New Product!

Most of you know, we (Seth and Michelle) own and operate NePo Suet Company here in Portland, OR. We just wanted to let everyone know that we have a new product available starting today! NePo Cricket Cakes! The cases will be regularly priced at $75 per case (12 cakes), but for the month of October we will be offering them for only $55 plus free shipping to anywhere in the U.S.!

These suet cakes are packed full of dried crickets and made with the same quality, love, and care that you have come to expect from NePo Suet!

We will only be offering 20 cases for the month of October, so remember to order quickly.

Dried crickets are almost a perfect food for wild birds. They are more nutritious than just about any other feeder insect. We have been testing these in the backyard for a month now, and the birds absolutely 

love them! 

2011 Festival of the Birds

The 2011 Festival of the Birds is coming up this May 7, from 9am-3pm, and taking place at Sellwood Park - just above Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge (Portland's first designated Migratory Bird Park)! This is a great time for new and experienced birders alike to come out and enjoy a day devoted to wild birds!

If you have never been it is a really great, family-friendly festival with guided bird walks (every half hour from 9am-2pm), booths, vendors, food, educational birds from the Audubon Society of Portland, storytelling, family activities, live music and more! It's quite a fun day and, best of all, it's completely free!

There is also a free, guided early bird walk on the day of the festival starting at 7:30am, however, registration is required. You can go here to pre-register for the walk!

Michelle and I, as NePo Suet Company, will be at the festival also. We will be offering Festival discounts on our suet. If you would like, stop by our booth and let us know you saw the blog and we will give you a 10% discount on your total purchase!

We hope to see you there and let's make this the biggest Festival of the Birds yet!

A few backyard photos

We finally had a sunny (read: not rainy) day here in Portland! WooHoo! It has been so wet and yucky lately that we haven't been getting many photos. So yesterday we decided to get a few. Nothing spectacular but fun to look at anyway. We hope you enjoy!

A Steller's Jay coming in for some of their favorite food!


A Scrub-Jay testing each peanut to make sure it measures up to his standards. If it doesn't, he puts it back and keeps looking until he finds just the right one. Sometimes they even bring a peanut back and exchange it for a better one.


Aha! I think we have a winner!


A Robin contemplating a bath.


The bath is a "GO", I repeat the bath is a "GO"!


A female Red-Breasted Nuthatch looking as pretty as ever.


The same Nuthatch deciding to grab a bite to eat.


A Pine Siskin trying to figure out how to crack a black-oil sunflower shell with it's tiny beak.


A Junco having an afternoon snack.


Another Junco looking for that perfect sunflower seed.


A Fox Sparrow singing away yesterday. There are two of them and this is the latest we have ever had them in the yard. Usually, they are here during the dead of winter and then they skedaddle. But this year, they have been hanging around and seem to be in courtship. We are hoping to see some baby Fox Sparrows in the near future!


A Flicker trying to decide what to eat next.


A female Downy Woodpecker grabbing some suet!


A male Downy doing the same thing on the same feeder.


Could Bushtits be any cuter?

It's been too long...

Good morning to all! Sorry that we have not been up on the proverbial ball lately! We have been super busy with getting our suet company, NePo Suet, going and we haven't been birding nearly as much as we would have liked to (but isn't that always the case?).

So, without further ado, here are some bird photos and we hope to be a little better about posting in the future!

Female Anna's Hummingbird


Yellow-Rumped Warbler grabbing some suet.


We have seen the Spotted Towhee in our backyard quite a bit this winter!


The Sharp-Shinned Hawks are still regular visitors.

An Orange Variant House Finch.

A Red-Shafted Flicker having lunch with us!

An Orange-Crowned Warbler snooping around the backyard.

The Red-Breasted Nuthatches seem to be in smaller numbers this year (at least for us).

A beautiful male Lesser Goldfinch.

A Chestnut-Backed Chickadee hanging out on a sunny day!

NePo Suet Company - Premium, Handcrafted Suet

Hello to all! Sorry that we have not posted in almost a month, but we have been really busy with our new business, NePo Suet Company! We officially started NePo Suet last month and have been going gangbusters since then.

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We have been making suet for quite a while now for our own backyard birds. More recently, because it has been such a hit in our yard, we started thinking about starting a suet business.

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We had quite a few people try it in their yard, all around the country, and we received a phenomenal response! Everyone has loved it and had great things to say. A few local stores have started to carry NePo Suet and we are trying to get into more soon.

We have spent the last many months perfecting the recipe and we have come up with, what we think, is the best suet on the market. Taste test after taste test has proven that birds prefer NePo Suet to any other suet on the market, even the more expensive ones.

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Some quick facts about NePo Suet:

All of our suet is no melt!

Our suet cakes weigh about 25% more than other cakes on the market, but still fit in any suet feeder.

We make the suet in very small (14 cake) batches to insure quality and consistency.

We have 6 varieties right now and will have different seasonal cakes all year long.

We buy all of our ingredients for our suet from small, local vendors.
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If you would like to order some NePo Suet and you live in Portland, please give us a call at

503-953-6018 to schedule a pick up. If you live outside the Portland area, we can (and do) ship all over the country. If you order a full case (12) you will receive free shipping to anywhere in the US.

NePo Suet Company

Please check out our newest blog at http://neposuet.blogspot.com/

Our small little suet company has started to grow! We decided it was time to create a blog about our suet. Please have a look and pick yourself up a few of the best suet cakes on the market.

Take care and good birding!

Fern Ridge and Koll Wetland photos

Michelle and I went to Koll Wetlands a couple of weeks ago and then to Fern Ridge Wildlife Area about a week ago. She took me to Fern Ridge for one of my birthday presents! We had an awesome time and on the Fern Ridge trip we added 6 new Life List birds!! It was phenomenal birding and we can't wait to go again!

We haven't had a chance to post until now. So, without further ado, here are the photos from our trips and a few miscellaneous pics.

Common Yellowthroats were everywhere at Fern Ridge. 100's of them all over the place.


We have never seen so many at one time. Flying right in front of us and over our heads!


A female Wood Duck at Koll Wetlands.


A female Wood Duck with little babies in tow! How cute is that?

A Violet-Green Swallow at Koll.

One of the many turtles at Fern Ridge. This one was kind enough to pose before slipping back into the water.

Black-Necked Stilts at Fern Ridge. A Life List bird! They were gorgeous.

Another Stilt.

And yet another Stilt.

An Osprey nest (with an Osprey in it) overlooking a farm at Fern Ridge.

A Spotted Sandpiper behind Michelle's office building in Beaverton.

Red-Tailed Hawks were all over Koll Wetland area. Flying pretty low, too.

Such beautiful, majestic birds.

Here was another Red-Tailed Hawk at Koll. I don't know if he had some food he was protecting or if he was just sunning himself.

The Crows thought that keeping an eye on the Hawk might be a good thing.

A Purple Martin at Fern Ridge. Another Life List bird!

A Pine Siskin bathing in our backyard.

American White Pelicans at Fern Ridge. They are awe inspiring birds.

There was probably 30 Pelicans there. The Pelicans with the large bump on their bill are breeding males. The are such large birds, especially, up close

An Osprey fishing at Fern Ridge.

A Canada Goose family behind Michelle's office. Notice the adult on the right? It has a white forehead. Strange.

A Marsh Wren letting the world know that he's available! Like the Common Yellowthroat, the Marsh Wrens were everywhere. 100's and 100's of them!

We just liked this photo because it contains White Pelicans, Coots, a Blue Heron, a Bald Eagle, a Canada Goose and a Galdwall. Can you find them all?

A male Red-Winged Blackbird doin' his thang!

On our way out of the Fisher Butte unit, at the corner of Royal Ave and Fisher Rd, we found this nesting Western Kingbird.

Not exactly the best photos, but it was still really cool to find!

3 Killdeer making a lot of noise at Koll.

This Killdeer let me get quite a bit closer.

At Koll Wetlands, we found a Blue Heron colony right off the road. Here is one of the Herons in the nest.

This one shows (kind of) a juvenile Blue Heron in the nest and another nest above it. Sort of hard to see the baby, but it's there!

Here are 5 of the nests. There were 8 that we could find in the tree.

A Greater-White Fronted Goose at Fern Ridge.

A big Canada Goose family behind Michelle's office.

This little Gosling at Koll looks like he's injured. He's not. I actually watched him walk over to this spot, lie down and and then stretch itself out. He seemed to be enjoying the sunshine!

Here's another one, stretching after getting up.

A pair of Gadwall at Koll.

A female Red-Winged Blackbird blending into her surroundings.

A trio of Cinnamon Teals in flight at Fern Ridge. There were Cinnamon Teals everywhere you looked.

A Chipping Sparrow at Fern Ridge Lake.

A couple of Canada Geese under a bridge in Downtown Portland.