Keeping squirrels away from feeders can be a constant effort. They eat a lot of seed, which makes maintaining your feeder more costly. They also dominate the feeder, scaring the birds we want to attract away. There’s another good reason to reduce squirrel and chipmunk access to your bird seed: they eat bird eggs and … Read more
We’ve all heard it: the unmistakable thump of a bird smashing into a closed window. We rush outside to assess the situation. With luck, there’s either no bird there or it’s resting on the ground, panting and dazed, and flies away in a few minutes. Sometimes, the little one’s not so lucky. Window strikes are … Read more
On this episode of The Garden Gate I offer a few tips about hummingbirds and some tricks to help you attract them! A hummingbird flaps its wings up to 70 times per second; its heart rate can reach 1,260 beats per minute. Hummingbirds can extend their long, skinny tongues twice as far as the bill, which helps them reach nectar deep inside … Read more
Pollinators, pollinator gardens, bee houses, bee friendly gardens. These are the BUZZ words these days. But they shouldn’t just be a passing fancy. Bees are very important for our environment. Without their pollinating abilities our grocery store shelves would be almost empty! So how does this relate to bird food? If your bird food is … Read more
Drew Monkman is a retired teacher, author and local naturalist. Drew has written the book “Nature’s Year in the Kawartha’s”, an updated version renamed “Nature’s Year” and co-written another “Big Book of Nature” with Jacob Rodenburg of the Kawartha Environment Centre. On this episode of The Garden Gate we talk about the Great Backyard … Read more
A great way to get a wide variety of birds to your bird feeding station is to offer a variety of bird food specific to each bird. For example, Cardinals like safflower seed but not a lot of other birds do. Cardinals are also shy, so it’s nice to have a bird feeder suited to … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Oct. 13th, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online. On this episode my guest is Simon Tapper a student at Trent University. Simon is studying many different birds in the swallow family. Swallows prefer nesting boxes located in open fields on tall posts. They mainly eat flying insects. We’ve noticed fewer … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Friday Sept. 29th, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online My guest on this episode of The Garden Gate is Trent University student, Simon Tapper, and we’re talking about the American Goldfinch. The goldfinch loves the seeds of Echinacea (Purple coneflower), grasses such as Big Blue stem, Rudbeckia (Black eyed susan). … Read more
CHEX TV airdate: Friday Sept. 1st Click link to watch this episode on our YouTube channel Cleaning your bird feeders is very important to keep your birds healthy and coming back for more. Tune into this episode or read further to learn more about what you should be doing! Cleaning your bird feeders Moldy or … Read more
Chex TV airdate: August 4th, 2017 Click link to watch this episode online. Butterflies, hummingbirds and bees love the gardens that the Peterborough Pollinators group have created. With funding from various sources that have installed gardens around the City of Peterborough. They also are encouraging home owners to install pollinator gardens themselves to encourage the … Read more