Customizing backyard wildlife

Mel Toellner began his business 13 years ago when he and his wife and children became interested in Missouri birds as a family activity. The business has expanded to fill a 70,000-square-foot warehouse in Mexico, Mo., home of Songbird Essentials, and a retail store in Columbia’s Chapel Plaza Court.

The company sells its products to 2,500 bird stores and is the biggest supplier of bird products in the world. Songbird Essentials stocks 7,000 products from 197 different suppliers, including its own brand, Songbird Essentials. Ninety percent of the Songbird Essentials line is made in Missouri, with many of the products manufactured in sheltered workshops.

Songbird Station, near the corner of Forum Boulevard and Chapel Hill Road, replaced the original location in the Forum Shopping Center. The expanded store includes products for wildlife and pets as well as furniture, native plants, decorative items and a line of free trade accessories, including handbags and necklaces.

Toellner recently spoke to a group at Songbird Station, an event organized by Columbia Home & Lifestyle magazine. Here are some of his tips for attracting the hummingbirds and other attractive wildlife to backyards:

Native plants attract bugs, the “good” bugs – spiders and fruit flies – that are sources of protein for butterflies and hummingbirds. To grow fruit flies, die-hard birders put out plates of ripe fruit. Another tip for attracting butterflies is to create a warming area: Start with black plastic. Place a flat white rock to hold heat on top of it, and then sprinkle it heavily with a mix of sand and coarse salt for the butterflies whose metabolisms require a lot of it. (The plastic keeps the salt from leaching into the yard.)

One of Songbird Essential’s products is a hanging tray of cotton with a high percentage of oil. Hummingbirds (and Baltimore orioles) like to pick and line their nests with this cotton. The oil ensures that water is not absorbed into the nest. Providing a source of misting water helps too, because the hummingbirds use it as a shower to remove pollen from their feathers. You can place hummingbird feeders anywhere, and putting them close to the house is fine.

The state bird of Missouri is the Eastern Bluebird, and bluebirds like to be out in the open. Put up houses for them, no less than 100 yards apart, with an opening of no more than an inch and a half. A raised floor is helpful for drainage. Heated water baths in the winter are important, so bluebirds can fluff their feathers to keep warm. Bluebirds don’t migrate. In the winter, one of their primary foods is the bittersweet plant, which ripens in late January or early February. Don’t quit feeding them in the spring. All the migratory birds are arriving, and they need food for their babies. The next seed crop won’t be available until fall.

Toellner cheerfully and vehemently encourages residents to trap or kill sparrows. Why? Because they will kill bluebirds and build their nests on top of them. According to Toellner, there are two birds in America you can dispense with: sparrows and English starlings. They are not native and not protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Don’t feed millet and corn to your backyard birds because it will attract sparrows. Native birds like sunflower seeds. Orioles love oranges (cut the orange in half, and present it fleshy side out). Robins and woodpeckers will eat apples. Cardinals like ground trays of bird food.

To deter squirrels, use safflower seed as feed because squirrels don’t like it, and use feeders that have cages or other devices to keep out blackbirds and squirrels.

To minimize the risk, don’t hang feeders less than four feet high; any lower is an easy jump for cats. Toellner said cats kill more songbirds than anything in the world.