Egypt4u

Went to the Garden Club meeting last night. The guest speaker was a local fellow who owns the only Wildlife Bird Store here and is quite a birder.

He talked about all the different local birds here, where they tend to live (close to water, vs low mountains) and the best foods to feed them. This year all our backyards have LOTS of BlueJays as it has been a bad year for food for them in the wild.

Never really realized that not that many birds like millet and never really realized a Grosbeak could crush a cherry pit with their beak. Was interesting.

Then he touched on squirrels and this made me think of Grandad and his squirrels. Wish the albino ones were still there. We have a native red species that is pretty rare and then we have grey and black squirrels that are more common.

He talked about all the newest and latest 'inventions' people have to try and foil the squirrels from getting all the food in the bird feeders. He talked about putting a feeder on the end of a shepherds hook and then hanging a slinky towards the top. As the squirrel climbs up and grabs the slinky DOWN he comes.

He talked about other people using clothesline and then drilling plastic pop bottles through the bottom and hanging at least 4 to 6 on either side of a feeder hooked on the middle. The idea being the bottles turn and so the squirrels fall off as the bottles turn.

The latest invention though that is fool proof is a newly designed tube feeder on a spring. When the feed is hung there are perches and openings for birds to eat out of however when a squirrel lands on the feeder the weight of the squirrel pushes the feeder down and this going down closes the openings so the squirrel can't get the food. He'd brought one from his store and it really worked a treat and definitely would stop a squirrel. The weight of the birds isn't sufficient to push the spring down but the weight of a squirrel is enough to close it up. More than interesting. Might even start feeding the wild birds again using peanuts as they're highest protein and they do not sprout!

Something else I learned that I never knew it that the hummingbird that live here that are coming to my feeder are really only getting ENERGY from the sugar water. What they're actually eating for nourishment are soft bodies minute bugs AND the sap from trees. They're quite symbiotic with all the birds that drill holes into the trees here as these are the trees that dribble sap year round and that is what they're eating.

Another tidbit re: hummingbirds is that the males are very territorial with the feeders (and they are as it is super amusing to watch them fight off others) except for first thing in the morning and last feeding at night. These are the two times when you will see more than one hummer sitting on a feeder.

Sounds like a really interesting evening you had there LLL and that guy certainly knows his stuff about birds and Squirrels.

When on our recent cruise, we did attend one of a series of talks by the very successful and Chelsea gold medal winner Chris Beardshaw. He has just had another book published, of course, which is a humorous account of some unknown 'facts' about 100 plants and vegetables.
He described a selection in his talk and one that I remember relates to the skin of the water melon.
Chris claims that the Romans used to scrape and eat the white pith from the inside of a water melon skin. This he claimed acted just like Viagra.
Right or wrong, there was a rush of old boys with zimmers and walking sticks to the kitchen because they remembered that water melon was available at breakfast.

His book is available on Amazon at

Apparently it is an entertaining read even if it does end up in 'the little room'

Chris claims that the Romans used to scrape and eat the white pith from the inside of a water melon skin. This he claimed acted just like Viagra.

He was just taking the pith Grandad

Watermelon rind? Hmmm???? I'm POSITIVE if the rind of a watermelon worked like he said we'd be importing them to the Island by the Ferry load!

As is we won't see a watermelon here 'til late summer of 2018.

I found this fellow (I don't remember his name) quite interesting. He owns a nature shop and sells all types of wild bird food, seeds, feeders etc. His presentation was complete with lots of pictures and photos (his own photos) and some of them were date stamped back to 2005 so I image he has been giving this presentation off and on to different groups for some time now. First time I've heard him but he was quite interesting. I liked his part about the squirrels and how smart they are.