Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 9, 1992 TAG: 9203070232
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY MacVEAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. LENGTH: Medium
This is for the birds.
Now, there's a thought.
And Helen Witty, an award-winning cookbook author, took it to heart. She and her husband, Dick, have written "Feed the Birds" (Workman Publishing, $8.95), a book of recipes, tips and personal observations about providing for their feathered friends.
"I don't get any complaints from the birds," says Witty. "And there is no canon of recipes. No classical canon against which you have to measure yourself. If they eat it, it's good."
Not only that, birds consider leftovers first-rate. So the Wittys preach making do with what's at hand, for food and for feeders.
Some birds, blue jays among them, even eat cat food. That doesn't mean the birds are utterly without preferences.
It pays to be observant, the Wittys say. Milo, for instance, is included in many commercial seed mixes. Birds in the Southwest seem to like it, but those in the Northeast leave it littering the lawn, they say.
"I like using things that would otherwise go to waste," says Witty, pointing to a cast-iron pan on her stove holding a cake of corn, raisins, eggshells and sugar ("Birds love sugar," she says.).
Also on the stove is an old coffee can to collect fat from bacon, ham and other meats.
"They're just bananas for bacon fat," says Witty, but birds like it plain. They'll turn their beaks up at fat from meat cooked with onions, garlic or hot spices, she says.
Speaking of bananas, birds go nuts for overripe ones. And they're simply mad for nuts. Stale bread or potato chips, eggshells, acorns, bones, elderberries and other foraged foods all will entice birds to backyard feeders.
The Wittys' book has a chart of more than 100 ingredients their "freeloaders" fancy, as well as plenty of suggestions about setting an alluring spread.
"There are recipes in here, but you don't need a recipe. If you don't have something, you can use something else, stuff you might find around the place or buy for nothing," Witty said one sunny winter morning as birds ate from the dozen or so feeders in her yard.
On this morning, she also made a pudding of apples, oatmeal, crumbs, peanut butter, brown sugar and melted suet ("This is very popular with woodpeckers, especially," she says.).
Witty's kitchen is well-equipped, as befits the author of four cookbooks, including "Better than Store-Bought" and "Mrs. Witty's Homestyle Menu Cookbook."
The feeders, too, are often made of recycled stuff. Dick Witty, a retired educational publisher, made one from a two-foot piece of log, drilled with holes to hold a mixture of melted suet, peanut butter, seeds and nuts. Another is an upside down two-liter plastic soda bottle, fitted with a stopper and a perch.
In the Wittys' house on Long Island, on a north-south migration route, a round table sits just off the kitchen, with a dozen bird-watching books nearby as well as a bird-watching journal and two pairs of binoculars.
There are windows on two walls - "We threw out the curtains because we couldn't see through them," Helen Witty says - overlooking the yard, with a picnic table covered with seeds and branches for perching. Two small tubs hold water and, as it's February, water heaters.
For all this, the Wittys don't even consider themselves serious birders. They don't, they say by way of explanation, take bird-watching trips. They do, however, take seriously the idea of providing for birds whose natural food sources have been overrun by developers.
The Wittys have plenty of company. Tens of millions of Americans feed wild birds; they spend more than $1 billion on bird food each year, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials. Only gardening is a more popular hobby.
And, the Wittys say, they have fun.
In summers, for example, there are young birds learning to fly and to take food from feeders. And there are rare sightings - a young bald eagle and an albino pheasant - beyond the 50 or so species the Wittys attract.
What of the bird-feeder's constant battle to keep predators at bay? How do you keep squirrels from the bird food?
"You don't really," Dick Witty says.
Instead, they feed the squirrels ears of corn, which they seem to prefer to the birds' food.
There also are racoons and a wild cat, which had the nerve to give birth under the deck. The Wittys captured mom and her three babies and had them neutered.
And there's the neighbor's cat, leading to Helen Witty's repeated request to her husband, "Oh, Dick, go chase Old Spam."
by CNB