Coke adds Bird Life

I went to town today and tried to find small jars of strawberry jam. As you might remember from reading my last post, I was going to buy 200 jars and build a custom holder.

Well, it turns out that small jars of strawberry jam are hard to find.  I ended up buying  several large jars of strawberry preserves at Smith's.  When I got home, I made this:

Strawberry preserves are perfect for a feeder like this, because preserves contain lumps of fruit. You can see in the closeup below that I drilled holes in the cap and cut small holes large enough for a tanager's beak around the neck of the bottle. You can also see strawberry jam dripping out. I expected to lose a lot, and that maybe the feeder would be a complete disaster. But I actually lost very little because fruit quickly plugged the holes.  The birds will have to work at it by pulling out the pieces of fruit that are plugging the hole. When they have their fill of jam and fly off, some jam will drip out but fruit will fill the holes again.

I think birds are going to love this feeder. It's practically ant-proof, though there is going to be plenty of food on the ground for the ants to clean up. It's probably too early to put it out, but I want it to be there before any tanagers show up. And I don't know when that's going to be.

Did you know that hummingbirds and tanagers are drawn by color? On their flight in, if they see food, they're going to stop to eat it. And if they stop, there's a chance they won't leave. If I have a western tanager living here this spring and summer, that'll be all the proof I need. And when that happens, I'm going to take plenty of pictures and post them here.

If you put out hummingbird feeders when you start to see hummingbirds, try something different this year. Put out the feeder now, before they arrive. More hummingbirds will stop, and you might end up with five times as many birds as you're used to. Try it!