Snob Feeding with Zick Dough

 

Let's face it. Along with the fabulous birds we all want to see, the sapsuckers with their velvet berets, there's a lot of riffraff in the winter bird feeding world. 

One starling at the Zick Dough is unique and beautiful.

Eight starlings is expensive. Dirty, too. Then 30...ugh! Starlings can take a fine homemade food like Zick Dough and turn it into pounds of poop faster than any bird alive. 

We fill up our guts then we turn it into @#$# 

Then we get rid of it

to quote the Holy Modal Rounders in "Slurf Song"

If you go listen, and I hope you will, you will understand something of my musical roots, and my sense of humor. Best sung in a roomful of filthy hippies who gleefully shout the backup lines.

Anyway, I like to keep my homemade Zick Dough Improved away from starlings. The way to do this is to offer it in a place starlings (and house sparrows) fear to go. These imported birds know we hate them, and they won't generally enter a feeder that looks like a trap, or that brings them too close to people.

Back in Jemima Jay days, soon after her release in June 2017, I devised a little feeder she could use, that other birds hesitated to exploit.

It's under the crank-out window right by my studio drawing table. I stocked it with things like pecan halves and chicken breast and basmati rice, fresh corn, snap peas...the buffet was deluxe and she thrived on it.  It was our little secret! 

Of course, given such fabulous fare, it didn't take long for Jemima's  little feeder to catch on with the other birds. This was mostly fine with me, and it's had wonderful consequences of late.

I've simplified the offerings, keeping it to Zick Dough Improved. See bottom of post for recipe. 

The Snob Feeder was easy to make.  It's just a canning strainer with a handle, and a black alligator style clip from the hardware store. Why a strainer? Well, rain goes through it, so you don't make Zick Dough Soup every time it rains. That said, I feed small amounts frequently, and withhold the food if it's really pouring. 

 I've clipped the strainer to the shelf bracket that supports my big bird screen--a panel of black crop netting strung across a frame of PVC pipe, which prevents birds from killing themselves on my big studio window. 

For more on that, go here:

A Solution to Window Strikes

It's easy to access! I just crank out the studio window, put a handful of Zick Dough in the strainer, and go back to work. 

Now I'm going to show you who benefited from the inside knowledge of my little "Snob Feeder."

Here's the male white-breasted nuthatch who made an appearance in my last post about ice storms. If you click on the photo you can see he's missing a couple primary feathers on his right wing--pulled out by getting stuck in ice in his roost hole overnight. 

You can also see that the birds have made a hole in the screen that they duck in and out of. :)

 Here's my adorable little female red-breasted nuthatch. Squee!! They're so much smaller than the white-breasted nuthatch, and red-breasts are only here in SE Ohio in winter.

Needless to say, tufted titmice are my most enthusiastic customers, as are Carolina chickadees. They both jump for joy for Zick Dough!

Cardinals love Zick Dough too, but my window feeder pictures aren't so hot. So here's a nice old couple. Look at all the red on that female, speaking of  her advanced age and the higher testosterone levels that come with it. The higher the T, the stronger her color.

Now, white-throated sparrows aren't folks you'd normally think would clamber into a food strainer right next to a window, but...

after thinking about it and watching other birds enjoying this intriguing looking food, like this buff-striped bird is doing, I have several who have made the leap! Here's a pretty white- striped morph. Studies have shown that, while they may not be as attractive to our eye, buff-striped males make better dads. :)

Speaking of sparrows, my sweet little song sparrow Ball, hand-raised last fall and still with me, loves Zick dough! He remembers it from when he was a babe.

If you click on the photo you will see the fault bar across his tail that is his nametag.

This fox sparrow will eat the Zick Dough I sprinkle on the ground below, but he's a little too shy to come in to the feeder. Having him this close is a thrill. Pardon the photo--the bird screen was iced up. 

Same for the eastern towhees. I have SEVEN this winter! Never have had more than a couple. I love these two huge sparrow species!

This lovely male downy woodpecker likes to come and go by the hole in the netting. He's welcome.

This might be his mate. I like the way she hangs down to get her treat.

Dark-eyed juncos are another ground feeder one wouldn't expect would climb into a homemade feeder, but here's one feasting.

Carolina wrens are regular. Like any insectivore, they need nourishing food to survive such hard winters as this one.

This beautiful American tree sparrow is thinking hard about coming in for Zick dough...

but settles for the dried mealworms I toss onto the snow several times a day. The birds were a bit slow to catch onto this new treat (just like me). But it's so nice to have something nourishing to offer the birds when it stays so cold for weeks at a time. 

Towhees, juncos and tree sparrows dig them! 

Pro-tip (I'm full of them today!)  The photo below was taken at Tractor Supply. Here's the choice. You can buy 17 oz. (just a hair over ONE POUND) of dried mealworms in the wild bird feeding section for $19.99. That's about $20/lb. I don't think the birds give a hoot about the "berry flavor" they add. That's just to get YOU to buy it for $20/lb.

OR you could walk to the chicken feeding section in back, and buy FIVE POUNDS of the same thing for $39.99. That's about $7/lb.

Your choice. They keep well. I tried to buy them first from my friend Tim Vocke at thenaturesway.com but he tells me that all dried mealworms are coming out of China these days. He's my first resort for live mealworms for my rehab birds. 

I hope this photo essay has shown you that you can cultivate personal relationships with birds using the snob feeding concept. Offer fabulous high quality, high protein food in small amounts, and make them work for it. Bring them in right up close to a window where you spend most of your time. They'll learn to recognize and trust you, watch your rhythms and anticipate your moves, and you'll get an intimate look into their lives. 

This is the fourth winter this beautiful female yellow-bellied sapsucker has spent with me.

I have had the great pleasure of getting to know her, teaching her how to eat strange things, and watching her slip into full adult plumage.

She brings me joy. Long may she run.

Here's that recipe.

 ZICK DOUGH IMPROVED: SMALL BATCH 

Melt in the microwave and stir together: 

1 cup peanut butter 

1 cup lard 

In a large mixing bowl, combine 

2 cups unmedicated chick starter 

2 cups quick oats 

1 cup yellow cornmeal 

 1 cup flour

Add melted lard/peanut butter mixture slowly to the combined dry ingredients and mix well.

Stir constantly.Stop adding the melted fats when the mix is crumbly and a little dry.

                                                    If you have extra PB/lard, just save it for the next batch.

                                                        You can adjust the texture with a little  extra flour.

NOTE: This is a COLD WEATHER OFFERING ONLY.  It's too rich to feed once the weather warms up. If you do feed in spring, keep it to cold snaps. It should be regarded as a treat in warmer weather, NOT a steady diet. 

Most frequently asked questions, to save time: 

I don't want to use lard. Can I substitute vegetable shortening?

You can, but the birds won't like it. I've done the side-by-side multi-species taste tests.

Isn't white flour bad for birds?

No.

I'm going to use organic almond flour and all-natural hand-ground peanut-butter.

Knock your$elf out! I u$e $tore brand wheat flour and PB becau$e I'm feeding a LOT of bird$$$$

Titmouse, in a Bad Way

 I'm not sure what little voice told me to go back out to the greenhouse late on the afternoon of November 29. I didn't have any particular mission there. I'd watered that morning. I just wanted to go back out. As I opened the sliding door to the little patio, there was a squeak and a flutter, and a tufted titmouse sort of trundled out of a pile of sycamore leaves that had blown up against the house. Dark was coming on, and I figure it had been planning to roost there. Oh dear! No titmouse in its right mind roosts on the ground, unless it has no other choice. This one was fluttering in a tight circle, its head tilted far over to the side. Something bad had happened to it. What were the chances it would fetch up against the very door I use the most? Was it chance, or something else? Birds know. They know.

 I fetched my butterfly net and dropped it over the little bird. It was in a bad way. I put it in a plastic Critter Keeper and pulled back to observe it. Tipping over on its side, it was stargazing, with an inverted head. Uh-oh. That looked like traumatic brain injury to me. Whatever had happened to it, it would need food, so I prepared a little dish of Zick Dough and crushed sunflower hearts. The poor bird began to eat before I could even withdraw my hand, something that I would learn is typical of titmice. They are survivors, fighters. It took a sunflower heart, tried to tuck it in its toes, but couldn't get its head to cooperate, so it dug into the Zick Dough. I was so touched by its will to live that I pledged on the spot to do whatever it took to get it back into the wild. And if it wasn't going to make it, at least it would have had a warm place to sleep, and a full belly before it died.

           

The Intake Video...I had a feeling it wasn't going to die! But neither was I prepared for what happened next.

From the get-go, I got a strong male energy from this bird, so I'm going to switch its pronouns to he/his. Some may laugh at me. They may go ahead. So far, I've batted 100, even with sexually monomorphic birds like brown thrashers, song sparrows, and blue jays. We raised three brown thrasher nestlings a few years back. By the first evening I knew I had two females and a male. Harper, Melba and Cletus. And who first found his voice on June 22?  Cletus. And the other two remained silent. Same with the three song sparrows I just raised. Two males and a female. Ball, Bob and Baby, the only female. I just knew. 

                                             Cletus sings quietly, June 22, 2015, on his 37th day of life. 

The sight that greeted me the next morning, after this promising beginning, was shocking. The poor titmouse's head was completely inverted, and any attempt at moving caused him to flip over on his back. Holding the bird up to the light, I could see its left eye flicking back and forth, a condition called nystagmus. I've had it with the three cases of vertigo I've endured, and it is no fun at all. The world spins around you and all you can do is close your eyes and try not to throw up. 

Shila pointed out to me that the day or two after a car accident are usually worse than the day of the accident, as the body assesses what just happened to it. So it was for this bird. Though titmice are savvy birds and not typically victims of window strikes, one could surmise that perhaps a raptor had made a pass through the yard and scared him into a window collision. Brain swelling could easily cause the torticollis and nystagmus. I wanted to alleviate that, so as soon as offices opened at 8 I started calling around to locate Metacam, an NSAID that veterinarians use for brain trauma. It's what they give window-struck birds that squads of volunteers collect in the streets of big cities during migration. I'm grateful for the local veterinarian who is willing to sell me the drugs I need!

By 10 AM, I had charged to town, grabbed the meds, bought a flame-orange reflective dog collar, picked out and tied a Christmas tree on top of the car, and had the first dose of Metacam in the titmouse. Still Nov. 30 was rough. I had to hand-feed the bird hourly from dawn to dark. And he looked so pathetic, all twisted up and unable to move, that it was hard not to lose hope. And hard not to wonder how long we'd have to keep this up.

              

I had good reason to wonder.  I remembered a case like this from way back in my Connecticut life, a bird named Sunshine.

 He was a white-throated sparrow, named by the little daughters of the woman who'd picked him up, and he had severe torticollis. I wouldn't discover the cause for several days: a deep wound right at the base of his skull, likely inflicted by a cat. I guess that qualifies as a traumatic brain injury! I got him on April 23, 1991, and it took twelve days of hourly hand-feeding and physical therapy (gently turning his head the way it didn't want to go) until the bird could self- feed again. By the 19th day, he was ready for release. Against all odds, I had a viable, releasable white-throated sparrow where once there was a sad little lump of feathers with an upside-down head. 

Click on the picture to read his story.

I released Sunshine on May 11, long after all the local white-throats had departed for Canada. I didn't see him again until the next afternoon. And on the morning of May 14, I awoke to his song--he had been singing in the cage and I knew it well. 

From The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds

"I pulled on my clothes and walked out into the yard to listen to this small bird's hymn to the silence. Had the cat had its way, his song would have been forever stilled. I was changed, transformed by these three weeks of feeding, massaging, and hoping for a sparrow. Such work is its own reward. I knelt to pull some weeds from the neglected garden on the east side of the house, the May sun warming my back. Sunshine flew closer, to a maple just overhead, and sang. I smiled up at him, finished weeding, and moved to the iris bed in the front yard, happy to be in the company of a wild white-throated sparrow. He followed, perching in the top of a white pine just over a stone wall from where I was weeding. And he sang.

"For the next two days, Sunshine would follow me around the yard, singing from the closest perch he could find. I don't know why he did it; whether, like a newly captured, hand-fed falcon, he'd (bonded with) me in those three weeks of intensive feeding and therapy; whether he considered me a substitute mate, parent, or rival. I know far better than to make the anthorpomorphic leap to say he was trying to thank me. What does a bird know of gratitude? Perhaps quite a lot more than we think. I can only say that he followed me, singing, and in signing, touched an inarticulate place in my heart. By May 18, he was gone, headed north, I hoped, tracking his own course once again."

Based on that experience, which was both grueling and transformative, I had reason to be hopeful about this titmouse. I was unshakably determined to see him through to whatever outcome Fate would decree.