Impeccable Birdfeeding: How to Discourage Scuffling, Hull-Dropping, Seed-Throwing, Unmentionable Nuisances, and Vulgar Chatter at Your Birdfeeder

by Bill Adler Jr.

This is a guide to feeding birds without causing mess or nuisance, offering tips on mess-free nuts, seeds and other foods, feeders which encourage neat dining, and customizing feeders to curb messy, noisy behaviour. It also has strategies for attracting the best birds while discouraging the vulgar.

Genres: Birds

166 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Bill Adler Jr. is an American writer living in Tokyo.

He's the author of Outwitting Squirrels (The Wall Street Journal: "A masterpiece"; Boing Boing: "One of the funniest books I've ever read"), Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relations With Gadgets, Tell Me a Fairy Tale: A Parent's Guide to Telling Mythical and Magical Stories, and No Time to Say Goodbye, a time travel novella, and other books.

Reviews

[Mark Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a mediocre read. I learned much from the descriptions of the various birds yet felt like the author exaggerated bird feeder issues - sort of created a problem in order to solve it.

[Molly]

This guy is an old grump who is bothered by birds making a mess of his feeders and yard. I personally believe that bird feeders are inherently messy and that you can still have a pleasant looking yard and garden with bird feeders in it. I'm enjoying the species-specific feeder preferences, and I'm interested in his ideas on how to encourage some birds and discourage others, but I'm trying not to let his grumpiness rub off on me. He did make me strongly consider keeping an aquarium full of live mealworms for bird feeding purposes. Maybe someday!

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I checked out a slew of books on birdfeeding from the library and this was the most appealing. Tells how you can enjoy birds but minimize the mess by feeding in a way that attracts one bird at a time and attracts the desirable (read 'neat') species.