The Oak Ridge Bird Man

01/23/2025

I get a lot of requests for guidance in helping out injured birds, but it's rare that I get to demonstrate firsthand how it's done. Well, today was a special day!

Before anything else, I need to emphasize: I am not a wildlife rehabilitator in any way, shape, or form (if this ever changes, trust me, you'll be the first to know). Nor am I a wildlife mitigation specialist ... any longer. However, I *used* to be the latter, which is how I know how to manage and handle a bird of prey in a way that minimizes the chance of injury to both the bird and myself.

This afternoon, someone who had met me at a market reached out because she found this beautiful Red-shouldered Hawk prone, dazed, and almost completely immobile. Whereas normally I can only offer informational resources, in this case the patient was barely 10 minutes from my house, and no other help was immediately available. In such a case, I couldn't in good conscience refuse.

Thankfully this went about as smoothly as any extraction I've ever taken part in. It would be easy to see nothing but wildness and ferocity in that expression and posture (of the hawk), but in reality this bird is utterly scared out of its mind. I'm not wearing sunglasses for the look - I'm wearing them so that it can't see my eyes, and thereby convince itself that I have dinner on my mind. The only reason it's so fluffed up is to say "I'm a big beefy bird and ready to RUMBLE." But it's a total front: it didn't even squeeze my fingers as I packed it up to take to the *real* rehabber (which, again, I am not).

I will always encourage you to contact me with *any* wild bird-related question, urgent or otherwise. That said, if you want to be ahead of the curve (and save me the guilt of telling you that I, personally, can't help), I'd strongly recommend doing a little research to find the wildlife rehabber(s) nearest you, as well as what they specialize in, as it will save you time and mental bandwidth should you find an injured animal. And don't be a hero! For injured animals, keep an eye on them, but don't lay a hand - both for their safety and yours.

01/10/2025

The boys here are ready to watch the snow fall, and we suggest everybody follow suit - the one market on the schedule for this weekend has been cancelled, so settle in and keep warm ❤️

The online shop is still up and running, so if your birds are clamoring for their next meal, visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/shop/ and if you order for delivery, so long as we thaw I can have the goods out to you by Monday!

01/03/2025

Last minute good news! We're adding another market to the winter rotation, and it's starting this Saturday! The most important info you can find on the image above, but visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events/ to see when exactly we'll be attending this and all our other events!

12/25/2024

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from the Oak Ridge Bird Crew!

12/12/2024

The Oak Ridge Bird Crew gets a little reprieve this weekend: just three markets, and they're all on Saturday. But! We've got one we're looking forward to especially: the Tour de Lights!

Here's Saturday's agenda:

Winter Farmers Market, 9:00-12:00 at Roane State Community College, Oak Ridge Branch

Winter Farmers Market, 10:00-2:00 in Market Square

Tour de Lights, 3:30-7:30 at the Mary Costa Plaza of the Knoxville Civic Coliseum and Auditorium

As always, you can also visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events for dates, times, and locations of everything we're up to.

Also! Let this serve as your first official notification that we'll be SHUTTING DOWN for the Christmas holiday, through a specific series of events. In order:

Saturday, 12/21 at noon, is the cutoff for any orders placed for MARKET PICKUP. We have one final market on Sunday, 12/22, and this will be your last chance to pick up any order at a market until January 11, 2025. Don't miss it!

Sunday, 12/22 at noon, is the cutoff for any LOCAL DELIVERY orders. We'll do one last round of deliveries on Monday, and then no more until after Christmas (exact timing of resumption TBD).

Monday, 12/23 at noon, is the cutoff for any orders placed to ship by mail. We'll do one last run to the post office that afternoon and then we are DONE shipping via post till after the new year.

After Christmas, the next market we're scheduled for is January 11, 2025 - we recognize this is a long span of time to go unmarketed, which is why we'll be opening up the online shop again ASAP to make sure your birds stay well fed. Visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/shop/ any time and find everything your birds will need!

12/10/2024

Looking at this pale green mound of ... glurp? ... is making me appreciate one of my favorite things about science: failure is just as valuable as success.

When I first started ORBM back in the late winter of 2021, before I settled into my current catalogue of waste-free wild bird feeds, I amassed a whole menagerie of different seeds and nuts to test what the birds in my back yard like best. One of those was pumpkin seeds - pepitas - which, besides the undeniable charm of being Hulk-colored, are also rich in fat and protein (an absolute must on both counts). Personally, I love their taste, too, but would the birds?

Well, it became very quickly apparent that no, they would not - they turned their beaks up at every opportunity, even when it was the only option available. And since they keep (waste not, want not), they've languished in the freezer since then ... until this weekend.

I got absolutely wiped out on Bird Butter (https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/product/bird-butter/) this weekend, and so, come Sunday morning, I was kinda in the lurch for food options to set out for my own birds. Then it came to me: I've still got those pumpkin seeds 🤔 And though I remembered the birds didn't want them whole, in theory any seed or nut can be pureed into a butter ...

So I toasted them. A whole quart in a cast iron skillet, turning constantly, until they began to brown and smell nutty. I absolutely blasted them in the food processor on high till their cell walls broke down, they released their oils, and the whole mass turned into a thick, verdant goo. And I balled it up, put it into both my bird feeders, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Birds came and went, testing with a few pecks, flying to the other feeder to try again, and leaving. I swear they started staring me in the eye through the window ... judging. Pleading. Questioning. "What is this? Where did what we came for go? Do you really expect us to eat it?" And after two days of this rejection, I'd had enough: I chucked it on the ground for the squirrels.

And now I see that not even the squirrels will touch it.

So Bird Butter, and Bird Butter only, it is! Consider the woodland creatures my peer review.

12/04/2024

Just a heads-up, y'all: the Market Square Farmers Market is *10-2*, not 9-1. For some reason FB is not letting me edit my post to change it. The hours are correct on IG and on my website (https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events/).

Search Dates and 07 Dec Oak Ridge Winter Farmers Market December 7, 2024     9:00 am - 12:00 pm Roane State Community College, Oak Ridge Campus Come find us in the atrium! At this weekly event, we will have: feeders; nest boxes; mounting kits; Feeder Mix; calci-worms; and Bird Butter. If [...] M...

12/03/2024

Another big weekend: FOUR markets, and they are ALL on Saturday!

By start times, here we go:

Winter Farmers Market from 9a-12p in the atrium at Roane State Community College, Oak Ridge Campus

Winter Farmers Market from 9a-1p in Market Square

Christmas Event from 10a-3p in the MacArthur Pavilion at Maryville College

Winter Festival from 1-6p in the Norris Commons

As always, you can find dates, times, and addresses at https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events/ - so come get festive! And if none of these this week or the coming ones are convenient to you, you can always visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/shop/ and get your shopping done online!

11/28/2024

It's another big holiday weekend - with three more markets!

Saturday we've got:

Downtown Maryville Holiday Market, from 10a-6p at White Star Station

Old City Market, 11a-4p on Jackson Ave in the Old City

And on Sunday, we've got the Ijams Holiday Marketplace, from 10a-3p at the Ijams visitors center!

All of these are up at https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events/ with exact addresses for anyone needing more details on how to find us. Happy Thanksgiving, and see you this weekend!

[We had one more market on the schedule, but unfortunately we will not be able to attend - stay tuned for what's coming up next week!]

11/22/2024

Only two events, but it's still a BIG WEEKEND!

The Pilot Club of Oak Ridge is having its annual Arts and Crafts Fair. It's two days - today (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday) - of some of the finest crafts you can find in the area, holiday-themed or otherwise, and it's all in the Oak Ridge Recreation Center, right in the middle of then! Today it runs 10a-7p, and tomorrow from 9a-5p. And we'll be there! In fact, we'll be there in lieu of our usual Saturday morning market at Jackson Square, so if you're needing your regular dose of bird feed, come get it down at the ORRC instead!

We'll also have one more market this weekend: Market Square, Saturday from 9a-1p, with the usual offerings. So wherever you happen to be ... come see us!

11/14/2024

A beautiful female Red-bellied Woodpecker on a gray November day.

10/31/2024

Hey, what are you up to this weekend?

Wanna go release a baby sturgeon like this one?

This Saturday from 10a-2p is STURGEONFEST at Seven Islands State Birding Park! It's a great event for anyone who likes wildlife and conservation - not only will I and many other local conservation orgs and vendors be there, but if you visit https://www.7islands.org/sturgeonfest (or just look up "sturgeonfest" in your search engine) you'll find the link to reserve your spot in line to release one of these little guys to help repopulate the French Broad River. It is *completely* free to do, but the organizers need to keep it orderly for the baby fishes' sake. And while at the park, you can even hit the birdwatching trails - come back and tell me what you see!

It's also, just in general, a big weekend for us in the Oak Ridge Bird Crew - we've got so many markets to attend we've had to turn some down. So here's where we'll be:

9a-1p: Market Square Farmers Market in Market Square

9a-3p: East Tennessee Makers Market at Maryville College (this one is HUGE)

10a-2p: Sturgeonfest at Seven Islands

These holiday markets are starting to pop up, so our schedule's about to get a little wild! Visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events/ to keep up with all our comings and goings.

10/16/2024

Peanuts are a popular treat for wild birds any time of year, but right now, with the arrival of the first truly cold weather, we have *really* hit prime peanut season. These legumes are loaded with fat, a healthy dose of protein, and an array of beneficial micronutrients, but the primary reason for their appeal is simple: THEY BIG.

They're so big, in fact, that you can actually use them to manage what birds frequent your feeders: for people facing issues with European Starlings or Mourning Doves, I often counsel putting out nothing but peanuts, as these species tend to swallow their food whole and simply can't risk a hypogeous chonker like this getting stuck in their craw.

But the big appeal right now, for birds ranging in size from this White-breasted Nuthatch to as big as woodpeckers and Blue Jays, is, well ... packing peanuts. The official name for the behavior is "caching" - taking from one to several of these and stashing them in an assortment of hidey holes throughout the woods and fields. They'll stick them under bark or in knotholes; they'll poke them under leaves; they might even stick them under your shingles or in gaps in the bricks of your chimney. If you're quiet and patient you can even watch them do it - I've been sitting in the woods behind my house and seen peanut-laden titmice and chickadees poking their little stuffed bills into every nook and cranny of a sapling until they notice me, realize their spot is not as secret as they hoped, and fly off to search elsewhere.

The point of this behavior is simple: making a strategic food reserve for the winter months. You'll find that even if you have kept your feeder full from now through spring for decades and decades, your little neighbors will still be out there satisfying the hard-wired drive to hedge their bets. If you want to help them stock up, visit https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/product/peanuts-whole/ and get yourself a quart, a gallon, or even a five gallon bag and watch these tiny critters perform the astounding magic trick of making it all ... disappear!

10/03/2024

Those of y'all who've been following my stories will recognize this delicious, fall-colored fruit who always tastes best right off the ground. It's persimmon!

In true Oak Ridge fashion I tend to keep my foraging patches and fishing holes behind the REDACTED label, but I'm going to make one exception today: shout-out to who so thoughtfully has given their two persimmon trees so much sunshine and good dirt that these delectable little pumpkin-wannabes right now are falling like rain from its lofty branches.

And just like rain in our area lately, so many are falling that frankly, we can't quite handle them all ... so if you're of a mind to try an absolutely delicious but oft-overlooked native fruit, I highly recommend getting in touch with directly so you can go scoop some up yourself!

09/27/2024

It's been ... crazy, y'all. We had three big markets scheduled for tomorrow - now only one we'll be attending; one has been postponed; and one we've had to cancel our attendance from because I'm currently stuck on the other side of the mountains without gas or power on account of the hurricane. Here's the rundown:

WE'LL BE THERE: Market Square Farmers Market

POSTPONED: Hops and Hounds Oktoberfest Village Market

CAN'T MAKE IT: UT Arboretum Migration Festival

I'm really bummed about this last one, because besides running the booth at the vendor market, I was also slated to give a lecture on the fall bird migration in our area 😭

For those who don't know, or could use the reminder: we post our schedule of markets and other events online at https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/events/ and keep it up to date, so if you're ever wondering where you can find us, check there first! We'll look forward to seeing you at Market Square this weekend, and keep your eyes peeled, cause we've got plenty more fun events coming up this fall!

08/14/2024

Guess what's coming up this Saturday! This is one of my favorite Ijams events because, besides the festive atmosphere and market of local vendors (me included), they've got actual, live, walk-up-and-watch-them-do-it bird banding! The whole event is from 7a-1p this Saturday, 08/17, and if that seems a bit early, that's precisely because you've got to wake up pretty early in the morning to get those early birds into the nets. But MAN it's a big shindig with all sorts of cool stuff, so come out and see me - and us!

07/13/2024

I'm sharing this picture of my own, personal, grungy two year old Borbhouse to make an important point about nest box placement: SHADE.

Y'all are feeling how hot it is out there right now, and you also understand that in the years and decades to come this will probably be considered a fairly mild summer. No matter how good your nest box's insulation is - and the Borbhouse truly has the best - you can't change the fact that the sun makes things hot. There's a lot of guidance out there saying that nest boxes should get morning sunshine, but after a deep, deep dive into the literature, all I've found suggests that this applies exclusively to wooden boxes, as they tend to collect and retain moisture and need that bit of solar heating to dry out. Y'all know what one of the best things about the Borbhouse is? They don't do that! They stay dry as a bone within, regardless of what's going on without.

Temperatures like we've had for the last month are severe enough that they can overhead a nest box in the sun and kill not just nestlings, but even the adults inside trying to protect them (I've seen this firsthand - it's heartbreaking). So having your nest box in the shade, at least during the hottest part of the day, can literally save lives.

If you're looking for the driest, cleanest, best insulated nest box around, head over to https://www.oakridgebirdman.com/shop/ and get it! And pick a quiet, shady place to set it.

06/17/2024

Quick! How old is this bird? And how can you tell?

This Tufted Titmouse is less than two months old, and you can tell from one big feature in this photo (and another that isn't shown here, but I'll share anyway).

That big thing is that GAPE. Do you see the corners of its mouth, how it almost has fleshy lips? That's what's left of the yellow flanges that, while this bird was a nestling, let it widen its mouth out to a big, round, brightly colored bullseye for Mom and Dad to shove food into as quickly as possible. Now that it's out of the nest, though, being big and bright isn't quite as useful; in fact, it can be rather dangerous! So those mouth corners are receding, and with a short time they'll have disappeared entirely. You can actually see this on quite a few birds, even up to the size of crows.

The other way you can tell this bird is only out of the nest in the last couple weeks is through its behavior (the thing I said you couldn't really see in the photo above). Birds of this age will take a perch, flare and vibrate their wings, and make a low, buzzy call that is unmistakable but often hard to pinpoint in foliage. This behavior serves two purposes: first, it's subtle enough that it doesn't tell every predator in the vicinity where you are and how vulnerable you are; and second, it's unique enough that there's no way the parents will mistake it for any other signal than "I'm hungry!"

This behavior will continue for the next month or two until the parents effectively stop listening, but, interestingly enough, depending on the s*x and species, this may not be the only time in this bird's life that it does this particular song and dance. Adult females of many species, in the latter stages of courtship, will often make these exact gestures in order to solicit a male they're either interested in or paired with, to feed them, as a way of cementing their bond. It's the "you said you didn't want anything but I'll still share my order with you" of the bird world, and a wonderful example of how, in evolution, so many things aren't really gotten rid of - they're just recycled for a new purpose.