When you take on a project, if you even do that kind of thing, do you think big? Or in a more practical way? How about without much thought, at all? Let it all evolve organically, so to speak, see what you get with no expectations. Try that with a BYFO, and anything can happen. You might find a boutique single-feeder operation is more than enough to satisfy your humble ambitions. Get the $12.99 one-tuber from the big box store, fill it with the cheap “wild bird food” mix, and see what shows up. Hey, do the birdies even care if they’re getting the avian equivalent of instant ramen or store-brand peanut butter on saltines with that stuff? Shouldn’t they be thankful for any H.sapien handout, being dependent on the kindness of strangers as they no doubt must be?
Not so fast, my bird-loving pal. Believe it when the esteemed Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology – it doesn’t get more authoritative than that, believe me – tells us that the red millet, oats, and other “fillers” that comprise much of those mixes will get sorted out and unceremoniously tossed to the ground by your choosy sparrow or jay or cardinal friends. Just like you and I, they go for the good stuff, which in their case is the sunflower seeds and cracked corn and thistle that’s usually in there somewhere, if sparsely. Let the squirrels and raccoons and other groundlings have that other junk, if they even want it. Or perhaps in the end it’s just mulch.
You can go overboard the other way, of course, as some of us are like that. One can easily go nuts with elaborate offerings for all the feathered friends out there, and might it be said that the more you spend, the more love you feel? Is this not a time-honored approach that many H.sapiens take with their own children, or anyone in their lives whom they consider special? You no doubt eschew such vulgarity, but when it comes to birds and “loving” nature you just might loosen up a little, and if that’s the case, has Duncraft and the rest of the bird-feeding industrial complex got something for you! Check it out: Fancy Finch Mix and Cardinal Delight! High Energy Blend and Super Songbird and Very Berry! And so much more! The Duncraft catalogue alone offers at least thirty different kinds in a four-page spread, and listed separately in the Bluebird section, they offer live mealworms! I kid you not. Ten thousand of which can be yours, today, for only $104.95. Does one store the little critters in a terrarium, or a jar, or a colorful canister down there alongside the flour and wheat germ? Ten thousand might require more than a few canisters or jars, or a really big terrarium. Not to worry, you’ll figure it out, because you love your bluebirds, and who doesn’t? Talk about happiness!
As should be evident, Duncraft follows the trend towards specialization typical of industries everywhere, all the more to tantalize the aspiring BYFO practitioner. Besides those bluebirds, they hint at how certain mixes might attract certain species more readily than others. So what’s it going to be? Finches or cardinals? Super songbirds? Just what the heck are those anyway? One assumes Duncraft has done extensive studies in their own backyard or researchers’ backyards across N America, though the sharp-eyed observer who also knows a few things about birds will be aware that the Duncraft market skews towards those living in temperate climes, rather than warmer ones. You’ll see no parrots or pyrrhuloxias on Duncraft perches, no siree bob. And if the evocation of “pyrrhuloxia” stirs your imagination towards something wildly exotic, be advised that while quite beautiful, the bird is basically a cardinal from the Mexican desert. Ever seen one? I saw mine in Texas, down at the southern border, and a treasured memory it remains. And who’s this “bob”?
So okay, maybe you’ve decided to keep it simple and cheap, and this approach is totally legit and works out fine for many, especially in winter, when any pathetic offering of sustenance, with its minimal demands on the BYFO operator’s time and money, will keep any number of backyard fliers satisfied, at least as far as anyone knows. Results might be adversely affected if there happens to be one or more other BYFOs nearby offering quality product, but that is idle speculation and how would you even know? A walk around your neighborhood could be revealing, and flocks chowing down are often easy to spot at a distance, but are you a competitive kind of person? Are you okay with a few (or many) house sparrows, sort of the default feeder-bird and a totally respectable species if there ever was one? Maybe you don’t need no stinkin’ finches or cardinals or Super Songbirds! Well then, good for you!
This BYFO operator must confess to a notable scarcity of finches this year, both gold- and house- (we never get purples), out back at 39 Iffley. He has begun to suspect there must be a nearby BYFO that offers thistle, crudely known in some BYFO circles as “finch crack,” but for now this is mere idle speculation. To demonstrate how complicated this world is in ways you’d never have imagined, even the humble world of birdseed has its areas of confusion. Nyjer® and thistle offer a textbook example. Many in the birdseed market, Duncraft among them, sell Nyjer® seed claiming it’s “also known as thistle seed.” Do not be sucked in by this misinformation! We’re talking here about Guizotia abyssinica vs. Cirsium discolor, okay? One is the seed of the African yellow daisy, while the other is a product of what many consider to be just another N American “noxious weed.” If you’ve never had clothing covered with spiny stickers from this plant, you’ve led a sheltered life. One’s seeds are imported (after being sterilized, don’t ask why) from Ethiopia and India, while the other, as the “weed” label suggests, probably grows near you. Finches and other birds, by the way, consider the seeds of both plants to be quite delicious, but the imported ones are 40% oil, making them comparable to black-oil sunflower seeds, and when offered in a dedicated feeder can pull in tons of certain rather colorful species. Finch crack, indeed.
And what about squirrels? This explosive topic was cursorily discussed in FFFFU (1) and it is possible there’s not much more to say about it. The choice is up to you as to how to play this one, and if you are dedicated to the Duncraft way of doing things, they offer different means of resolving what they clearly take to be a “problem,” one which also offers another opportunity to move product, as well. They make lots of promises about the effectiveness of their many offerings, some which employ springs and others with cages and a few with baffles, which begs the question of why so many different kinds? Does one deploy one technology until the fuzzy-tailed smarties figure out a way to defeat it, at which point one tries another kind? Is the ultimate solution some kind of Mutually Assured Destruction, such as has been reached with nuclear weapons? What does that even mean if it’s just about rodents and birdseed? If nothing else, running a BYFO will teach you a few things about the awesome intelligence, not to say diabolical cleverness, of one of nature’s more underrated backyard species. As mentioned previously, YouTube offers endless hilarious and impressive videos testifying to this.
But getting back to the major theme from episode 1 (did you even notice there was one?) of this gripping series of posts, it is time to take a granular look at the labor involved in running the BYFO at 39 Iffley Road, as it is in doing the work that one gets in touch with those sacred aggie roots that are so defining of our species in the grand scheme of history, amen. It starts of course, with the birds, and the defining characteristic in these parts is not so much the colorful and entertaining species that have appeared – which is the main appeal of feeding birds, as Audubon or any Duncraft executive will tell you – but in the sheer numbers of those damned feathered friends that seem to show up en masse, day after day, with appetites you wouldn’t believe.
Just look at the pictures! So many birds, and so many of them! House sparrows, mourning doves, grackles! None of which species you will find portrayed, anywhere, in the Wide World of Duncraft – which is located, as the crow might fly if they had the energy, a mere 70 miles from Iffley Road, up in Concord NH. Do these common species somehow never cross over the state line, where they might appear in a Duncraft catalogue backyard? Or has all evidence of those species been Photoshopped out of the Duncraft picture? And if so, why?
Going by what is shown in the catalogue, the Duncraft world is exclusively suburban, but c’mon! Ravinginbeantown has extolled the glories of our local humble “urban” species before, but clearly nobody at Duncraft has been paying attention. Or maybe they long ago ceded the urban market to other vendors, like the big-boxes of Home Depot and Walmart. It’s a fact that the rather large mesh receptacle off our back porch is not in the Duncraft catalogue but comes from Walmart, and the seed offered therein comes by way of 40 pound bags at the Depot, currently available at $36.97 apiece. Duncraft offers the same product in a five-pounder for $16.97, plus shipping. Do the math, then reflect upon why this writer/feeder figures that the Duncraft market might be considered “boutique,” whereas what’s going on high above the 39 Iffley backyard is industrial, in comparison. So many birds, so much seed!
If expending greater sweat from one’s brow denotes more connection with aggie roots, birdfeeding on an industrial – or maybe just serious agricultural – scale will do the trick. Last week brought the introduction of the fourth forty-pounder of the winter season into the picture, a season which began the weekend after Thanksgiving 2023. We’re talking 120 pounds over six weeks, or about twenty pounds a week. The major players in this feeding frenzy/scenario are the house sparrow, weighing in at one ounce, the common grackle at four ounces, and the mourning dove which tips the scales at slightly more than that. I hope I am not insulting your intelligence in reminding you that there are 16 ounces in a pound, meaning 1920 ounces of black oil sunflower seed from Home Depot have now gone down at 39 Iffley Road since this feeding season’s beginning. I invite you to do the math and find something fascinating or meaningful in all this and get back to me, and thanks. Your findings will be published at ravinginbeantown sometime in the future, you can count on that, though in what context is yet to be determined.
The clear point to be made at this point is that we’re talking about an awful lot of sweat. Driving to the far suburbs to get the bags is part of the effort. Local urban Home Depots do not stock the big bags, suggesting that industrial BYFOs are more common in the ‘burbs than one might assume from looking at the Duncraft catalogue, and the whole experience is a trip in more ways than one. Birdseed at the Depot, as you might expect, is located “out in the yard” in the garden section, where it’s easy to find amongst all the lawn and yard product – just follow the birds! As the pictures show, where there’s bird food there are house sparrows, and those aggressive and clever LBJs (a birding term meaning “little brown jobs”) know how to survive in a tough world. Inspiring, aren’t they?
In the case of the Iffley BYFO, one seeks out three unadulterated bags, lugs them out to the car, brings them home, then drags them into the cellar where thus far the mice haven’t figured out what’s going on, cross your fingers. A 40 lb bag of seed is kind of a shapeless and squishy thing, whose transport by a human requires careful body mechanics and much caution. From the cellar, a bag must be carried up the narrow back stairway where its contents will be emptied in the metal garbage can that thus far has proven squirrel-proof. As the feeder empties – and this happens steadily from day to day but much more quickly when the weather is ungodly cold or windy or both, requiring that one spend more time out there – the demand for scooping and filling is relentless.
Talk about developing an appreciation for those aggie roots! So what if instead of chickens and cows and pigs and horses and maybe alpacas and emus, it’s for a few cardinals and titmice and woodpeckers but mainly lots and lots of house sparrows, mourning doves, and grackles? And so what if it’s not about product that can be expressed in things like pork belly or egg futures but about awe and wonder of maybe just a basic appreciation of the natural world? At least at 39 Iffley we only run our operation in the winter, when one sweats a little less, for what that’s worth. Getting in touch with one’s aggie roots is a priceless experience, but enough is sometimes enough.
