 Have you ever spotted a bird sitting on a fence post and wondered, what is that bird? Or heard a bird call and wondered about the bird making that sound? It's lovely to live in Boulder County, mountains to the west, blue skies above, and birds. Lots of birds. An estimated 60 million people worldwide enjoy watching birds, and it isn't difficult to get started at it. Cat Bradley Bennett was born and raised in Boulder County. She spends a lot of her time outdoors around here looking for birds and taking photos. Join Cat and her friends to learn more about how you can enjoy the past time known as birding. My name is Cat Bradley Bennett. I'm a Longmont resident, a Colorado native born and raised in Boulder, and I love birds. I love to watch birds. I love to listen to their songs. I love to go out and try to find them and see if I can identify them. And I just find them fascinating. I think if I had one superpower I would wish for, it would be to be able to fly like a bird. I became a bird watcher when I was 26 years old and a friend took me east to the Jackson Reservoir. It was the middle of winter. I had to get up really, really early, which I was not real fond of doing. And when we got out to Jackson Reservoir, the reservoir was completely frozen over and there were 26 bald eagles all standing around on the ice. I was hooked. I've never turned back. I love to go out watching birds and take my camera, maybe catch them in action like that western king bird behind me throwing a grasshopper up in the air before he swallowed it. Now we're going into winter. It's mid-October right now. Families are maybe trying to think of things that they can do with their kids inside without a lot of exposure to other people. Bird watching is something that fits that bill. You can do it at any time. It doesn't take a huge investment of money or time. It's something you can do alone with your friends or as a family. And winter is a great time to start because you can attract birds to your yard and then watch them from the comfort of your home and try to learn how to identify them. So today I'm going to show you some ways that you can attract birds to your yard so that you can begin to hone those identification skills. Let me share some slides. Now when we think of feeding birds, we think of some kind of a feeder and a typical one is a tube feeder like this one. I have it filled in this picture with thistle seed and it's not a thistle that sprouts here so you don't have to worry about that. This is called Black Niger and there's some white millet, some red millet mixed in there and some safflower seed. I would not recommend the cheap mixes that you can find at the supermarket because there's a lot of filler in that seed that the birds won't even eat and you'll end up with all that waste on the ground. Now this tube feeder has attracted this pair of house finches, a very common bird here. The male on the left is not quite as gloriously red as he would be in the spring and summer because this is a winter photo. He has taken that energy that he would put into those gorgeous red feathers and it's going to put that energy into surviving the winter. So he's not quite as beautiful as he would be. Now that's the female on the right and she's very plain. She's gray and streaky, so she blends in in the spring and summer when she's sitting on her nest. The tube feeder might also attract their smaller cousin, the American Goldfinch. This guy is in his beautiful spring plumage. In the winter he's going to look a little more brown, a little streaky, not quite so beautiful yellow. You'll still get that lovely black on the wing. But he's not going to be quite as gloriously yellow and black as he is in this picture. But the American Goldfinch can be a daily visitor to a tube feeder if you have thistle seed and small seed like the red millet and the white millet. Another common visitor is one of my favorite songbirds, the black cap chickadee. They love sunflower seed, they're very fond of peanuts and they'll also pick at some of that smaller seed. If you're really lucky, you might even get their smaller cousin, the bush tit. Now here is a platform feeder where I have spread some of that thistle and white and red millet and these little bush tits come in every day and they love the thistle seed. We have quite a few sparrows, some we only see in the winter here, and some are year round residents like this song sparrow. The song sparrow is a beautiful singer in the spring and summer, but in the winter time you won't be singing so much, but he could be a daily visitor to your bird feeder. Typical behavior of a song sparrow is just scratch for the seed on the ground. So here's the song sparrow's larger cousin, the green-tailed toey. And that's a wonderful activity to watch as they jump back and forth and they scratch the seed up and they eat the seed on the ground. Another type of feeder is the suet feeder. Suet is a type of fat and it's generally mixed with some small seed, maybe some cracked corn, could be some peanut hearts or even peanut butter, and you will attract some woodpeckers like this red shafted flicker. The red shafted flicker gets its name from those lovely orangy red feathers that you see on his wings and tail. But you also might get our smaller woodpecker, the little downy. This is a little male with the little red dot on his head and he can be a daily visitor to your suet feeder. Now when the spring starts to arrive, I start putting out some fruit. Robins are not going to come to a seed feeder because they're not seed eaters. They like worms and bugs, right? So you can put out dried mealworms and the robin might be attracted to that. But in the early spring, around April, I will start putting out fruit like this orange half and even apples and that can attract some robins. And as the spring progresses and the migrants come in, you might be lucky enough to get the Bullock's Oreo, who loves oranges. And you also might get a Western Tanager. Now he's not going to hang around here in Longmont. He's going to stop by and fuel up on oranges, bits of apple or even grape jelly that you see in the dish here. And then he's going to head for the hills to find a mate and breed for the summer. In May, I put out my hummingbird feeder. Notice that the nectar in this feeder is clear. Do not use those commercial nectars with red dye. It's not good for the birds and all you need is four parts of water to one part sugar, boil it for a minute and store it in the refrigerator. And you want to switch out your hummingbird nectar at least every week, once a week. Wash the feeder to make sure it doesn't have any mold growing on it. And you might attract any of the hummingbirds that come through here, including the broad-tailed hummingbird, the rufus that come through here in early July on their way to their breeding ground, or the black chins like this little female here. But you don't even need a hummingbird feeder to attract hummingbirds if you have flowers that provide nectar they like. So here is that same female black chinned hummingbird going for Rocky Mountain bee plant or Clium. They like Larkspur, trumpet vine is a very good attractor for hummingbirds. They'll come to any variety of flowers that are in the yellow, red, purple range. But the bee plant is a very prolific bloomer and it will attract hummingbirds. If you have trees and shrubs that provide food in the way of fruit for birds, that will bring them. So here is a serviceberry bush, and this robin is gorging on the serviceberries before they're even ripe. There are crab apples, cherries, even Oregon grape or the Virginia creeper that will attract some birds, elderberries. There are lots of fruits that will attract birds to your yard. Now the other thing you need is water. Birds need to be able to hydrate every day just like we do. Birds have a good drink of water like this young Blue Jay, but they also need water to be able to condition their feathers. And they need to do this every day because healthy feathers are the means of survival. Notice that this water is not very deep, it's only about an inch and a half. Now also, I have this little birdbath placed between a couple of trees because wet feathers are heavy and it's difficult for a bird to fly. So once he's finished with his bath, this little guy is going to hop up into one of those trees and preen and condition his feathers. So he's good to go for another day. So if you have some food for the birds, some water for the birds, places for them to nest, maybe places for them to perch, you never know who's going to come to your backyard. Like this great horned owl who simply loves to come and sit on my fence in the wintertime to take his daily nap. So I encourage you to consider finding ways to attract birds to your yard. What will help you will be a pair of binoculars and a good field guide. And I'm going to talk about both of those things in some upcoming episodes of Winging It. So join me and my friends as we go out into the field and we'll look for binoculars. We'll look at some field guides and we'll definitely go out and look for some birds. Bye bye. Join us next time when Kat and her friends talk about field guides and phone applications that help you identify birds.