Your Ultimate Backyard Nature Store ®
The Wild Bird Center of West Caldwell, NJ is your resource for backyard bird watching and feeding. The Wild Bird Center is a specialty retail shop that offers a complete line of products to help you enjoy wild birds and foster a healthy backyard habitat.
Our birdseed and exclusive seed blends are field-tested and proven to attract the widest variety of birds. We offer an extensive selection of feeders, birdbaths, nest boxes, and other bird feeding products second to none. We carry a large selection of books and other gifts for wild bird lovers.
We also carry binoculars and spotting scopes that can help you spot songbirds on the bird feeder, hawks migrating overhead or seabirds along the shore.
New! Sign up for our new e-mail newsletter!
We're about to launch a new e-mail newsletter. Sign up below to be among the first to receive it. We'll continue to send the mailed newsletter (unless you wish to opt out), but the new newsletter will allow us quicker turnaround on special events at the store and special discounts for our "regulars." Sign up below. Of course, we promise never to give our e-mail list to anyone else.
And our store is fun! We have lots of gift items that will make you smile: bird-shaped motion detectors that sing real bird songs; "Pupper Weights" in the shape of dogs (and Kitty Weights too); pastel-colored birdhouses made from boards made from recycled milk jugs; and delightful new hummingbird feeders.
Our store features Nicholas, our Senior Cat and Vice President of Customer Relations, and now Nora the kitten. Mostly Nick sleeps on the chair near the register, but he can sometimes be found birdwatching at the front door or greeting customers by sitting on the scale. He invites you to come in and give him a scratch behind his ear. Nora sleeps in the front window or walks on the rafters! She's a little less social because when she's awake, she's pursuing toy mice around the store. Nora is our official "birdbath tester." Here's one she's partial to.
Falconer Visit--May 3rd at 3 PM
Mike Dupuy will visit the Wild Bird Center on Saturday, May 3rd. He'll probably bring his Harris Hawk, Copper (shown below), and possibly his Goshawk. Mike is a great presenter who will discuss the sport of falconry and discuss how falconers acquire and train their birds. It's a great opportunity to see these raptors up close. Mike's talk is great for kids and adults both. Stop by this Saturday and enjoy the show.
Scout, a red-tailed hawk, was calmer and showed us her beautiful tail.
Nora Update
Nora, our junior cat, is flourishing. She still likes to roll around in the birdbaths and take a swipe at Nicholas. She is getting to be much more affectionate and enjoys a good pet and a kiss on the head. She's still only a little over 7 pounds--"petite" especially compared to Nicholas. But her personality is big!
Here she is at home pretending she's a ficus tree. Nora continues to amaze and delight us with her antics--hiding in the tiniest spaces, climbing higher than seems possible, rolling around in the birdbaths. Come in and give her a rub. It will lower your blood pressure!
Store and Local News
New Link
Look at the left side of this webpage. You'll see a new item: What Bird? This is a great site that will allow you to enter the information you have about a bird so that you can make an identification. Gather as much information as you can about the bird in question and click on the What Bird? link. In minutes you should be able to identify "your" bird.
New Birding Venue
Self-described swamp stomper Mike Mazur introduced me to the Great Piece Meadow in Fairfield. This huge tract is old farmland and woodland that is part of the Green Acres program. It is a great spot for birding that includes a heron rookery, fields, waterways (mostly colonial Dutch drainage ditches) and woods. The mixed habitat means there are all sorts of birds. We have a list of over 40 species we've seen or heard there including nesting Baltimore orioles, green herons, bobwhites, tree swallows, red-headed woodpeckers, wood thrushes, indigo buntings, bluebirds, bobolinks and even Virginia rails. Join us on a birdwalk and we'll introduce you to this lovely spot.
Visitors To My Yard
I had an interesting visitor to my backyard recently: a coyote. I got a few shots of the little guy. Told Nicholas this was one reason he was an indoor cat.
Birdfeeding (with the exception of mealworms) is over for the season since one or more bears have shown up to raid my feeders. When the bears are not around raccoons and skunks have been a nuisance too. They are mostly nocturnal so I don't have decent photographs of these raiders, but the bear showed up recent at 7 PM and I got this shot.
And down the road from my house I spotted a series of huge holes in a classic long oval shape that indicates that they were made by a pileated woodpecker. I'm going to keep checking this site in hopes of seeing the actual bird!
I caught this Downy Woodpecker on a bad hair day. He loves the Woodpecker Log suet feeder as do the Hairy and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers.
Also seen in Kent, CT, a flock of wild turkeys. Here's one of the beauties.
Down the road from my house turkey and black vultures made a feast of a dead raccoon. The bird on the far right is the black vulture.
There are lots of frogs around my vernal pool. Usually they plop into the water the minute I walk toward the water, but occasionally one cooperates and lets me get a photo.
Here's a red-bellied woodpecker at my suet log (a great feeder, by the way!). This is one time where you can actually see the red belly.
A chestnut-sided warbler began coming to my feeders. An adult male was the first visitor, but I saw a fledging the same day. Now the youngster comes--especially to the tree nuts and the Woodpecker Log feeder. This bird is partial to peanut suet.
No photos, but my nestboxes fledged several black-capped chickadees and a family of house wrens.
flickr.com
You can upload all your digital photos to flickr.com and share them with family and friends. In addition, it allows you to do some fun stuff too. I created this from a photo I took in Central Park.
Another Great Birding Website
Go here to see red-tailed hawks that nest on the Trump Parc in New York City.
And, of course, be sure to check The Cornell Lab of Ornithology to see what's going on there. They have an update on the ivory-billed woodpecker and the Nest Cams where you can see live photos of birds on their nests.
Upcoming Events
I'll be doing a birdwalk with the Hilltop Conservancy on May 31st. Meet us at the store at 8 AM or at the Hilltop entrance near the ballfields off Mountain Ave. at 8:30 AM and we'll look for some great birds--Indigo Buntings, maybe some Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks and a raptor or two. Join us for a great walk.
We participated in the Earth Day celebrations at the Environmental Center on April 19th. There were over 3000 visitors. We saw a lot of our regular customers and met a lot of new faces. We highlighted birdfeeders made from board recycled from milk jugs. For more environmental friendly birdfeeding ideas, stop by the store.