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Re: Suet?



On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 Bwstagsleap@cs.com wrote:
>
> In N.Y. I was able to buy suet at the supermarket.Harris Teeter gave me what
> appeared to be fat. Is this ok for the birds?

Definitely! In Massachusetts, the grocery stores often stock chunks of
straight, raw, beef suet in the meat department. I, and my father after I
left town, stocked the feeder with this and had a parade of Downy and
Hairy woodpeckers, White- and Red-breasted nuthatches, Black-capped
Chickadees, and Tufted Titmice, with less common visits from other species
like Brown Creeper and Carolina Wren. I've heard tales of similar small
insectivorous forest birds visiting animal carcasses in the winter to peck
the fat directly from its source, too.

> Does anyone know where to get
> good suet? I have not had much luck with the suet you can buy at the bird
> shops. Any help would be appreciated.

I have to agree with Brad on this. Since raw suet isn't so readily
available down here, at my former rental house on Hillgrand Drive here in
Durham (near American) I used the cooked bird cakes with seed, fruit,
bugs, etc. from the birding stores. These attracted more Brown Thrashers
and Gray Catbirds, and possibly more Creepers, but not nearly as many
woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees, and the suet definitely took
longer to disappear (except when squirrels get into it). And since
relocating to Lynch Street in Old North Durham, the suet's been basically
turning to big cakes of mold in the feeder, with maybe one visitor a week
(Downy or Catbird). In between, on Ninth Street, the suet also was rarely
visited, mainly by catbirds and cardinals.

My theory thus far has been that the winter down here is warmer, and the
birds just don't need suet that badly around here. Ninth and Lynch streets
have the added disadvantage of not being near any significant tracts of
forest (Hillgrand was right on the edge of the Duke Forest). But if anyone
has tried raw suet down here in the Carolinas, or better yet done a
comparison of the raw stuff with the prepared cakes, I'd be interested to
hear about it.

The mold issue also intrigues me. The suet turns black in the feeder on
Lynch Street before the birds really make much of a dent in it. On Ninth
Street, the suet hung in the feeder for weeks or even months at a time,
but I don't remember it getting moldy like this. My only ideas for
explanation are (1) I'm hanging the feeders (hummer, suet, and seed) all
together on one pole now, whereas before they were further apart; (2) the
suet feeder is hanging on a metal hook now, whereas at my last two
residences is was nailed to a tree (though I'd expect the tree to harbor
more mold than the metal); or (3) I'm just not cleaning the feeder well
enough between suet cakes, and I need to submerge it overnight in pure
bleach or acid or something.

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/