their bird baths this weekend?

06/18/2026

They come with a built in gps.

06/18/2026

A lot of people think making the nectar 'sweeter' gives them more energy, but a 1:4 ratio is the standard feeder recipe recommended by many birding sources and keeps them properly hydrated in the summer heat!

06/18/2026

Sent from a Good Friend, I am sure that a lot of my customers can relate....🤣🤣

06/13/2026

All spring, while every other bird in your yard was racing to build nests and raise families, one bright yellow bird did nothing of the kind. It waited. It's still waiting. And it has a reason.
It's the American goldfinch — and it breeds later than almost any bird on the continent. While robins and wrens are already feeding their second broods, the goldfinch holds off until the end of June and into July. It isn't lazy, and it isn't behind. It's synchronized to a plant.
Goldfinches are strict vegetarians — one of the only birds that raises its young almost entirely on seeds instead of insects. And they don't just eat the seeds of thistle, milkweed, and other downy plants — they build their nests out of the silky fluff those seedheads produce. So a goldfinch simply cannot nest until those plants go to seed in midsummer. Its whole family calendar is set by a flower's, not by the sun's.
The nest the female weaves from that down is so tight and fine it can hold water like a cup. And when a cowbird sneaks an egg into it, the cowbird chick usually starves within days — it can't survive on the all-seed diet the goldfinch feeds its own.
So while the rest of the yard empties out in late summer, the goldfinch is just getting started, raising its brood in the seedheads everyone else has written off as weeds.
🌿 What helps
Leave the "weeds." Let thistle, coneflower, black-eyed Susan, and milkweed stand and go to seed instead of deadheading them. That late, downy mess is the goldfinch's whole world — its food, and its nest itself.
It was never behind. It's just running on a different clock — the one set by the flowers.

06/12/2026

Most people put up one bluebird box and wonder why nothing else moves in. The birds you've never seen needed a different hole.
A bluebird needs a 1½-inch entrance in open field. A chickadee needs 1⅛ inches at a wooded edge. A screech-owl needs a 3-inch entrance mounted high with a clear flight path. The same box at the same height will never bring all three.
🌿 The guide by hole size:
- 1⅛ inch — chickadees. Wooded edge, 5-12 feet up. The smallest entrance keeps everything else out.
- 1¼ inch — tufted titmice and nuthatches. Same wooded habitat, slightly larger hole.
- 1½ inch — bluebirds and tree swallows. Open field, pole-mounted 4-6 feet up, facing east. This size keeps starlings out. Pair two boxes 15-20 feet apart and both species nest side by side.
- 3 inch — screech-owls and kestrels. Ten to thirty feet up at the woodland edge or on an open-field pole. Same box works for both species.
- 3×4 inch oval — wood ducks. Pole standing in or near water. Mount a hardware-cloth ladder inside so the ducklings can climb up and jump out.
🐾 Two details matter as much as the hole: a predator baffle on the pole below the box, and a box you can open for cleaning at the end of each season.
Same yard. Different holes. Different neighbors move in 🌿

06/11/2026

American Robins are incredibly smart! They may learn to associate watering the garden with easier-to-find earthworms. 🌧️ Have you ever had a Robin follow you around while you water the garden? Oh ya , as soon as that water sprinkler gets turn on it's two for one A bath and good eats 😁 even have had them right next to me when turning over the compost pile.