Last year I wrote about my experiences putting out various fibres for the birds in Bird Nesting Balls.  This spring I have put out some new fibres to continue my experiments.

Our guild has a destash area where donated yarn and fibre is placed in our studio.  Members can adopt items and are requested to make a reasonable donation to our guild in return.  Someone had left a number of bags of dog fur on the shelf.  It was very soft, but also very short.  Pretty much unspinnable to me.  But I thought it would be perfect for a fresh set of bird nesting balls.

While discussing this plan with my guild mates a bag of Bear fiber was also produced and I was urged to take it.  While bear fibre sounds amazing, in reality it was very wirey and unpleasant.

Because I had quite a bit of fibre, I bought 3 metal rings designed to hold peanuts in the shell.

Here are the various fibres: tan dog fur, black dog fur, and bear.

 

I loaded the circular bird food holders with a blocks of Bear, black dog fur and tan dog fur.

Here are the holders after I stuffed them.  I also loaded a small amount of black cat fur into the blue bird holder.  (Last year the Chickadees really like the black cat fur.)  The lighter coloured fiber in the blue bird holder is llama.

Once the holders were loaded it was time to hang them up.  I spread them around the bird feeders in my front yard on April 21.  I also hung up the 2 balls I used last year, one with cream wool, and another with tan alpaca.

After a few weeks I began to notice that the holders were looking shaggy, which I assumed meant that the birds had been pulling out fibres.  But I had not witnessed the birds gathering fibres.

We have many hungry Raccoons in the neighbourhood and despite the baffle on my pole they manage to get up on the feeder.  We also have squirrels that launch themselves onto the pole and claw at things.  I recently noticed the wool holder was on the ground and falling to pieces.  So I went to the store and bought a metal cage designed to serve suet cakes.  I filled it with the wool and hung it backup.

Shortly after making this upgrade to my fibre supply station, I finally noticed a Chickadee taking fibre from one of the rings.  It looks like the black dog fur is the Chickadee’s preferred fibre.

I also managed to capture a short video.  I apologize for my dirty windows.