Wild Bird Foods
Many bird lovers visit pet stores or hardware stores to purchase specialty bird seed mixes to attract specific types of birds. They buy cardinal food to attract cardinals and special finch food to lure finches. People understand that certain birds like particular types of food, but what most don’t know is that the food a bird prefers has a lot to do with its bill (also referred to as a bird’s beak).
The bill is one of the most significant and defining characteristics of a bird’s appearance. Like feathers, bills are unique to birds, and their shape and size are often used by bird watchers to identify them. The bill serves a number of purposes, from communicating and cleaning to mating and gathering nesting materials. More importantly, it’s a highly useful tool used to accomplish a bird’s most important function — feeding.
Birds use their bills as dinner utensils to crush, crack and snap shells off of seeds. They chisel, peck, poke and drill tree bark for insects, and they sip, suck and probe flowers for nectar. The kind of bill a bird has usually allows it to utilize a particular food source and is a very good clue to its diet. Many birds have a specialized bill which limits the food it can eat. That’s why specialty mixes exist. Mixes like Wild Delight’s Cardinal Food contain premium nuts and seeds that cardinals’ bills were designed for.
Birds’ bills come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Conical bills, like those found on cardinals, finches and grosbeaks, are thick and sturdy — great for cracking and shelling seeds like Nyjer and safflower seeds. In fact, these birds have bills that are strong enough to crack seeds as hard as cherry pits.
However, not all conical bills are the same.
Some are more slender, as on the goldfinch and pine siskin, which allows them to probe deep to extract seeds. Crossbills have the most specialized bill of all the finches. Their “crossed-over” bill allows these birds to remove seeds from cones, pry bark from trees to uncover hidden insects and split open fruit to extract the seeds. In fact, the red- and white-winged crossbills are the only two birds in North America to have crossed bills.
Other birds such as woodpeckers have strong bills that taper to a tip and are ideal for chiseling through wood for insects or sap. The downy woodpecker has bristles around its bill, protecting its nostrils from sawdust, while the yellow-bellied sapsucker drills holes in trees to access the internal river of sap.
Besides insects and sap, woodpeckers prefer fruit and tree seeds. Specialty mixes like Wild Delight’s Woodpecker, Nuthatch and Chickadee Food contain real fruits such as cranberries, apples and juniper berries, and a premium blend of hulled seeds that are great for woodpeckers as well as chickadees and nuthatches.
Birds like warblers have thin, slender beaks to pick insects off of leaves, twigs and bark. Tiny bills, like those on black-capped chickadees, are able to get into small places to eat insects that are hiding. Chickadees also open seeds by jamming them into tree crevices and then hammering the seeds with their bills. They even break open seeds by holding them in their feet, pecking their bills against them.
Generally, birds are quite practical. They will choose the best food available within the limits of their bill size and shape. Waste-free mixes like Wild
Delight’s Deck Porch N’ Patio contain seeds that are already shelled, making it a great choice for feeders because birds with a variety of bill sizes and shapes can eat it — and it keeps outdoor living areas free from shells and leftovers.
Birds’ bills come in all shapes and sizes, just like the birds themselves. In one way or another, what they eat simply depends on what they can eat. By providing food like specialty mixes that are made to include nuts and seeds that fit the bill, bird enthusiasts can better attract and enjoy their favorite outdoor pets.
Advice on Buying a Sports Horse
Sports horse breeders follow intensive breeding programs. The breeding goals differ from registry to registry, some more geared towards Showjumping others Dressage, Eventing or all-round top quality riding horses, this is reflected in the breeding, for example to produce a top class jumping horse only prestigious jumping blood lines are used to produce a horse with the physical attributes and athletic ability which is needed for show jumping.
If you are looking to buy a horse to compete, a sports horse would be a very good choice. You should set yourself some guide lines on the criteria of the horse you wish to buy; a good place to start is to identify your capabilities as a rider. Less experienced riders should look for an older experienced horse that knows its job; an accomplished rider may want to bring on a younger horse and take it through the grades, it is absolutely essential for the rider to realise their capabilities. Unfortunately many people make the mistake of “over horsing themselves” this is when a less experienced rider has bought a horse that is far too much for the rider to handle. This can ruin good horses and ruin a rider’s confidence. Set a budget, the height range that would suit you best and what you intend to do with the horse. This will narrow down the market and get you focused on the right market of horses for sale.
Professional horse producers will often travel to Ireland and mainland Europe to source Sport horses from breeders and farmers. The horses that are brought back to the U.K. are to be sold to the equestrian competition market. A good professional horse producer will help you find the right horse; you will usually find that there will be quite a few Sports horses for sale at any one yard so you will have plenty of Sports Horses for Sale to view. There are lots of yards devoted Sports horses for sale, so you will always have plenty of horses to look at, if they don’t have a horse that is suitable they will often be able to source a Sports horse for sale that meets your requirements, as they are more than likely to have established equestrian links with farmers and breeders overseas.