Wade Kammin of Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Shop gives summer tips for happy birds including hummingbirds

Elizabeth Wake:
Welcome to Community Voices on NPR Illinois. I'm Elizabeth Wake. Today I'm here with Wade Kammin from Wild Birds Unlimited. Thanks for being here, Wade.
Wade Kammin:
Thank you for sure you having me on.
Elizabeth Wake:
For those who don't know about your shop, where are you located and what do you offer?
Wade Kammin:
We are at 1930 South MacArthur Boulevard in Springfield, and we specialize in backyard bird feeding. So bird feeders, quality bird food, as well as just enjoying your whole backyard. So we also have garden decor, gifts, any holidays, people come shopping with us to get great gifts too?
Elizabeth Wake:
Are there different seeds that different birds would want?
Wade Kammin:
There really are. There's all different birds have different preferences. We can help select a seed blend that has exactly the right seeds in it that each individual species like, while at the same time making sure you don't get any waste grain, the things that get knocked aside and grow weeds in the garden. We can make sure you're getting the best bang for your buck.
Elizabeth Wake:
How long have you been interested in birds?
Wade Kammin:
Gosh, I started when I was very, very young, so I used to help my grandparents fill their bird feeders. They gave me my first bird feeder when I was 5. and the rest is history. I got started in the business though in the mid-90s working for the prior owners. I helped them for a few years in 2001 when they retired. That gave me the opportunity to purchase the business. So it's been 25 years now.
Elizabeth Wake:
Do you have a favorite bird?
Wade Kammin:
I probably like chickadees a lot. Chickadees are small. They don't fuss at the feeder with other birds. Very, very active. You know, a lot like myself, don't hold still. So it's a neat bird to watch.
Elizabeth Wake:
Is there one that you remember the bird that got you interested in birds?
Wade Kammin:
I think like most people, probably the cardinals. Right colors, they're so much fun to watch. But also watching behavior as you watch pairs of cardinal form a pair of bonds in the spring. There's a lot of things like courtship feeding or the male feeds the female. When they go to nest, they work together to raise the babies. And watching that all play out in your own backyard and at your bird feeders is a lot of fun.
Elizabeth Wake:
Do you have a favorite place in central Illinois to go birding?
Wade Kammin:
Of our gardens, different habitats. So, a combination of woodlands, the lake, prairies, and we sponsor them. We provide bluebird houses and have set up a bluebird trail there. So that's a great spot. But Adams Wildlife Sanctuary over on Clear Lake, that's often overlooked. A lot of people don't realize how much more there is to that. So back behind, there's also woodland, there's also prairie. So it's kind of a hidden gem that's a great place to go.
Elizabeth Wake:
For someone who's just getting into birding and wants to know How do I even get started? What equipment do I need to do this?
Wade Kammin:
So that's where we love people, have people come in and visit us. They can jump on our website. I archive a lot of the articles that I've written myself. Come in and talk to us in person. We'll ask you questions about your yard, where you live, what your budget is, et cetera. And we can fine tune a plan just for you. Because there are all different ways to do it. The habitat makes a huge difference. Whether you live in the country in the middle of cornfield or you live in town in an older neighborhood, you may have different birds and different needs. So we can help you narrow that down. spring migration. The hummingbirds, people love the hummingbirds. The bright orange orioles, rose-brested grosbeaks, some overlooked birds like the white-crowned, white-throated sparrows, both are coming back now. We'll see them passing through the goldfinches. They're actually here year round, so we feed them year round, but they're just now turning yellow. They're only yellow in the summertime.
Elizabeth Wake:
Really? So what color are they in the winter?
Wade Kammin:
The males who are bright yellow in summer turn olive brown. That helps them camouflage in the trees when there's no leaves. But right about the time the leaves are coming on the trees, the goldfinches are turning bright yellow again. So now the females, they stay dull all summer. It's really neat to see the transformation at this time of year.
Elizabeth Wake:
Where can you find those?
Wade Kammin:
They're everywhere. So it's kind of a fun thing. A lot of people like to think, oh, I don't have them in my yard. Well, it's usually about a matter of having the right foods out for them. So the right bird feeder and food, a special finch blend for them. But also people who like to garden, there's plants you can attract them with. So if you're a native prairie bird, if you put out Plants like coneflowers, coreopsis, sunflowers, we grow those. When those go to seed, they'll come right in. They're like a magnet. They'll pull them in. So it's a combination of feeding, but also gardening.
Elizabeth Wake:
Okay, so I love to garden. I'm an avid gardener. I like to let everything fallow over the winter.
Wade Kammin:
Perfect. I love you.
Elizabeth Wake:
I really want to encourage the pollinators, and I want to leave that natural wildlife and habitat for all the small creatures.
Wade Kammin:
So beneficial.
Elizabeth Wake:
One of the reasons is that I have read, and maybe you can explain more about it, but like I'll leave the coneflower and it'll go to seed. And I'm not deadheading those last ones. I'm letting those stay. And why is that good for the birds?
Wade Kammin:
A couple of things. Once they go to seed, there's birds like goldfinches and others who they're gonna come in, they're gonna feed off of those seeds. Some of them are going to pick right away, but they're not going to get them all. So as the season progresses through fall and winter, they're going to come back and check those food sources and continue to use those. But the second layer is as those seed heads get picked over and wind takes its effect and stems break, you're going to end up with these little hollow stems. Later, there's going to be beneficial insects like some of your pollinators, the little native bees. They're going to come and they're going to use those hollow stems to either find shelter in or lay their eggs in, which will then become the next generations. If we tidy a pair of yards too much, we're actually those beneficial things. So when you do your cleanup in the spring, you can cut back somewhat, but leave some stalks because that's going to help. And your other plants will come up and grow around. You're not going to see them later. So it's definitely better to leave that.
Elizabeth Wake:
I'm also, I call it weed and feed. So whenever I weed things, I just drop them right back there because it's a natural mulch. But is that good for the birds? Yeah, a lot of.
Wade Kammin:
It because as the weeds leaves in the fall, concrete around your plants, there's going to be other seeds that fall down under and get trapped under that. Well, the birds will notice to sort through, they'll scratch through that and they'll find seeds below. It's also going to find an overwintering spot for different types of insects. So a lot of those insects are going to survive the winter by doing that. Some of those insects become next generation. Some of them become food for the birds in the wintertime. By having a spot for those insects to live and bury themselves in that leaf in a weed litter, then you're helping and maintain that. Where if we just clear it all, the wind blows the seeds away, it blows the insects away. It just doesn't give nature a chance to If we're.
Elizabeth Wake:
Clearing our yards and especially clearing out a lot of those next generation insects, are we also seeing a decrease in the bird populations? We are, right.
Wade Kammin:
There's A hand-in-hand correlation between those events. So a messy yard is a good yard and messy doesn't have to be bad. You can still tidy up your lawn. You can keep it from choking out your grass, but you leave those edges wild. You know, rather than bagging your leaves, then just you'll put them back in the beds. You can compost some of them. I just recently moved, but my my old house lived in for nearly 30 years, and I never once bagged leaves in front of the curb. there are a few big sticks and things that went to the curb. The leaves always just got either mulched back in or spread on the edges of the beds. They break down on their own. You don't have to make them go away. They're going to go away. Nature is going to take care of that for you. But to see the changes in that yard from the time I moved in, the late 90s until recently, it just made a world of difference in the number of plants that came back and the number of birds who came back. And just to see that one little lot in city that made for wildlife.
Elizabeth Wake:
So I read some of our bird populations in North America are dwindling and apparently one out of every four birds have disappeared from our lives in the past 50 years. So this is from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I actually got this straight from your website. Thank you for that information. What are some of the ways that our listeners could help birds and make a positive difference in the bird populations?
Wade Kammin:
So one, we talk about food, water, shelter, and raising babies. So food, providing bird feeders is great. Providing food naturally. So we just talked about the plants and what we can do to encourage seeds and insects there. Providing a water source for the birds is great. Whether it's a simple bird bath, little garden pond, some way for the birds to have water. Shelter. So shelter can be birdhouses. They'll nest in them. They will also sleep in them all winter long. So that's it. But then shelter in the way of plants. So if you like to garden, adding a wide Evergreens, different kinds of bushes, vines these are all the places where they can raise. They're young, but they're also shelter from the wind, from the rain, from predators. if a hawk comes sailing through, they'll dive into that cover so that they're not as exposed and it provides an escape path. Those are all ways minimizing or just completely eliminating pesticide use. There's a big one. People often think, oh, I'm just doing a little bit of this in my yard. That's not a big deal. But if we make that cumulatively through a whole neighborhood, the whole city, the whole country, the whole world, it's having a huge impact. So every bit we can do to reduce that. And a lot of those insecticides, maybe you're targeting mosquitoes. Well, it's not just getting mosquitoes, it's getting all the insects. So you're depleting a food source for the bird. There are so many birds rely on insects to feed their young, and if we diminish those, we're just hurting that next generation.
Elizabeth Wake:
Like everyone else, I don't like mosquitoes, but I know that birds need water, and a lot of people, if they want to attract birds, will have a bird bath. So is there a way that I can not add Yeah, that one's really easy.
Wade Kammin:
So if mosquitoes lay eggs in a standing water, so a birdbath or anything else, it takes about 7 to 10 days for that to become an adult mosquito and leave the birdbath. So if you are changing your birdbath at least once a week, ideally you should be doing it every day or two anyway, dump the water, put new water in, you've just chucked that generation of mosquitoes out. So it's not really a concern.
Elizabeth Wake:
Okay, that's actually a lot easier than I thought.
Wade Kammin:
There are other things you can add movement to the water. Mosquitoes don't like moving water, so there's. in your bird bath to make the water move. The bigger concern is just making sure your other water vessels in the yard don't have standing water, flower pots, saucers, and things you may overlook. Dump those regularly too.
Elizabeth Wake:
For those just joining us, this is Community Voices. I'm Elizabeth Wake with NPR Illinois, talking with Wade Kammin of Wild Birds Unlimited. I like to buy my coffee as sustainably as possible. I have also learned coffee that is shade grown is better for the bird populations.
Wade Kammin:
In a traditional coffee farm, it's grown much like crops we grow here, where they cut down the forest, plant coffee plantations, and these are varieties of plants that thrive in the sun, they produce faster, and so it's better for the farmers to grow a lot of coffee beans, coffee berries that way, but it's terrible for the wildlife around them. They have developed varieties of coffee plants that will grow and thrive in the shade. That means they can leave the tree canopy intact where the birds live, where there's more insects, there's things up in the canopy, but the coffee plants themselves are growing below that. So hence shade grown because it's underneath the canopy of trees. A little different type of bean, but still makes a great coffee. So it's definitely something to explore.
Elizabeth Wake:
How interesting, how connected everything really is.
Wade Kammin:
A lot of those people don't realize that where our songwares, the about the hummingbirds, they go down to central South America where a lot of those coffee farms are. Our summer birds, that's their winter home. And so if we're damaging the winter home, it's affecting them when they come back.
Elizabeth Wake:
If people are interested in backyard bird feeding, How do they get started at wild birds?
Wade Kammin:
We have a lot going on in the store. A couple ways. You know, one, you can preview us at our website, wbu.com slash Springfield IL. We do have a lot of education articles on there and people sometimes like to preview those. Or you can just come in. Everybody in my store are experts. Most of us have worked together for ages, you know, decades even. Everyone's going to be very open and friendly and help you get started. And the beauty of bird feeding is it can be done on a very, very simple basis. We call it like a simple tray feeder and a little bag of bird seed can get you going with birds. Or you can go elaborate. We can do a whole pole system with three or four arms, three or four different types of feeders and run the gamut. It can be done simply or as expansively as you want. We're there to make sure you get started and you don't get overwhelmed.
Elizabeth Wake:
What about squirrels?
Wade Kammin:
So squirrels.
Elizabeth Wake:
I mean, I'm pretty ambivalent, but if I'm going to be buying food to attract the birds, I don't want the squirrels either making a mess of it or eating it all out.
Wade Kammin:
That's a question we get all the time. Also it is very easy. There are several different methods. We have our, what we call our easy button bird foods. We've got a couple type of bird foods squirrels simply don't like, at least most squirrels. So we've got a seed called safflower most squirrels don't like. Most blackbirds don't like it either, which is kind of good because they can kind of dominate. We also have several blends that have a hot pepper coating on the seed. They've been designed where birds don't have the same heat receptors in their taste buds as mammals. The birds really aren't bothered by the heat, but the squirrels are, and the raccoons are. Typically you put that food out, birds will be very happy with it, but the squirrels will usually leave the feeder alone. We also have squirrel-proof bird feeders, we have squirrel baffles. Sometimes people say, oh, those don't work. Well, they do work if you do it right. Sometimes it's got to know the rules of the game. So we can help you know what those rules are. Because it does matter. Every yard can be different. And so the rules might be a little different in those yards.
Elizabeth Wake:
Okay, so don't be afraid to go in and ask questions. Not at all.
Wade Kammin:
I mean, we love questions. We probably do more than anything, answer questions and problem solve. And we love it. It's like a little puzzle that we get to solve.
Elizabeth Wake:
Okay, that's good to know. Like you mentioned, I am one of those who just loves hummingbirds. I absolutely love them. They're one of my favorites. So what should I do to see more hummingbirds in my yard?
Wade Kammin:
So combination of things. a good quality feeder that doesn't drip, doesn't get bees, doesn't get ants, and so those will put off the hummingbirds, and we can help you with that. Put up several feeders. Hummingbirds are very territorial, and so for most of us in this area, you have one or two hummingbirds coming in, but they'll fight. So if you spread feeders out throughout the yard, it cuts down on the coralling on the feeder. Keeping the food fresh. A lot of people don't change their nectar as often as they should, and then it spoils, and it's not good for the hummingbirds. So changing the nectar every two to three days max is really important. There are some people want to talk to us about. And then the other just circles back to what we were talking about earlier, planting. The flowers, the insects. A lot of people don't realize that nectar is an important part of the hummingbird's diet, but it's really just the gas, the fuel that keeps them going as they hunt for insects. Insects is where they get their protein, their vitamins, and so they eat a tremendous amount of insects. So planting a variety of plants and flowers to provide both the nectar for the hummingbirds but also attract the insects that the hummingbirds want to eat. And avoiding pesticide use goes back to the correlation there. So the more natural your yard, the more hummingbirds you'll have. That's just a real biggie for them.
Elizabeth Wake:
Okay, now I know that bats will eat mosquitoes. Are there any birds that will eat mosquitoes?
Wade Kammin:
So there are some birds. Now, legend has it like purple martins, oh, eat a bunch of mosquitoes. Actually, the research has shown not so many. So martins are great and we encourage them for other insect control, but the average person isn't going to get them in their backyard anyway. They're a really more specific habitat bird. But there are other birds who eat mosquitoes. So a lot of your, just say your house friends and your other small birds, as they're out hunting down in the bushes, when the mosquitoes aren't flying around in the evening and attacking us, they're often resting under the leaves and the bushes and trees. And so you'll have birds who are going in and then snagging mosquitoes and other small insects as part of that. So it'll be included as part of a wider variety of diet.
Elizabeth Wake:
Okay. Another reason to love birds.
Wade Kammin:
Yes, the more birds you have, the more insect control you have.
Elizabeth Wake:
Yeah.
Wade Kammin:
Bird feeding can be such a enjoyable hobby for anybody of any level from like me getting started under 5 to seniors and everybody in between can enjoy that. And pretty much any problem somebody might have, whether it's a little mess on the ground or anything else, there's almost always a solution. So never hesitate to come ask us about how do I stop this from happening? Because there's almost always a way to make sure we can keep the hobby enjoyable.
Elizabeth Wake:
I love that. Well, Wade, thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate your insight and your knowledge.
Wade Kammin:
I love being here. Thank you.
Elizabeth Wake:
Community Voices is events you might have missed and conversations with neighbors, artists, and area businesspeople. Suggest a guest or comment at communityvoices@nprillinois.org.