I’m not sure whether this is the right time of year to be putting out thistle for finches, but I’ve been seeing them around, so I thought I might as well. I’ve been interested in trying thistle socks, but gasped when I saw how much our local bird shop was selling them for. No way could something like that cost $7 — online I found them for around $3. But why not make them myself? I headed to the fabric store and found that they don’t carry the typical fabric used for the socks, so I decided to do an experiment and chose 4 materials to see which the finches preferred — jersey, a lacy curtain material, and two kinds of netting. I spent a total of $3.05 and still have extra material to make more — I also got a sock free with my thistle purchase, and I pulled out an old bit of pantyhose to make a grand total of 6 thistle socks to delight the birdies.

I should point out that I’m currently without a sewing machine — we handstitched the four bags we made. If we have a winner, I’ll likely be borrowing a friend’s sewing machine, and then I’ll make more (here’s yet another reason why I want a new sewing machine, hubbie!).

I hope the birds prefer the jersey, pantyhose, or lacy stuff — they were the easiest to work with. The larger netting was a failure off the bat — the thistle fell right through the holes (I should have tested it before I bothered stitching the sock). Surprisingly, a lot of thistle fell out of the store-brand sock, too. What a waste of seed — I hope the other socks work ok so that I don’t have to watch so much thistle fall to the ground. The pantyhose was the easiest of all — I just had to pour the thistle and tie a knot — but the result had, pardon me, a rather phallic appearance until I smushed the seed down into a nice ball shape. The advantage to the smaller netting is that it comes in a variety of colors — it would make a colorful display in the trees. I didn’t poke any holes in the fat little thistle ball of pantyhose, but I might do that if the finches ignore it completely.

Now all I need are finches!

I certainly didn’t want to ignore the other birds in our neighborhood. I put out our new hummingbird feeder by the butterfly garden,

and got the yellow jackets out of our old seed birdfeeder, cleaning it and drying it for new seed. Hopefully the cardinals will find it again before the doves do. I bet if I set out the little sprinkler near it they will — a cardinal couple took a bath when I watered the side yard today. Looking out the window, there’s already a squirrel trying to figure out how to get some free munchies. 

So where are the birds in my bird post? Well, they decided to hide when the camera came out, but I managed to sneak a pic of this female cardinal, chirping with her mate.

In other garden news, we already have tadpoles — we’ve had water in the pond for what, a week and a half? Seems rather fast — I wonder if there were toad/frog eggs in some of the plants we bought. Oh, I hope it’s just our neighborhood toads and not some crazy frogs from the pond store. Although there’s only one tadpole in this picture (it was hard to get a decent photo) — there are a ridiculous number swimming around happily in the pond. Some are larger than others — they just can’t all be from our toads. Sigh. 

And the bottle discovery from the front yard soil is apparently a Coca-Cola bottle from around 1957 — for now I sealed a message in it with a cork and put it by the front door.