NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:February is for the birds

It’s not that Vic and I are against the month of February — far from it. February is a great time of year if you’re lucky enough to live in Southern California. The days are balmy, the beaches are nearly deserted and you can find a parking space downtown.

In fact, I was just downtown a couple of days ago having lunch outdoors on the patio at Chimayo with friends Judi Smith and Glee Gerde. The weather was so wonderful that I called my brother George in Indiana to tell him about our blue skies, high surf and the lovely cumulus clouds that decorated the horizon over the ocean. With snow coming down at a rate of an inch an hour in Indianapolis, my brother had already shoveled his walkway and driveway three times that day. Yes, I have a mean streak.

February here is a marvelous time of year, but not so for much of the country where snow blankets the ground.

February is for the birds, quite literally, because this month is National Bird-feeding Month. We can thank John Porter, a former Illinois congressman, for that. He had February officially declared National Bird-feeding Month in January 1994.

We’re all for feeding birds at home; however, we would like to point out that it is illegal to feed birds and other wildlife at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, the Huntington Wetlands and our city parks. An exception is made in Huntington Central Park for feed that is purchased at either Alice’s Breakfast in the Park or the Park Bench.

One problem with feeding wildlife at our parks is that some people toss bread onto the water. It sinks, decays and contributes to outbreaks of avian botulism. Another problem is that feeding birds in parks reduces the wildness of the birds and makes them more dependent upon people for handouts.

However, in snowy parts of the country, it is important for the survival of wild birds to have an available source of food. We humans have taken over so much wild land with our homes and yards, freeways, industrial areas, malls and parking lots that wild birds and animals have a greatly restricted area in which to live and a greatly reduced amount of available food. Supplying supplemental feed helps birds survive.

Vic and I began feeding birds in our yard in 1976, when we lived on a small farm in Connecticut. We were thrilled with the close-up looks that we got of blue jays, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees and downy woodpeckers. We’ve had a feeder or two ever since.

In the late 1990s, I was the backyard bird columnist for WildBird magazine. Manu- facturers of bird feeders occa- sionally sent me their products to test and write about, so I accumulated a large collection of bird feeders. I confess that during that time we had 27 feeders of various kinds in our yard.

We maintain five humming- bird feeders, a thistle seed feeder for goldfinches, four tray feeders with mixed seed for sparrows and doves, and four sunflower seed feeders for finches. But birds need more than supplemental food. They also need water and places to hide. We have a patio pond in back, a pond in front, and several bird baths as well as seed and nectar feeders.

We maintain a naturally landscaped yard with lots of trees and shrubs, and no grassy lawn. Our yard not only is good for wildlife, it’s water thrifty and requires little care.

Our yard is a certified National Wildlife Federation backyard refuge. In the 19 years that we’ve lived here, we’ve had owls, hawks, warblers, wrens and many other avian visitors that have been attracted to the water and wildness of our yard. We’ve also had opossums, raccoons, rabbits, ground squirrels and a gray fox visit our yard. No, we don’t have a lavish estate, despite what a realtor might write about it in an ad. It’s the same tiny-sized plot that most people in town have, 60 feet by 100 feet, occupied mostly by driveway, garage and house. It’s the combination of natural landscaping and availability of food and water that attracts the critters.

The latest visitors to our yard are fox squirrels. In the last two weeks, we’ve had three individuals come to the yard at different times: a male, a female and a juvenile. I confess that I put out peanuts in the shell for them.

These cute little critters aren’t native to our area. They were brought to the Los Angeles area in the early 1900s and spread to the Central Valley, where they became a pest in the walnut groves. They have come only fairly recently to Huntington Beach, where they have taken up residence in Central Park. We’re probably getting spillover from the park.

We encourage you to become a backyard bird feeder. Go see Jan Smith at the Wild Birds Unlimited store on Beach Boulevard. She has everything you need to get started, plus plenty of tips on how to either feed the squirrels or discourage them.

Our recommendation is that you get several feeders and scatter them about your yard. During the time when we had only one or two feeders in our yard, we got almost no birds. Now we have plenty.

Wild birds give us hours of delight. Feeding birds is fun, easy, entertaining and helps wild creatures survive in an increasingly urbanized world.