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Backyard Bird Watching for Kids: How to Attract, Feed, and Provide Homes for Birds
by George H. Harrison Kit Harrison
Our Price: $10.17
Used from: $3.99

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth Edition
by Jon L. Dunn Jonathan Alderfer
Our Price: $16.32
Used from: $10.80

Finding Your Wings: A Workbook for Beginning Bird Watchers (Peterson Field Guides (R))
by Burton S. Guttman
Our Price: $14.65
Used from: $0.99

Attracting Birds to Your Backyard: 536 Ways to Create a Haven for Your Favorite Birds (A Rodale Organic Gardening Book)
by Sally Roth
Our Price: $12.89
Used from: $6.93

The Backyard Bird Lover's Field Guide: Secrets to Attracting, Identifying, and Enjoying Birds of Your Region
by Sally Roth
Our Price: $13.57
Used from: $5.99

Mealworms: A Delicacy for Birds To you and me mealworms are unattractive, squirmy insects. To many birds they are a delicacy. What exactly are mealworms? Mealworms are the larvae of the darkling beetle. It is natural for birds to like eating mealworms as they often eat insects.

Many birds love mealworms especially bluebirds, chickadees and wrens. You have 2 choices when it comes to mealworms: you can buy live worms or dried worms. The chart below breaks down the pros and cons of dried vs. live mealworms. The dried worms are dead and will not harm the birds, however, I've found that birds tend to prefer live mealworms. Birds will eat the dried worms, but the live ones are just more appealing. Some birders are squeamish and prefer not to deal with live worms, which is perfectly understandable. There are many benefits of having dried mealworms. You don't have to worry about feeding them or keeping them refrigerated. And they also are about half the cost of live mealworms. The table below lists the positives and negatives of live vs. dried mealworms.

Live	Dried
More Costly	Less Costly
Must feed and refrigerate	No special storage requirements
Can escape from tray feeder	Stay put in tray feeder
More appealing to birds	Less appealing to birds

You can buy dried mealworms at a regular pet store. I think it would difficult to find live ones though. And, they will cost you much more than if you purchased them from an online retailer. Also, you won't find them near any bird seed or bird food products. This is because mealworms have been traditionally marketed for reptiles like snakes and lizards. They will more than likely be found near the food for reptiles in very small cans. If you are purchasing live mealworms for the first time, buy the lowest quantity you can which will probably be about 1,000. Since this is your first experience with mealworms you don't want to have too much invested in case you decide caring for them is not for you. A few tips about storing your live mealworms: *Don't put them out in wet weather as they will drown *Feed them oats *Refrigerate them at a temperature of 40 to 50 degrees F *Keep in a container no deep than a shoebox There are many birds than enjoy these squirmy insects. It is natural, as insects are a major part of birds' diets. I encourage you to try feeding these to your backyard birds. I have a feeling you will be pleasantly surprised by the results. � 2008 Malika Harricharan

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North American Birds News

Bellevue-born author/photographer goes to the birds (Seattle Times)

Paul Bannick's tramps through the Eastside woods stoked a passion for the natural world that has achieved its apotheosis in his splendid new photography book, "The Owl and the Woodpecker: Encounters with North America's Most Iconic Birds." foreword by Tony Angell, audio birdcall recordings by Martyn Stewart (Mountaineers, 198 pp., $24.95).

It's a good year for bird-loving bookworms (Seattle Times)

A roundup of bird books, from "Birds of the Inland Northwest and Northern Rockies" to "For the Birds: A Month-by-Month Guide to Attracting Birds to Your Backyard."

Oilsands development could lead to 166 million fewer songbirds: new study (The Canadian Press via Yahoo! Canada News)

EDMONTON - A new report by a prominent American scientist suggests that songbirds will pay a hefty price for the development of Alberta's oilsands.

North West Evening Mail (North-West Evening Mail)

TOTAL strangers David Coward and Darren McSweeney walked away as friends from the misty summit of Red Man’s Way nature trail in Barrow after cracking the clues which led to the Evening Mail’s Find a Fortune treasure trove.

Study on wildlife corridors shows how they work over time (EurekAlert!)

( Washington University in St. Louis ) At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, there are five strange looking "patches" cleared out of the surrounding forest. No, they're not crop circles carved by aliens. They're actually budding longleaf pine forest ecosystems. Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis and collaborators at three other American universities have created these ...