The Birders Report

You Do It Suet – A Very Handy New Product

by Larry Jordan on April 11, 2017

You Do It Suet

Do you have bird feeders around your home? How about suet feeders? Yes? Well I have a treat for you!

I have discovered a great new product created by Desiree and Josiah Cole. It’s called YouDoItSuet®. Like most people who cook meat, I always poured the leftover fat into a metal can and stuck it in my freezer until it was full, then threw it in the trash. This is obviously a waste of good fat that can be made into suet cakes for our birds.

The YouDoItSuet® product is a silicone mold that you can use to store your drained fat in the refrigerator or freezer (I store mine in the freezer) until you have enough to make a suet cake. You can make the suet cake right in the mold or, as I did, add the fat from my bacon, sausage, hamburger and other cooked meat to some suet I had stored in the freezer to make a larger batch. Then I filled my YouDoItSuet® molds and stored them in the freezer.

Once the suet is frozen it can be removed from the mold which is now ready to store your excess fat again! Place your freshly frozen suet cake in a plastic bag until you’re ready to place in your feeder. The mold can be hand washed and it is also dishwasher safe.

Living in Northern California sometimes temperatures get over 50° in the winter so I have to make N0 Melt Suet. The ridge on the inside of the mold holds 1 1/3 cups of liquid so I can follow my recipe by mixing up a batch when the mold is a little short of the ridge line, or increase each of the recipe ingredients by 1/3. The YouDoItSuet® website has several recipes you can try out as well. Here is a video of the product.

Now for the best part of this post, Desiree has agreed to give all of you, my readers, a discount coupon for her superior product! After ordering whatever you want at the “You Do It Suet” website, put in this discount code TBR2OFF in the box on the checkout page for two bucks off the regular price! Enjoy!

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Some of My Christmas Day Yard Birds at 10000 Birds

by Larry Jordan on December 29, 2016

Say hello to the new California Scrub-Jay

Christmas morning I had many feathered visitors to my backyard. Head on over to 10000 Birds to see several of my Christmas birds with links to several of my 10000 Birds West Coast Beat Writer posts!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and wish you a very Healthy and Happy New Year!

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The 117th Audubon Annual Christmas Bird Count Begins December 14th

by Larry Jordan on December 3, 2016

The 117th Audubon Christmas Bird Count begins December 14th and runs through January 5th. The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a long-standing program of the National Audubon Society, with over 100 years of citizen science involvement. It is an early-winter bird census, where thousands of volunteers across the US, Canada and many countries in the Western Hemisphere, go out over a 24 hour period on one calendar day to count birds.

The Christmas Bird Count relies 100% on donations to provide support to compilers and volunteers on count day, to manage the historic database, and to fund the technology to make historic data available to researchers. The data collected by CBC participants over the past century and more have become one of only two large pools of information informing ornithologists and conservation biologists how the birds of the Americas are faring over time.

Birders of all skill levels are urged to participate in the Christmas Bird Count.

If you love birds, especially if you are a beginning bird watcher and want to learn about the birds where you live, you will want to participate in at least one Christmas Bird Count. You see, there is always at least one experienced birder in each field party, and each field party needs a recorder, someone to record the birds as they are counted.

While participating in my first Christmas Bird Count, not only did I learn which birds lived in my neighborhood in the winter, I learned where to find them on an American Ornithologists Union arranged bird check list, the same arrangement used by most bird guide books. If you are the group recorder, by the end of the day I guarantee you will have learned how to use a field guide to birds.

If you are an experienced birder you may be asked to lead a field party that covers a specific area within the 15 mile radius of your local count circle. Not only is this an excellent way to support bird conservation but you can also influence younger or less experienced birders by helping them identify birds and build their confidence in bird identification.

Getting involved in the Christmas Bird Count is easy!

All you have to do is go to Audubon’s count circle page to find a count circle near you and sign up! Don’t delay though, the counting starts in less than two weeks.

If you live in a designated Christmas Bird Count circle and are unable to go out into the field, you may still be able to participate by counting the birds in your own backyard. For more information on the 117th Audubon Annual Christmas Bird Count go to their home page or find an Audubon Chapter near you. Above all, whatever you do, have fun birding!

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Sarah Palin Secretary of Energy or the Interior?

by Larry Jordan on November 17, 2016

Sarah Palin

As of this posting Donald Trump LOST the popular vote of the 2016 presidential election by over 1,400,000 votes. So if you hear anyone try to claim that Trump has a mandate, feel free to laugh in their face. Now begins the degradation of our public lands. See my latest post at 10000 Birds.

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