I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
— Emily Dickinson
Randy Solomon is in an optimistic business. While other stores are packing away Christmas decorations and brooding about January sales, customers at Solomon’s Backyard Bird Centre in NewPort Village are stocking up on bird seed and looking forward to the first bird migrations of the season.
It won’t be long before hummingbirds start winging their way up to B.C. from Mexico. But even in winter there are a lot of birds around, making the Backyard Bird Centre a four-season destination for bird lovers.
Recently, Solomon moved his store from North Road to Port Moody’s NewPort Village to capitalize on the walk-by traffic. “I knew it was a prime shopping area,” said Solomon, a professional accountant who started his store 12 years ago to blend his interest in nature with business.
When a space came up in the summer he grabbed it, even though it was smaller than his previous location. The Port Moody resident who lives on Heritage Mountain is now only minutes away from his business and has enjoyed an expanded customer base since relocating. But the retail store isn’t his only source of income. A website (www.backyardbird.ca) offers many of the same products online and Solomon estimates that he does about 3% of his business online, with customers purchasing seed and feeders from as far away as Ontario.
“It seems to be growing pretty steady,” Solomon said.
Still, many long-time customers prefer to purchase their seed at the store. It’s been triple-cleaned, which means all the chaff and sticks have been picked out of it, and it has been specially selected for the birds of this region. The Backyard Bird Centre also offers an amazing array of bird feeders, from small, clear tubes for the sugar and water mix that hummingbirds love to squirrel-proof feeders, like the Droll Yankee Flipper, which flips squirrels off into the bush while allowing feather-weight birds to eat in peace.
In recent years, Solomon has also expanded his niche market to include gardeners, another fast-growing segment of the population. Babyboomers love to spend time in their garden, and The Backyard Bird Centre offers things to make gardening more enjoyable, such as wind chimes that have been tuned, and birdbaths that are more like sculptures than simple water features. By including jewelry and giftware in his product line, Solomon has ensured his business has year-round certainty. The recent drop in the U.S. dollar has helped, too, Solomon said, making it easier to offer good value to his customers.
But growing a business hasn’t been without its challenges. It’s time-consuming to stay on top of business trends and to keep the product line fresh. Still it’s more fun than being an accountant, Solomon says.
“The customers are very nature-oriented and great people to deal with.”
• For more information about the Backyard Bird Centre, go to www.backyardbird.ca, visit 249 Newport Dr., Port Moody or call 778-216-9645.
Attract the birds, not the bugs
Tips to keep feeders just for feathered friends
By: By Tara Carman
Updated: May 17, 2009
COLOURFUL, chirping birds pecking away at a feeder are a heartwarming sight, but if it's not set up properly, you may end up attracting some not-so-feathered friends to your backyard.
Think squirrels, rats, ants and wasps.
There are simple things people can do to make sure their bird feeders attract fauna exclusively of the feathered variety, says Randy Solomon, owner of the Backyard Bird store in Port Moody, B.C.
For first-time bird feeders, Solomon recommends using the shelled version of the black oil sunflower seed. This will attract the greatest variety of small birds to the feeder.
"The birds absolutely love it, so they're less apt to drop it on the ground," he said.
Solomon advises against using the generic wild birdseed mix available at grocery stores because birds don't like it as much. They tend to kick parts of it onto the ground, where it attracts rodents.
Other types of food are better suited to attracting larger birds, Solomon said.
Jays are partial to peanuts and woodpeckers like suet cakes, a concoction made from peanut butter and rendered beef.
Squirrels are agile and clever bird-feeder hazards, able to worm their way into many types of feeding devices. A model called the Brome Squirrel Buster Plus has been Solomon's best-selling bird feeder for six years. It uses the weight of a squirrel or large bird to close off the seed ports so that the animals are foiled, but not harmed.
Using hulled sunflower seeds in a squirrel-proof feeder is a foolproof way to go for first-timers, Solomon said.
Hummingbirds feed on sugar water and there are feeders of all shapes and sizes on the market, most replicating the shades of brightly coloured flowers. Solomon recommends choosing one that is easy to take apart and clean.
The sugar-to-water ratio should always be one part table sugar to four parts water, as this mixture closely duplicates naturally occurring nectar. Boil the mixture, let it cool before putting it out and remember to replace it once a week.
Honey is a no-no as it can contain harmful spores. Brown sugar can be contaminated with iron, which is harmful to the birds. Also avoid red food colouring, as it contains chemicals the birds are not used to digesting. The red in the feeders themselves is enough to attract them. But ants also like sugar water and can contaminate hummingbird feeders.
"If you have ants in your hummingbird feeder, you won't get hummingbirds. They don't like them," Solomon said. Hanging the feeder from an overhang rather than a branch is one way to dissuade them, he said. Ant moats, which surround the nectar outlets with water, are another way to foil the insects.
-- Canwest News Service
