Bird Feeders

Milton Lee Eckstein Jr., a retired grocery store manager and fast-pitch softball player, died of complications from cancer Saturday at his Inwood, W.Va., home. He was 84 and had lived in Joppa. Born in Rosedale, he attended Kenwood High School. He worked at A&P grocery stores for 27 years, including one on Sinclair Lane, where he was manager. He later became head of maintenance for Maryland General Hospital. He also owned a business, E&M Home Improvement. In 1984, he was inducted into the Maryland Fastpitch Hall of Fame.

IF YOUR LOVE for birds sends you to the store for 50-pound bags of seed as often as you buy milk, or you have become an expert at chasing squirrels off the feeder so your precious flock can get its fill, Carroll County Bird Club has an event for you.Three times a year, members of the club, and as many people as they can recruit, participate in a daylong count of birds. These tallies are one way to determine the variety of species in the county, as well as migratory patterns.September's count was a bit dismal, said Laura Tarbell, vice president of the club, although she and her husband, Jerry, counted as many as 43 species.

THE STRIPED BIG TOP will go up in Manchester on Sept. 15, transforming the Manchester Carnival Grounds on York Street into the magic of the Roberts Brothers Three-Ring Circus.This circus is one of only a dozen or so in the nation that travel all summer, performing two shows a night at firehouses and parks in small towns like ours from New England to Florida.Show times in Manchester are at 5: 30 p.m. and 7: 30 p.m. Tickets, available at Millers Market, are $6 for adults and $4 for children.

Last week's cold and snowy weather makes this a good time to remind readers to fill bird feeders. Inexpensive bird feed mixes are available from grocery stores, garden shops, farm stores and discount stores throughout Carroll County.Popular mixes include millet, cracked grain, cracked corn, milo, canary seed and sunflower seed. Put out some suet if you want to attract woodpeckers to your back yard.Last year, I wrote a column about a national bird seed preference test being conducted by volunteers under the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

I have had some health problems this winter that have kept me sidelined throughout the hunting season, but have enabled me to completely enjoy my backyard bird feeders. Though I am not a bird watcher, in the popular sense of the term, backyard bird feeding has always given me and my family a great deal of pleasure. And we enjoy identifying the dozens of varieties of birds that pay us visits.My favorite visitors are the cardinals with their bright red feathers and their "cheer, cheer, cheer" songs.

Your own back yard probably isn't what comes to mind when you think of a wildlife sanctuary. But wildlife is feeling the squeeze everywhere. Your patch can make a difference.Habitat is the technical name for any area that provides an animal with food, water, shelter and a place to raise its young. By keeping these basics in mind when you plant your garden, you can make your yard habitat to a host of species.Not all wild animal species are appropriate in residential areas, however. Your neighbors won't appreciate it if you encourage urban pests such as raccoons and possums.

As we await the early results of this year's firearms deer season, which began yesterday and will continue through Dec. 10, let's turn our attention to an abundant source of nature's beauty and enjoyment available to all Carroll County residents.Back-yard bird watching and feeding is enjoyed by hundreds of Marylanders.More than 20 species of birds visit our area of the state each winter. Some of the more common species you will find in your back yard include cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, sparrows, finches, grosbeaks, doves, nuthatches and woodpeckers.

If you're looking for great garden design ideas, perhaps a little bird can give you some pointers. Wild birds have a terrific sense for landscaping, and if you let their ideas of what is right, proper and needful inspire your garden's design, you'll have a wonderful garden -- lively, pretty and full of color, life and song. One of the very best things you can do to make your garden more attractive to birds is to plant a songbird flower bed, says Steve Kress, a bird conservation expert and vice president of the National Audubon Society.

When most folks think about a back yard, they think of it as a fairly tame, cultivated place. In reality, your back yard is a small piece of the earth's surface, the natural home for a variety of wildlife. And in addition to the ground below, any back yard possesses the "air rights" above the yard, as well. As such, every back yard is a little slice of heaven and earth, with a small sampling of all the wildlife in between.Birds are among the sweetest representatives you can invite down from that space between heaven and earth, and wonderful reminders that back yards are, indeed, wild places.

Still no reason for Md. to allow killing of bears It's shocking that The Sun's editorial page has reversed its position on Maryland's attempt to open a trophy hunt for black bears ("Maryland's bear season," editorial, Aug. 3), because not much has changed since the paper published its opposition to that same radical shift in our half-century-old wildlife policy ("Bearing the burden," editorial, Jan. 25, 2000). The bear population is still small, estimated at only a few hundred animals.