54. Judy Hoysak | Wild Bird-Feeders from Perky Pet | Pennsylvania
Update: 1970-01-01
Description
Judy Hoysak is the brand manager of Perky Pet Birdfeeders, one of the oldest and largest bird feeding companies in the world. Judy’s here to help listeners learn how to bring more birds into their garden and make it bird-friendly habitat.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I work with PerkyPets which is one of the world’s oldest and largest bird feeding companies. We have a huge selection of bird feeders, everything from hummingbird feeders and nectar feeders to seed feeders. We supply most retailers that you go to, most feeders that you see in the stores are one of our Perky Pet birdfeeders. I came into the business because I had a passion for the products and the outdoors and I had a real passion for birds, I’m an avid birder, it brought all of my interests together.
I love my job, i love to talk about birds, and I love to encourage and to get other people out there to get excited to feed birds.
Have you been to Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania?
Yes, we are actually really close to Hawk Mountain and we have actually done some sponsorships events over there. It’s a fantastic group, one of my very favorite places in the world. I went up there during the migration last fall, just really amazing i think they saw like 10,000 hawks that flew over that day, one of the biggest days of the season.
Evidently it was a very sacred Native American mountain, because of this really unique geography where as the hawks were flying through they are funneled through this area, its an absolutely beautiful place.
Tell me about your first gardening experience?
I grew up originally I’m from North Carolina, grew up in the suburbs, and was very ambivalent about the outdoors, everyone had a yard and a garden. I was living in Brooklyn, I went to NY after I graduated my undergrad, I was just starved for nature, and I was obsessed with nature. My apartment started to resemble a jungle. I went and studied product design in NY and I was completely obsessed with this idea of my starvation with nature, I focused my masters theses on products that allowed people to interact with nature, so I created this kooky furniture line that allowed you to grow vegetables in your coffee table and and room deviders with beams? I was doing weird hydroponic experiments inside, just really fun experiments really wishing I had some outdoor space that I could get out there and garden anywhere I could possibly try to grow some vegetables I was trying.
Now i live in rural Pennsylvania I have a yard and a garden. I’m actually digging in the dirt and growing some vegetables. It was something that was really missing from my life and essential to my character.
I went to Pratt Institute! The Brooklyn Botanical Garden is also very inspirational.
What does organic gardening/earth friendly mean to you?
I am lucky to live in rural PA, we have Amish farms, and very, very many local farms in this area, I am very very fortunate, and just about everything I eat is from Lancaster County. I try to really get outside that mass produced food system, I prefer the freshness and taste of things that were grown locally, when you grow them yourself, you get so much more, you can eat a bean that was grown just a 10 seconds ago! Tastes so much better then even something picked yesterday! And this area too, it’s not necessarily a lot of the farms are certified organic, but they say they don’t spray or they are using minimum pesticides and keeping things as natural as possible because that’s the old way they have always done it, as long as your doing things in a pesticide free way, I’m happy to participate in that.
What can I do to attract more birds to my garden?
One of the great things about having a little garden is being able to enjoy the wildlife and birds and bees and butterflies that come out there. A lot of times you can put a lot of different plants and things there that will naturally attract them, that really easy and fun to do but sometimes you want to do a little bit more.
One of the great ways to doing that is by adding bird feeders to the yard and giving them another natural food source. There’s lots of different types of bird feeders out there. It’s a pretty simple concept, it doesn’t have to get overly complicated. Seed feeders to attract the seed-eating birds and nectar feeders to attract hummingbirds and different orioles and birds like that.
They are also attracted to water in the yard, you might want to provide a water source. They are attracted to moving water, so maybe not necessarily a stagnant bird bath. I have a little contraption called a wiggler in there and if you have a fountain the sound attracts them also.
Also providing them a bit of shelter, making sure you have some shrubs and bushes, even downed trees and branches, just giving them a place of refuge in case a some bigger birds or a predator flies by.
Do you want to explain the difference between Seed Feeders vs Nectar Feeders?
Seed Feeders vs Nectar Feeders.
Seed feeders hold bird seed. There’s dozens of different kinds of bird seed you could put in a feeder, and dozens of shapes of feeders you could possibly put it in.
Probably one of the most common would be your standard tube feeder, a cylinder with several ports, a lid and a way to hook it to a tree. It’s an easy entry into bird feeding, they come in a variety of colors and materials and a wide range of price points, a simple tube feeder, is a great place to start.
If you’re curious about what kind of seeds to put in there, I know there’s different bags of sometimes it looks like trail mix, a huge variety of bird seed can be intimidating.
A good place to start just look for a bag of black oil sunflower seeds, it’s non-expensive & one of the most common variety and widely eaten. Most birds will enjoy that, it’s high fat and protein content and what they are looking for.
Don’t necessarily go for the very cheapest cheapest because you end up with a lot of filler the birds are going to kick out anyway. Your going to attract most wide variety of birds with that.
You do get a lot of volunteers with the black oil sunflower seeds. That’s a common question I get a lot is how do I prevent all of these seeds from sprouting underneath my feeder or around my yard.
Well, I live in tiny downtown Lancaster and I have only a a tiny little pocket, what I call a pocket garden, you know little row houses, unlike a nice Montana farm, so my back garden is really only 10’x20′ so i have a lot of birdseed everywhere and so im trying to do a lot in that small space, including have a little patio and grow a few vegetables and some flowers And a little 4×8 spot of grass for my dog to roll around. So what happens is underneath the feeders you get a huge amount of seeds and sprouts coming up and its a common complaint for those who have it over located just off their patio or in a place thats not really desirable. So I switched to a sunflowers hearts mix. It’s pre-shelled, called a no-waste mix, once the husk is gone there’s nothing in there to sprout. Theres also some Organic pre-emergent types of weed controllers. We have one called Safer concern – all organic n omri listed. I think they make it out of a corn-gluten so it reacts with the seeds and prevents them from sprouting in the first place. Its great to use in the garden cause its safe for pets or children or birds, if the birds eat it it totally doesnt effect them in anyway. So that’s another great way to keep your bird-feeding area neat.
So what would you recommend people to do to attract more birds into their garden?
So we talked about the seed feeding birds but we could talk a little bit about hummingbirds.
Yes its just Sugar water, put in a plastic or glass container, we call ports where the humingbirds can come and either have perches or not have perches. But hummingbirds are really amazing birds their wings beat like 80 times a second and they fly these huge distances and they use so much energy so fast that basically they have to keep eating constantly or theyll just starve to death and die which is sometimes how I feel during the day, but not quite as bad as a hummingbird. In fact, even to go to sleep during the night, they have to almost go into this hibernation state because they can’t sleep long enough or they’ll starve. They do eat a lot of bugs and insects etc for protein, they do need flower nectar for the carbohydrate energy. So if you put up these nectar feeders, with the sugar water feeders they come and they love it. So hanging up the nectar feeders, is a really fun way.
They don’t have to be red, the nectar doesnt have to be red, if it’s a bright color, if its your first time hanging one, and you want to attract them to your garden they’ll pretty much notice any bright color. They usually remember the location
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