eBirdseed.com Wild Bird Feeding Blog

Hi all,

The picture above is of our informal eBirdseed.com hummingbird cam (the gray object stuck to the window). Since we put the camera up, we've had over 9,000 views. And that's wonderful when there are hummingbirds around. But the problem is that on Cape Cod now, the hummingbird season is over and the camera pretty much shows bupkis. So what do we do? We could simply replace the hummingbird feeder with a standard feeder and that way see lots of bird action. On the other hand, we could try to do something crazy like enclosing the camera in a waterproof container and running it out to the squirrel feeder. (That would exceed the limits of USB cable length, but would still make for an interesting experiment.) What do you guys think?

Onward... Remember, the eBirdseed.com September '08 bird photography contest is about to end, so enter 'em if you got 'em. You can see the current entries here.

Finally, here's an update on our world-famous quahog chowder recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups clam meat chopped (best scratched from mud during storm)
• 1 cup clam juice from above clams
• 1 medium-sized white onion sliced and diced
• 2 inch square of salt pork sliced and diced
• 2 peeled, medium-sized potatoes diced
• 1 quart of milk
• 1 pint of heavy cream
• 1/2 stick of butter (optional)

1. Practice sanitary kitchen habits
2. Place potatoes in milk and warm gently in pot 'til almost fork tender
3. While potatoes soften, shuck quahogs... (hint: if a 'hog doesn't want to open, nuke him for a max of 10 seconds)
4. Use cheese cloth to filter out grit and shell bits
5. Dice quahogs and let them simmer in their juice on low heat
6. Fry salt pork until cracklings are a golden brown, then set aside. (Save that fat!)
7. Lightly brown onion in pork fat
8. Dump all ingredients in pot along with 4 oz. of heavy cream to gently stew for an hour or so stirring during commercials
9. Serve with dab of butter and more cream to suit in cup. (This is a rich recipe!)

See you by those photogenic and oh so aromatic feeders,

CapeCodAlan

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