You fed the birds, now clean up after them

Cleaning up after the Big Freeze will be important for your birds

A Harris’s sparrow and American goldfinches crowd into a tray feeder during the cold spell. (KJBOutdoors photo)

In a classic case of “I’ve always just said that” an earlier version of this column had some incorrect math on mixing bleach solution for cleaning feeders (and dog kennels). It is replaced with corrected copy with guidelines from Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

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The snow is retreating the mud is appearing and it’s almost like springtime in the backyard again—and that means spring cleaning.

Yuk.

After so many of us enjoyed seeing so many birds invading our feeders the past couple of weeks it’s especially important now to, well, do the dishes.

I’ve had plenty of practice at it this winter and learned a thing or two about creating a bird feeding station in the process—which is to say I did things the wrong way.

So I have a few tips for folks needing to do maintenance and a few for those who might have enjoyed the birds during the cold spell and are thinking about expanding to feed more birds in the future.

With an invasion of more than 100 blackbirds at my station at any given time early in the season up to 26 goldfinches and another 10 or 12 house finches and a marauding hoard of 21 European starlings I’ve learned three important things about keeping a robust feeding station going in the backyard this year.

1. The more feeders, the more birds, the more food, the more money you’ll spend.

2. Birds need a good, protected location, but it also needs to be easily cleaned.

3. Before you buy a bird feeder, consider how it dispenses food and make sure it’s easy to dismantle and clean.

A Harris’s sparrow and a Carolina wren briefly share a suet feeder during the cold spell. (KJBOutdoors photo)

My Mess

After some backyard “remodeling” and inheriting some new feeders from a friend I came to a point where I just wasn’t sure where I would put all my feeders this season. The only semi-protected spot was near the privacy fence and our tall redbud tree on the west side of the lawn—which also happened to be in a newly established flowerbed.

It worked out very well at first, but when the big flocks rolled in it quickly became a mess. The ground-feeding birds kicked three inches of mulch into the yard and all the mulch everywhere became a place for bird poop and old seeds to collect and grow fungus and bacteria.

It was gross but also dangerous for the birds as it became a place for finch eye disease (conjunctivitis) and Avian pox to spread.

The plan for next season is to spread out those feeders to safe zones around the yard and create cleared surfaces or graveled areas under them that are easy to clean.

American goldfinches feed from an older tube feeder that shows how much traffic it saw during the cold spell. (KJBOutdoors photo)

Choosing feeders

I have two feeders that I built, a large tray feeder on which I might put a variety of things—including fruits in the summer—and a sheltered feeder for mealworms for the bluebirds. Beyond that I’ll put out finch food (usually a nyjer seed/sunflower chip mix in a tube-style feeder) and black-oil sunflower seeds. For these two food types I have eight other feeders in my backyard, seven of which are different models.

I inherited some of those models, but others are self-inflected choices. I will never buy another feeder without first considering if it is a well-made and commonly available model that has been around awhile, that it is easily dismantled and cleaned, and that I like the appearance and wouldn’t mind having several.

By “well made” I mean chief elements of the feeder likely are made of steel of some kind, that the dispenser is designed to hold to the seeds without letting them easily get wet, and that makes it just a little bit of a challenge for the birds to remove the seeds. I have two less-expensive plastic feeders that always empty out well before the others, not because they’re more popular but because for every seed a bird pulls out two more fall to the ground.

Sparrows, blackbirds, doves, robins and others, like this dark-eyed junco (possibly an Oregon form), feed mostly on the ground. (KJBOutdooors photo)

Finally, cleaning

The ground around the feeders needs to be regularly raked or swept—I resorted to using the leaf blower this year (hint: the leaf blower is effective but wear a mask).

Cleaning around the area keeps down attraction of rodents and formation of fungus and bacteria.

The drill for cleaning feeders has six easy steps: Dismantle, scrub and rinse, soak in a bleach solution for 10 to 20 minutes, wash with warm soapy water, rinse well, reassemble.

The bleach solution should “no more than one part bleach to nine parts water” according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Feederwatch program information. I’ve been soaking mine with the same mix I use to spray down my dog’s outdoor kennel on a weekly basis that is actually 1:16, or a cup (8 ounces) of bleach per gallon of water. If it’s good enough for a dog kennel, I think it’s fine the for the birds, and it seems plenty strong to me.

With so many feeders I’ve started using a large cooler with 8 gallons of bleach solution in it. I dismantle, rinse and scrub and toss a feeder into the solution. By the time I’ve cleaned and dismantled all my feeders the first feeder is done soaking and ready for soap and a rinse so they just get rotated through and hung up to dry before being re-filled with seeds.

Then I’m ready once again for the hoards to return.

American robins “take turns” at the bird bath during the cold spell. (KJBOutdoors photo)

A pair of female red-winged blackbirds rest on a branch above the authors feeding station during the cold spell. (KJBOutdoors photo)