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Matching Bird Food To Feeders

If fall temperatures arrive this weekend as predicted, it will feel like it’s time to fill the backyard bird feeders. Colder morning temperatures send hungry birds to well stocked feeders. Here are some tips to help make any backyard feeding station a success. Whether you’re new to feeding birds or just want to keep it simple, nothing beats black-oil sunflower seed in quality tube feeders. Droll Yankees and Aspects make the best tubes on the market, and they last for decades. Cheaper tubes sold in big box stores often crack or break before winter is over. Black-oil sunflower seed ...

Odd Little Insects

My children and their friends spotted some strange insects at Audubon the other day. They were dark steely blue, shining in the grass. Their bulbous round abdomens looked awkward compared to their skinny heads and thoraxes. These beetles crawled in an ungainly fashion through the grass, ...

Feeding Birds, The Apartment Style Treats

Over the last 30 years I’ve written dozens of columns about feeding backyard birds. Based on my experiences, I’ve recommended specific foods (black-oil sunflower seeds, peanuts, and mealworms) and specific feeders (tubes, hanging bowls, and suet baskets). My mission has always been to write what I know, so I wrote about attracting birds to the 95-acre slice of West Virginia heaven my wife and I called home. During winter I kept 25 to 30 feeders filled and could often count 20 species of birds visiting throughout the day. On particularly cold snowy days, I might see a few more ...

Who Inspired You?

Audubon did an exhibit in 2006 titled “Hooked on Nature.” One of the features was a corner in which the naturalists identified a person who inspired them to become a naturalist. I chose my dad. The text I wrote then reads as follows: This photo is one of my favorites. I don’t ...

Lake Changes Affect Fishing

I have fished on Chautauqua Lake each summer since I was five, but as I fished the lake in late summer of this year, I felt as though I no longer knew the lake. The lake has changed so much that it felt as if I were fishing on an entirely different lake. In the late 1970s, I caught quite a ...

Swarms Of Dragonflies

One of the benefits of writing this column is that readers let me know when they observe unusual, unpredictable natural phenomena. For instance, when a brood of 17-year periodic cicadas emerges, I hear about it on day one. About two weeks ago readers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia began reporting “swarms” of green darner dragonflies hovering over hayfields, wet meadows, and large backyards. Because such events are ephemeral and unpredictable, it helps to have an army of nature watchers on duty. Though I’ve never seen a swarm of dragonflies myself, I first heard about ...