By Gita M. Smith

Photo: Goldfinches at a Handmade Feeder -- by Gita M. Smith

Have you ever been hunting in a deer stand and heard birds calling out a warning? Or have you ever heard them calling their mates to announce that they have found food? Birds have calls for different occasions. You may hear the assembly call (parents calling the young ones to come to them) or the stay-away call that male birds make to warn other males off their territory.

If you start listening to the birds in your own back yard, you will soon hear the different songs and calls they make. In summer, the birds are raising their young, and they are looking for food close to their nests. By keeping some feeders full of seeds, you’ll be sure to attract lots of birds to your back yard.

To tempt goldfinches to visit you and stay, you can fill a mesh bag or a stocking with thistle (or nyger) seeds. The brightest yellow finches are the older males. The least showy ones are the females and the new babies. They have dull feathers so that predators won’t see them when they are in the nest. As the young male finches start to grow up, their feathers get gradually brighter.

Ask your Mom if she has a spare knee-high stocking with elastic around the top to make a goldfinch feeder. If you use a regular stocking, fill it about halfway up (to the knee) and tie it off at the top. Tie it to the branch of a tree so it can hang straight down. Then take a scissors and carefully poke a few very small holes in the stocking; the seeds will be easy for the birds to peck and pull out. Once they discover the feeder, birds will pull seeds through the holes you started for them and they also will make more of their own.

White mesh bags filled with thistle seeds are sold in most Wal-Mart stores as well as seed-and-feed stores. Finches will hang sideways onto these mesh bags and pull the seeds through the tiny holes in the bag. Large birds will not use this type of feeder, which leaves the little goldfinches a chance to eat their fill.

Ground-feeding birds like doves, towhees, cardinals and crows will pick up any of the nyger seed that the finches drop.

In summer, birds are always looking for water to drink and bathe in – especially when the temperatures get up in the 90s. One of the best things you can do to keep birds healthy and coming back to your yard is to put out a bird bath. Birds don’t care if the bird bath is fancy or plain. They are happy just to have water to drink.

Glue a baking tin or pie plate to the bottom of a big, upside-down flower pot. When the glue is dry, fill the pan with water and put it near the base of a tree. Be sure to change the water every morning in the hot summer weather. For easier birdbath designs that you can make, go to: http://infochangeindia.org/kids/doityourself_04.jsp.