Yeah, each species is a little different. These are mostly Valley Oaks. They too have cupule (caps or cups); however most of them had fallen off once on the ground. Thanks for reaching out!

We are glad you found us! Welcome to the 3B community!

Haha, it looks like this video was right up your alley!

@@BackyardBiologyBoys YES!!! LOL

Thanks for the kind comment! I’m glad you found us and enjoyed then music. During the trail cam footage the music played was Calm River by Lesfm, Known and Loved by Joyspring, Northern Lights by The Known Sea, and A Good Father by Joysping. We have a mixed bag of content but will likely do something similar in the future, so keep an eye out and Welcome to the 3B community!

@ Thanks! I’ve subscribed to your channel, and I’m enjoying your videos. All great so far. Good comment section, too. I’ve noticed that you don’t credit the music on the ones I’ve watched. Just a suggestion … 🥰 I hope many blessings your way!

@ great, suggestions! I’ll start doing that. Thanks for your support!

@@debsenne1474 Yes, good observation. This is an amazing doe who has raised two fawns despite this unfortunate injury. We first saw her this summer; you can see her story in this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqjQkoyAjseLbsksi=ldJDN0XBGX7QX8uj

Thank you for your concern! Keeping our bird sanctuary safe and healthy for the wildlife is a top priority for me. I clean and sanitize our feeders regularly with a 10% bleach solution and ensure the ground beneath them is raked of seed hulls and waste a least once a week. The feeder stations will only be up in the fall and winter and I periodically rotate them around our property. The water trays are also scrubbed and refreshed every few days, especially during heavy use. Feedback like yours helps us and the 3B community learn and improve our wildlife friendly practices -thank you for reminding us how important hygiene is for the birds’ well-being!

Haha, it sounds like we get a little bit of everything in the 3B community. Thanks for sharing and good luck 🐈

@@LocustIvy you bet! Thank you for reaching out, and watching our content. Welcome to the 3B community. Glad you found us!

Oh that’s great that you will be making one! Nice to hear about your starling issues being resolved. And I just keep an eye on the Coopers and Sharp-Shinned Hawk activity. Thanks for reaching out, and glad you found us. Welcome to the BBB community!

@@flowerslt420 Yes, I’d say so! It amazes me how much those trays got used. We have a 1-acre pond about 1/10 a mile from those trays but still that little bit of water got a lot of attention. Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the BBB community! Glad you found us.

No problem! Glad you found us and welcome! What part of the country are you from?

That would be cool! I enjoy watching him hunt a gopher.

Thanks for your insights. That’s super interesting! God is good 👍🏻

Blue Jays are always fun to watch. Great pick! Thank you for participating in our giveaway. Best of luck, and welcome to the BBB community!

@@rclrcl462 Glad you like it. And happy you found us. Welcome to the BBB community!

Yes, we had a very warm and dry start to Fall. I think that exasperated the situation. What is puzzling to me is how much the water trays were used. We have a 1-acre pond about 1/10 mile from where the small trays were located. I’ll have some more footage of the water trays in use in our next video coming out in a few weeks highlighting Fall on our Wildlife Homestead. Keep any eye out for that one, I think you might enjoy it 😊. Thanks for reaching out and for being a part of our BBB community!

@@Mrbirdoutdoors thanks very much! We love the property, and are so thankful to be here. A part of this community!

@@Austins0asis that’s awesome! There are flying squirrels in our area but I haven’t yet captured one on camera. I was kind of hoping the smart bird feeder would catch one but nothing yet. @Biodiversity-Institute has experience with this and was telling a bit about it in an other video.

Yes, fun to see the different varieties. We mostly have white, black, and live oak varieties on our property. Some still have their “hats” on but most do not. Yes, I’d love to see some cats. We’ve seen mountain lion tracks but haven’t captured one on the trail camera yet. We will have a new medium size cat featured (trying not to give it away, but it’s probably obvious) on our next video about Fall here at the wildlife homestead. That will probably be out in two weeks?

I actually didn't know oak trees produced a wider variety of shapes besides the usual rounded type with small "hats". It is definitely interesting to study biology and natural diversity in a tree species like this! Makes me want to go into botanical studies even more!

@ yeah, life is awesome! Quite the variety of acorns. And ours have the cupule (or hat/cup) but most of them detached when falling off the tree.

That’s great! I bet that’s a lot of fun to watch, the larger birds on the small feeders. Very neat to hear you have grosbeaks. I’m hoping to see Black-Headed Grosbeaks on the property this summer!

@@eckmann88 Thanks! Glad you found us and welcome to the BBB community! Are you generally interested in wildlife, birding, or outdoor adventures?

@ All of the above! Though birding is my special passion :) We have a few feeders in our Texas backyard and the dream is to one day do something like a sanctuary on some land!

@@eckmann88 Awesome! Sounds like we have a few Texans in the community. That is the dream! Enjoy your feeders now and I hope you get that sanctuary built someday soon.

Thanks for the advice; that’s my exact sentiment as well. I’ll leave the feeder station up through winter but not after, and plan to put out nest boxes soon. Thanks for being a part of the BBB community!

Thanks, and yes those three are very cute. Those were all coyotes however one looked to be a juvenile. It was a little suspect to me as well with its scratching on thin tail so I’m hoping it’s doing okay and didn’t have mange. I’ve been keeping an eye out for it but haven’t seen it since. We also gave gray fox on the property, which are shorter, appear longer, and sleeker. Thanks for reaching out!

Great question! You can see dust coming off the ground on many trail cam clips which gets picked up most often at night based on the camera sensor. This particular moment, I believe is a combination of dust and debris coming off the coyote scratching itself. This behavior and general look of that coyote was concerning to me as I’m hoping it doesn’t have mange. I’ve been keeping an eye out for it to see if we could potentially help it in some way but haven’t seen it since. Thank for your great question.

@@BackyardBiologyBoys I wondered if he had mange too or was just a dirty little coyote. My anxiety needs to believe it's dirty and I am sticking with that!

@ apologies for the added anxiety; God knows none of us need additional stressors in life! Yeah, initially watching the clips on the trail cam I just thought it was a juvenile coyote. I especially enjoyed seeing him hunting a gopher. But the behavior does seem suspect. I’ll make sure to keep you posted if I see him again, but for the time being we’ll just assume no news is good news 😉

Haha, yeah it was a fun effort. In all reality the deer ate 99% of the acorns. The western gray squirrel had the nerve skip our pile to forage and bury acorns naturally occurring on the ground. And I accidentally put the wrong clip of a Northern Flicker in, missing the one working on an acorn in our pile. Everything else was just interested in the water!

@@BackyardBiologyBoys Yes...for the gray squirrel...can't fight behaviors that are innate genetically: "Big pile of acorns?! Does not compute! Must find acorns that are scattered and cache them."

@ Yes, we’ll put! And I guess the good logic could probably be applied across all the animal kingdom; including use in some applications 😅

You learn something new everyday! Thanks for reaching out! For that price I might need to consider becoming an international acorn supplier 🤣

Haha, isn’t that the truth!

Awesome, yes nuthatch are one of my favorites as well. Do you often get pairs to come to your feeder? Thanks for participating in the giveaway and best of luck!

Crazy, another viewer had the same response🤪

@@GamePeace01 crazy! Someone else is building a 1/2 acre pond in Illinois as well. 😜

Crazy, another viewer had the same response 🤪

Thanks for the affirmation and kind comment 😊. We’d very much appreciate you sharing our channel with anyone else you might think would enjoy our videos. I wasn’t familiar with a catio until stumbling across one on a walk while visiting Vancouver WA. Seems like a great solution! Yes, our cats are indoor but go on excursions when the boys leave a door open or they sneak out. Almost as frequent as the deer are the coyotes here; so we try and keep them in as much as possible. I enjoy watching the coyotes but also haven’t lost a pet to any.

@@CherrieMcKenzie Hi Cherrie, thanks for sharing; it’s always fun to see what birds will show up on a given day or season. That blue bird house should be exciting too. Keep us posted on if it gets established. I’m excited to get a few nest boxes out here as well.

Yeah, I’m kind of 50/50 on the stove versus tap. I’m not sure why other than sometimes it seems like it takes just as long for the water heater to start warming it up. I can’t imagine keeping up with 18 feeders; your amazing! We use to see woodpeckers feeding from our nectar feeders at a past property but not our current. Maybe just because our nectar feeders are closer to our house?

Great choice! Thanks for participating in the giveaway. Is that a Sacramento Sucker in your picture?

@@BackyardBiologyBoys It's a Sonoran Sucker out in AZ. I love native fish species :D

@ oh, that is awesome, me too! I’ve always thought Razorback suckers are pretty rad. Did you catch it on a fly?

@@BackyardBiologyBoys yes on the fly they are a great fight on a fly rod, especially cause these ones can get huge! I'd love to be able to catch a razorback sucker, I've got a couple of waterways out here to try my luck at.

@@barns.flydrift Awesome, that sounds like a lot of fun! Well keep me posted if you do catch one. And best of luck, maybe 2025 will be your year to do it.

Great response and practice. I plan to take down my feeder station after winter and also increase native seed and fruit on are property. I’d be interested in learning which plants and shrubs worked best for you? Was there an obvious go-to in your region? Thanks for reaching out and participating in the giveaway. It’s great to have you as part of the BBB community! Happy New Year!

​@@BackyardBiologyBoys I live in Maine so the native plants that I’ve added to my landscape and that I see the birds enjoy the seeds of are purple coneflowers, anise hyssop, rudbeckias, liatris, goldenrods, asters, sunflowers, to name the most popular ones. Of course, I do not cut these plants down in the fall. Hummingbirds enjoy bee balm, the native honeysuckle, lobelias, phlox, penstemons, red columbines as well as some annuals (not native) like zinnias. Some birds (cedar waxwings, robins and others) love the blueberries, various dogwoods, chokeberries and strawberries. We also have staghorn sumacs that the robins enjoy when they arrive in the spring and we have a late snow. This year I will add more dogwoods, and especially winterberries, junipers and other shrubs for the late fall/winter berries. I’m lucky enough to have a few acres of land where we have mature trees (oaks, maples, black cherries, birches…) and where I can I leave a section as a wild meadow and I have also added many, many native perennials to my extensive flower beds to attract pollinators and other insects, which help provide food for the baby birds and the bluebirds. (Hope this wasn’t too long an answer! I do get so excited about birds, wildlife and native plants. 😂 I’m a big fan of Doug Tallamy and watching videos on providing habitat! Keep the videos coming!) Happy New Year to you too!

Glad to hear you have your happy bird place! What are some of your more frequent bird visitors in TX? Also, those sound like some creative solutions you’re working through! Nice work, and keep up the wildflower plantings. Sounds like you have a wise perspective about it!

That’s awesome to hear, thanks for sharing! What’s been your favorite bird and/or animal to show up at your bird sanctuary? I love to learn more about it and any recommendations you might have from your experience! Thanks for reaching out.

@@TracyBirds Awesome! Glad to have you as part of our BBB community, and representing Alberta. Great reminder regarding suit! We are in the Sierra Nevada foothill of California. You are right, in the summer it’s too hot, but our fall and winter allow for it. I’m curious if you have a favorite variety/type of suet that you use? We planted two native wildflower plots this fall and we’re super excited to see what become of the meadow this spring. Thanks for any additional insights or suggestions you might offer!

@ I actually make my own suet and the birds love it (beef fat suet, natural peanut butter, oatmeal for binder, and mix of seeds, nuts and mealworms for the birds). Temps are dipping here again, it will be -30°C tonight so I just refilled all the suet feeders.

Oh that’s awesome, thanks for sharing your recipe! Do you ever just use natural beef suet (like fat from a butcher)? Also, what birds are you seeing, chickadees and nuthatches?

@ yes I get the suet from a butcher (that’s what I melt down to make the suet), but I typically don’t put it out as I would have too many magpies and ravens around. My suet feeders are small and meant for clingers (woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees).

Thanks for the suggestion! I was going back and forth between no music and music. Next time I’ll remember to go no music. And yes, I think many animals liked the water more than the acorns; except the deer! Not an acorn left.

I second the request for no music. The music you chose was nice, but I'd rather hear the natural sounds the animals make. And thanks for putting out water.

Great, that’s awesome. We have a 1-acre pond and it’s a blast. Have you seen Bamabass on KZbin? I suspect you would enjoy their channel as well. Although we are more stoked to have you as a part of the BBB community! Thanks for participating in the giveaway, just make sure you aren’t feeding too many fish from your future pond to the Osprey!

@@BackyardBiologyBoys​​⁠​​⁠Yes! I’ve enjoyed his videos and seeing the wildlife the pond has brought. I also really like @thewildlifehomestead and the vernal pond and videography have been really inspiring

@ Yeah, I’d say. Stefano’s channel is awesome and was my inspiration for our wildlife homestead content. Best of luck with the pond and be sure to keep us updated along the way. I’d be interested to learn from your experience and I’m sure other here would as well.

Wow, thanks for the kind compliment! That is neat to learn of the shared experience of San Francisco, albeit years apart. Having hope is an amazing multiplier! Thanks again for reaching out, that made my day.

Most definitely! It’s been a rewarding way to watch and learn about the different birds and wildlife that are a part of the ecology. Thanks for your support and nice comment!

Awesome, welcome to the BBB community! Glade you found us. Nighthawks are indeed a cool bird! Best of luck in the giveaway!