Bye, bye, birdies

If you are one of those folks around here who can’t seem to attract birds to their feeders this winter, here’s some advice:t ttYou may have missed the boat, says Dr. Rebecca Holberton, an assistant professor of biology and a specialist in bird migration at the University of Maine. She says the best time to load up the feeders is in the fall, when the birds are still looking around

and deciding where to hang out through the winter. By the time snow covers the ground, they may have found other feeders in the neighborhood. Or some of them may have decided that eastern Maine was no place for them this winter and gone south (like some heat-seeking humans).

She does offer some hope. A good stiff

cold snap may cause some of them to take another look around and find your hand-out station. If even one or two birds find you, others are sure to come.

Judy Markowsky, director of he Field’s Pond Nature Center in Holden, has some additional advice: Use an unbent paper clip to ream out the holes where the birds get at the feed, which may have iced over. Go heavy on black oil sunflower seed, which has more meat and more nutrition than the striped variety and which is easier to crack. The chickadees probably will come first. Then will come others, including nuthatches (which like to spiral head first down the trunk of a tree looking for bugs) and goldfinches and red polls. Above all, patience. Wait and they should come.

While some others gaze at unpopulated feeders, both Dr. Holberton and Ms. Markowsky are attracting lots of birds to theirs, including a lone cardinal. But both of them started in the fall.