Bird feeding & bird watching

[Kathy in VA]

Sorry, y’all...I’ve been out of town.
Well, there were no rubber hands to be found in my town when I went shopping the day after Halloween! I searched at least 5 stores. I asked a friend if she knew where I could find a hand; she happened to be a beautician and suggested a beauty supply fake hand. “What do you call it?” I asked. I learned I needed to do a Google Images Search for a “Practice Hand”—for beauty students to practice applying polish and false nails. So I came home and found brand new Practice Hands on eBay for $5.94! Free shipping! Probably could have gotten a cheaper one if I knew how to bid, but I stick with the Buy It Now stuff. So a fake flexible rubber hand is on its way to me! “A hand in hand is worth two in the store”—some store, somewhere! Anything to save some shopping time and training time—that hand can train birds while I do other projects.

Wendell, thanks for all your helpful information. I had considered asking other stores if they had extra/broken mannequin hands, but I decided it was worth the small cost of ordering one to not have to spend any more time driving around town searching for hands! And this one will be rubber, so rain shouldn’t affect it; the mannequin hands I saw later on the internet were painted wood.

Louise, sorry I missed seeing your Nov. 1 post. Thanks for the glove idea. Since I had already ordered a fake hand, I’ll try it first...but if the birds are afraid of the “human-looking hand,” maybe the fake hand can wear a glove for awhile!—especially if the hand gets chilly outside!

Linda, I loved the website link photo of the amazed lady hand-feeding the chickadee! That was a great photo! I love that look on people’s face when they come to my house and experience a hummingbird drinking from their hand, but I’ve always been so busy trying to photograph the bird on their hand for them (so they can “save” the memory) but not thought to photograph/capture the expression on their face, so I can save that memory! Sorry for my ignorance, but what is an oiler? Grandpa used an oiler to lubricate things in his garage, but I can’t quite figure how that might be useful with birds! After reading the link, could it be a term for a black-oil sunflower seed, or the hulled sunflower kernel? Not sure about the computer language....HTML and midi...but were you wanting to share this song with us?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VwU_oS2ErQ I don’t recall seeing the Mary Poppins movie as a child (I guess I spent more of my childhood out in the woods watching wildlife instead of watching kids’ movies) but that was a beautiful song of a lady feeding the birds that I'm thinking maybe you were referring to. Thanks for giving me the info so I could search for it. Thanks for the chickadee/glove ideas! Did you feed them thru a window first, or just stick a glove on top of a post outside and then go outside and sit in that spot with the glove on?—or how did you go about the training? You know how I love details!