Wednesday June 7th

Ben Heritage introduced Haskell Lamb of Wild Birds unlimited.

Our members enjoy our new meeting location at D's Restaurant on Columbiana Blvd.

Last Meeting
June 7, 2006
Reporter – Lyn Richards
New meeting place! We had good attendance at our new location, D’s Restaurant. Evidently everyone found us. Johnny Jeffcoat opened the meeting with prayer, John Hanson introduced our visitors. Harold Crawford and Molly Cousins both brought special visitors.
Skey Caskey reminded us all about the upcoming fishing tournament, in two weeks.
Ben Heritage introduced our speaker, Haskell Lamb, the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited on Lake Murray Boulevard. Haskell spoke to us about the hobby of bird feeding. It is one of the five most popular hobbies in the US. His goal is to help people learn to enjoy bird watching and feeding.
There are about 300 species of birds in South Carolina. Haskell and his wife have identified about 115 species right in their own backyard! The first thing to do to attract birds into your yard is to have a bird bath. Baths attract all kinds of birds. The bath should provide relatively clean water and be about 1½ inches deep. Deeper pools of water, such as fountains, can drown a bird and they are generally attracted to shallow baths.
Different birds have different diets; seed, insects, and fruit are the primary diet of SC species. There are only four types of seed that birds eat; sunflower, safflower, thistle and millet. And all of those types of seed must be fresh in order to attract and successfully feed birds. Wild Birds Unlimited gets about 1 ton of fresh seed in weekly, so their customers can be assured of the seeds’ freshness. Less expensive, generic seed can contain as much as 40% filler, which are seeds that won’t get eaten by birds, but will germinate. Squirrels can be a nuisance at feeders. Haskell taught us that safflower seed has a bitter taste that will discourage most squirrels from raiding your feeders. He also showed us a "squirrel resistant" feeder he sells at Wild Birds Unlimited. Birds cannot taste bitterness, or hot pepper, so types of feeders or feed that incorporates pepper will also repel squirrels.
Happy Dollar finished the morning, with contributions from four happy Rotarians!