Birds use my drier lint, the cotton stuffing from pill bottles, and the cat and dog hairs from my pets' brushes. When nesting time really is going hot and heavy, I also start adding ~3 inch pieces of string from UW newspaper bundles.

Christine Southwick
N Seattle/Shoreline
clsouthwick at comcast.net


On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Guttman,Burton wrote:

> I'm known to be a nut on waste reduction and recycling, and I'm a citizen representative on the Thurston County Solid Waste Advisory Committee. So a relative of ours, who lived here for a while and, naturally, used our clothes washer and drier, has challenged me to find a use for clothes lint, the stuff that accumulates on the lint filter of the drier. Well, that's quite a challenge. But then I thought of our little feathered friends and started to wonder: would this stuff be any good as nesting material? The main problem is that the fibers are very short, but birds such as goldfinches use the soft fibers of thistles to line their nests, and maybe other birds could weave in some drier lint. Of course, even one week of clothes washing produces so much lint that it would take quite a few birds to use it, and you understand that this isn't really a serious question about recycling. But I still wonder: if I put this out in the woods here during nesting season, would birds use it?
>
> Burt Guttman
> The Evergreen State College
> Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu
> Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503
>
>

-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________

Tweeters mailing list

Tweeters at u.washington.edu

http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters