How Did Sunflowers Get Their Name?

The head of the sunflower is round and flat with bright yellow petals like the sun’s rays.

During the day, the sunflower turns its face to follow the sun, making sure it gets the maximum amount of light.  So, the name “sunflower” was born.

The plant is used in various ways.  Its leaves are used as fodder for animals, the seeds can be eaten raw or roasted and are also harvested to make sunflower oil.  The yellow flowers are used to make dye.

Easy to plant and easy to grow, the sunflower is waiting to be in your garden!

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed Woodpeckers, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, are medium size woodpeckers and have suffered population decline where aggressive European Starlings have caused them to abandon their nesting cavities.

Their reduced po;ulations and patchy distribution makes them relatively uncommon, but their habit of feeding along roads makes them the woodpecker most frequently killed by vehicles.

You can attract them by providing dead snags or nesting boxes and offering sunflower seeds, raisins, or suet.

Distinguishing Features:

Note:  The contrast between their red heads, white underparts, and black backs makes it hard to miss these adults.

Size:  8.5-9.25 inches

Color:  Both sexes have bright scarlet-red head, neck, and throat areas; juveniles have ashy-brown heads.  They have snowy white underparts, rumps wing patches, and secondary wing feathers; jet-black backs, tails, and wings.

Voice:  Makes loud queer, queer, queer, or queark sounds.

Range:  Permanent residentsof the Southeast from the Atlantic coast west to central Indiana and northeastern Texas (excluding the Blue Ridge Mountains) and south to the Gulf Coast, excluding tropical Florida.  Summers north and west of this range. Winters in southern Louisiana west to central Texas.

Habitat:  Prefers open stands of trees with little undergrowth.  Both parents excavate the nesting cavity, in a dead tree, dead stub of a live tree, utility pole, or fence post.  Occasionally nest in manmade boxes (5×7x16 inches with a 2 inch hole cut 3 inches below the top) mounted 10 feet above the ground in a wooded area filled with sawdust, allowing the birds to “excavate” their cavity.

Eggs:  Lays 4-7 oval white eggs; 1-2 broods per breeding season.  Both parents incubate eggs 12-14 days.  Fledglings leave the nest 27-31 days after hatching.

Food:  Drills for wood-boring grubs and insects; forageson the ground for insects, and fallen seeds.  Like flycatchers, they also perch and wait for flying insects.   Feeds on fruit, berries, and large nuts in fall, and stores winter foods, especially acorns beechnuts and corn.  Will come to feeders for cracked corn, sunflower seeds, raisins, suet, and suet mixes.

Habits:  Frequents parklike stands of large trees in rural and urban areas, large scattered deciduous trees in open grasslands and agricultural areas, and dead trees in swampy or burned-over areas.  They catch insects in midair, flycatcher style.

Controlling Squirrels

If you’re on a squirrel patrol, and want to discourage them from eating your bird food, you can attempt to separate squirrels from the food in your feeders, but it’s not easy and you will probably lose in the end.

There will always be one squirrel that will figure out even the most ingenious barrier and get to the food sooner or later, and time is always on the squirrels’ side.  You can buy squirrel-resistant feeder that are encased in plastic-coated wire mesh or have metal perches and rims around the feeding holes, but these feeders don’t prevent squirrels from physically reaching the food, but they do prevent them from chewing on the feeders and destroying them.

My uncle had the attitude when planting a garden, regarding each plant he put in the ground “Plant two for me and one for the rabbits.”  The rabbits come, no matter what, so you might as well feed them.

Some squirrel-proof feeders prevent squirrels from staying on the feeders if they reach them; the Mandarin Sky Cafe model, made of Lexan plastic, the stuff bulletproof glass is made of, is the best one of this type on the market.

That’s just so “Hollywood.”  Feed the squirrels and forget it, the harder you make it on them, the more they will work at getting to the food.

Other feeders prevent squirrels from reaching the food inside the feeders by having a counter-weighted bar that shuts the feeding holes when a creature heavier than a bird lands on the feeder, or a wire mesh cage that has holes large enough to let in small to medium size birds, but is too small for squirrels. 

If you buy a wire mesh cage model, make sure the cage will keep the squirrels far enough away to stop them from stretching their “arms”inside and reaching the feeding holes.

Unless you use the Mandarin Sky Cafe model, it’s almost impossible to squirrel-proof a hanging feeder.  We can land on the moon, but we can’t stop a squirrel from stealing bird food.  You can discourage or at least slow down squirrels and other animals by hanging large baffles over them or using feeders that have domed tops, such as Droll Yankee’s Big Top model.

You can buy platic and metal baffles, both cone and disk shaped, at bird feeding supply stores or by mail order through birding magazines.  You can easily make a baffle using a cylinder of galvanized stovepipe, but it’s worth the investment to buy one that is the right size and readily attaches to the pole.

Here are some other strategies for your ongoing squirrel war:

• Choose a spot on a limb at least ten feet out from the trunk and five feet off the ground so very athletic squirrels can’t jump out or up and reach it.
• Hang the feeder with thin wire.  Do not use monofilament fishing line, string or rope–all a squirrel would have to do is take one quick bite with its sharp chisel-shaped incisors to bring down the feeder.
• Always put a baffle between the hanger and the feeder because squirrels can slide down even the thinest of wire with the skill of seasoned circus performers.
• Mount your feeders on poles and place a baffle right beneath each feeder.  If you hang the feeder from a shepherd’s crook pole, you will still need to put a baffle on the pole to keep the squirrels from climbing it.  Squirrels can shin up the skinniest of poles.
• Some people grease the poles with petroleum jelly, but it’s not really recommended because it is potentially harmful to the squirrels as well as birds and other wildlife.  Petroleum jelly can harm the animals eyes and mat their fur or feathers, reducing their insulating value.
• Fill your feeders with safflower instead of sunflower seeds.  Safflower seeds have a somewhat bitter taste tha the birds don’t seem to mind once they get used to it (mix with sunflower seeds at first).  Squirrels and blackbirds, starlings and Rock Doves, don’t seem to like it – no guarantees, some squirrels will eat anything.
• Fill your feeders with the “hot” new bird food, prepackaged sunflower and other seed laced with a film of hot red pepper powder.  You can also buy the pepper powder and sprinkle it on other bird food.  The theory is that squirrels’ keen sense of smell and taste will make them avoid your spicy offering, but the most “desirable” birds will readily accept the pepper taste as many species fed on hot peppers in the wild.  Who Knew?  I’d like to know who figured that out!!  Some squirrels take one taste and immediately leave the feeders, other squirrels relish the peppered mix as if it were just what they wre looking for to spie up the bland seeds.  You will just have to test it out.

Once you have accepted the fact that you will never get rid of the squirrels on your property and thatyou are spending a lot of time and energy battling them, you might decide to just accept them as part of your back yard wildlife.

Sauirrels are after all, agile, clever, and cute.  Mix corn with more costly seed on platform feeders or set up “squirrel feeding stations” away from your bird feeders and stock it with dried corn on the cob. 

make a feeder by attaching a  large eyescrew to one end of a 24 to 30-inch length of light chain and a snap clip to the opposite end.  Insert the screw into the large end of a corn cob and clip the chain around a tree or limb.  The squirrels won’t be able to drag away the corn, so you’ll be able to watch them eat.

Sunflower Seeds As Food for Birds

To attract the widest variety of birds to your feeding stations, offer as many foods in as many different kinds of feeders as you can.  Here are some suggestions to get you started.

Seeds

Americans spend more than $2 billion on birdseed each year!  Seeds are easy to store and dispense; they’re relatively inexpensive and birds eat them year round.  Sunflower seeds and “wild bird mixes” have beenn widely available for many years, and other seeds can now be found at local stores and through mail order sources.

Striped Sunflower Seeds

Striped sunflower seeds are larger (they can be up to 1/2 inch long) than black oil sunflower sees and have longitudinal dark and light stripes on the seed coat.  Since the hulls are too thick for most small birds to break open, striped sunflower seeds tend to pile up quickly under feeders. 

Birds that like sunflower seeds:  Cardinals, Jays, Grosbeaks, Chickadees, Titmice, Nuthatches and woodpeckers.

Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

Black oil sunflower seeds are the genric seeds of birdfeeding – if you want to put only one kind of seed in your feedrs, this is it!

More bird species will eath these small, oil-rich and calorie-rich seeds, than any other kind.  Be sure to offer black oil sunflower seeds in at least one of your feeders.

Black oil sunflower seeds are easily distinguished by their small size and dark , almost black seed coat.  Their small size makes them easy for birds to carry off, and their thinner hull makes them esier than striped sunflower seeds to break open.  Their smaller seed coats also mean that less waste will pile up under your feeders.

Birds that like black oil sunflower seeds:  All seed eating birds, including Woodpeckers.

Hulled Sunflower Seeds

Choose hulled sunflower seeds also called sunflower chips or hearts if you want to feed the birds without having to periodically rake up the seed coats that accumulate beneath your feeders.  I almost always use hulled sunflower seeds in window feeders that are over patios, walks, porches, or driveways.  Hulled sunflower seeds cost more per pound, but remember thatyou are not paying for the weight of the seed coats as you do for the unhlled seeds. 

Birds that like hulled sunflower seeds:  All seed eating birds, especially goldfinches, siskins, House Finches, and chickadees.