We have a corncob holder that we use in winter to feed the birds.

Starting in spring I shift it to holding nesting fluff. This year I found some nice natural cotton that is made just for this purpose, and the goldfinches have started to take it yesterday.

First photo is a newly moulted male gathering some.

Second photo is a female doing the same.

The dark stuff below is alpaca fur, the lighter color has been taken but the darker is less popular.
I bought both types of fluff this year on Ebay.

I took both photos thru my wavy window glass.

Since the finches have their new breeding feathers, there is lots of action around the house now of them flying around and making finchey sounds.

Cornell University (the same as where the Red Tailed Hawks cam resides) is a great place to learn about birds... they even have recordings of their songs and calls.
this link is of the Goldfinches:

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I learned an interesting thing on the Cornell site:

Goldfinches do not eat insects at all. Most seed eating birds eat insects especially when feeding nestlings (hummingbirds and our Cardinals do that). But Goldfinches do not. So they stated on that site that when cowbirds lay their eggs in a finch nest, the nestling dies within 4 days, since no insects are provided for them. I found that very interesting.

Today I have a chickadee taking the new cotton fluff.

Here is what the fluff is.....seems far more popular this season than the cotton I gave last spring (from my supplement bottles).
They will not take polyester I discovered long ago.
This is what I found Ebay...

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While this nesting cotton is made for their special holder, it works fine in my wire corncob holder too. It appears this fluff has shorter strands in it so it is easier for the birds to pluck it out. They are super busy this morning doing so. The finches are arriving in pairs... but it is difficult to tell with the chickadees, as the males and females look almost identical.

This morning I managed to catch a female goldfinch approaching a chickadee at the fluff dispenser. The goldfinch is on the left. It was totally an accident as I was focused on the chickadee only. The goldfinch is coming in for a landing... they fly in bursts, flap flap, cruise, etc...so her wings are folded in the photo.

I am very taken with birds' nests. I have for years used them as subjects for my drawings.

Here is one example: I don't know what type of bird made this nest, as I found it on the ground upNorth in the woods after a storm. It was quite small, so I thought it was a warbler...since we have many of those up there. This nest had lichen and birch bark woven into it...so I know it came from the boreal forest up there.

Various Goldfinches incorporate fluff of many types differently in their nests. This Google search shows some techniques they use. Some of them use alot if a good supply of clean fluff can be found.

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MrsD,

Your Goldfinches are totally different to ours, much more golden with no red markings. As for the Chickadee, I thought it looked exactly the same as our Marsh/Willow Tit, so I checked to see if it was an alternative name - nope, just very similar looking birds which confound many.

Nesting materials. Due to my neuropathy and TN I let my beard grow before having it trimmed short. The Sparrows and Robins collect the hair. They also used to appreciate the brushings from my Ex's GSD, that I took in when she could no longer keep her.

Dave.

mrsD, I'm not sure, but I may have seen that nest pastel before but just wanted to say that your artist gifts never cease to amaze me.

Oh, Thank you Lara.... yes you might have seen it before. I don't have all my slides converted to digital yet...so I tend to use the few I have done over and over as examples.

I have a 3 ring giant binder with many sheets of slides of my work.

Upon thinking about it, that little nest might be a chickadee. We found one tightly wound inside peeling birch bark once. I'll have to look that up on Google soon. We have alot of warblers on the island upNorth, chickadees, a few robins and bluejays, nuthatches, woodland sparrows, but not many other birds. No goldfinches there. Or Cardinals, or Titmouse. We do have the beautiful pileated woodpeckers, and the other woodpeckers all nest really high up in dead branches or trunks. The Pileated dig their own holes in living trees... huge holes. They are impressive, and leave large chips all over the ground below. That is how we locate their nests. And I hear hawks scriiing so they must be up high too.

I really like to delve into the details and textures of wildlife. I tend to find and see things that others miss. I recall a small nest hubby cut down from a tree around the house..it was about 3 inches in diameter and abandoned in late summer. It had tiny snail shells in the bottom. I mean TINY... the ones with pointy shells, that live in shallow water. I always wondered at what type of bird lived there. They had thin shells, and which were transparent, like "baby" snails. We do have small black snails in the shallow water along the shore that eat algae on the rocks. I think some ducks eat those. But how these got into that nest is a mystery. Our land snails are round and don't have pointy shells. Oh, well...

Here is a link to chickadee nesting types...


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I just read in an older (about a year older) Nat Geo magazine that many birds may be endangered or no longer nesting where they do today... by 2050 or later. So I feel those birds in urban environments, need access to fluff as well as food. The main source of fluff is milkweed..which is declining rapidly in the US and affecting the Monarch butterflies which eat its leaves as
larvae. The birds take the fluff for nests too. Monarch butterflies are down to 25% of what they used to be very recently.

The vigorous taking of this fluff I offer, is really a sign that the birds really need it for making their nests for the young. I learned a bit about this from the older cams of Phoebe Allens... that I used to watch from Calif. The owner of that cam explained the need for natural nesting materials that his hummingbirds needed and used in the livestream cam situations. I think it is something that most of us don't think about... how the little birds make their homes for their young, safe and cleaner to result in a healthy new generation.

This is the issue with the blurb about disappearing habitat for nesting birds. It is a two page spread about 3 types of birds with maps... The common Loon, the Baird sparrow, and the Burrowing Owl...losing nesting sites due to global warming. Predictions that 126 other species expected to suffer also. Nat Geo has these short subjects in the beginning of each issue, before the featured articles start. Most libraries carry this magazine. (BTW the dinosaur article is very well done and fascinating too)


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They don't have the whole story however online. (maybe if you subscribe?)

Expanding farms and building projects are destroying the natural plants that birds use for nesting materials and food. This is already impacting the Monarch butterfly, which has lost Milkweed plant that it needs for food. The loss of prairie dog colonies, is causing a problem for the burrowing owl, which uses old tunnels for nesting.

Well, after a two day rain and no nesting birds taking fluff, we are now drying out some.

A tufted titmouse has been coming a little bit before the rains and he is highly aggressive in yanking out the alpaca fur. He goes to it each time he visits whereas the white cotton seems more popular with the finches and chickadees.

Today he/she was back yanking away...so fast the movements were just a blur for my camera. He/she yanked out most of the fur today.

So I looked around the net about this and found this link which is very very interesting. It appears that the titmouse will yank fur out of living mammals including people!

Here is a video of it:

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This photo on this link of the gray bird yanking brown fur, is what I have been watching today as well.

So I guess our mammals are relieved that I am providing alpaca fur for the fiesty Tufted Titmouse!

MrsD,

Weezie had better watch her back, these birds are aggressively unconcerned as to who they pluck.
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Dave.

Yes, I do think it is very funny. LOL