⌛ Bird feeders

are you wanting to feed seed or fruit? for fruit, just put a banana or two on a tree trunk or some other natural place and see if anyone comes around, it might take a few days before it's discovered. for seed, chickens might be a problem, but try tossing some rice or other small grain under a bush or tree.

i'm hoping it's where a person lives but i haven't seen much in the line of bird activity here, a siquijor neighbor kept bananas hanging on the porch railing and no birds came.

here's some fotos of fruit eating birds that came for fruit at the last place i lived in panamá. the oriole and the summer tanager where winter visitors from the states. according to ''a guide to the birds of the philippines'', we have similar fruit eating birds here but i haven't seen them (yet).
http://snipurl.com/1wre2s

norm : ))~

 

the trick is to not give them any more than they will clean up in a day or less so there's no waste. and it's gonna be hard to keep the chickens out.

if you have space, consider planting some plants with nectar bearing flowers. i have flower piercing sunbirds work some large yellow flowers on my porch and i'm pretty sure i've seen them working hibiscus. i'm too new to these parts to recommend plants but a good plant nursery should be able fix you up with plants that attract nectar feeders. ah... the hummers in p'ma worked heliconias for nectare.

another thing you can use to attract birds is fat , hang some in an onion bag on a tree trunk and see who comes along (besides ants : ) peanut butter works too.

norm : ))~

 

You must have overheard me having this exact conversation a few days ago!! I am going to find someone to make me one of those poles with the hangers for birdfeeders, then, I will have someone make me a couple of birdfeeders to hang on the hooks. We don't have alot of chickens running around our neighborhood so am not worried about chickens somehow getting to the feeders on the hooks. We do, however, have alot of birds in the area. I considered making my own suet, too...but it just wouldn't hold up well in this heat.

 

you could start/test with a bamboo pole with the branches still on and hang the feeders from that. grills from dead fans work good for feeding fruit and also growing orchids. you could also get a piece of 1/2'' hardware cloth and form it into a small bag for fat.

chicken's will fly up several feet to get at fruit, that's why i mostly hang stuff.

how about a slice of dryish fat or marrow or... before you go to the trouble of making a feeder, just smear a little peanut butter on a rough tree trunk to test the waters. the bird book shows 3 lowland woodpeckers (2 of them common) in this area so i would think you'd get some visitors. once you get a feeding station established, the ''word'' will get out and you'll have birds coming from the next purok : )

norm : ))~

 

This got me itching to make a birdfeeder, so I made one out of a soda bottle and have some pvc pipe with some wire sticking out of the top bent over to hang the bottle on....just gotta get to Agrivet and pick up a bag of seed and see how it goes.

 

fruit bats

i lived near a tropical almond and when the nuts were ripening, i would hear in the nite what i thot was rats fighting over the nuts, until one nite i was outside and saw that the rats were actually *large* fruit bats that were eating the pulp, or whatever it's called (material?) that surrounds the outside of the nut, leaving the nut nicely cleaned for harvesting.

i've read that the flowers attract sun birds but i didn't observe that.



norm : ))~