Our Fine Feathered Friends

One of the blog readers has suggested a post on our fine, feathered friends.  So glad to oblige!!

Here at the Nelsen household we have a bird feeder.  It's weathered and grayish with age, mounted on a greenish pole, and at its base is surrounded by a rocket nose cone.  Picture showing nose cone is provided for evidence.  Why, you ask?  As my one grandson said when my husband asked him about his yellow teeth, "Well, Grandpa, there's a good reason for that."

The birds don't care what it looks like; they are just hungry.  The rocket nose cone mounted just below the feeder keeps squirrels and raccoons out of the seed.  We have a LOT of critters running around here, and we're trying to feed birds first.  The pole being green -- well, that's because Eric painted the short light posts in the front of house that same color.  Kind of looks like weathered copper.

By feeding the birds for so long, we now get a lot of the so-called desirable ones -- cardinals, woodpeckers, titmice, nuthatches, chickadees, towhees, and an occasional surprise.  There are probably at least a dozen or more pairs of cardinals who call our woods home. 

The so-called desirable ones behave pretty well, other than the cranky bluejays.  They have no manners at all.  They are hoggish and do not like to share.  The doves are slow and look like turtles moving around (when you don't have your contacts on) below the feeder.  Unfortunately, they make a good catch for hawks too.

There are top feeders and ground feeders.  Many of the birds are just as happy pecking and nibbling down below and count on the top feeders to make a mess and send some seed down their way.  That's where the bluejays come in.  They swipe along the tray of the feeder and make rain of the seed. 

The squirrels, chipmunks and birds coexist happily below the feeder, hopping over one another and giving each other a little space.  I love to watch this interaction.

About eight years ago, a cardinal was hatched in a nearby nest.  He had some kind of brain chemistry problem, as we would soon find out.  Territorial?  Oh, you have no idea what territorial could be unless you saw this bird in action.  He would see his reflection in our windows and attack them.  He'd sit on an outside windowsill and just fly at the window, flapping his wings as he went up and then came back down.  Over and over again.

We have cats.  Can you imagine what sort of chaos this created?  The cats would hear the bird flying at the window and run for that part of the house.  Then they would jump onto the inside windowsill.  That kept old crazy away for a few seconds, but he'd be back in another location, and the cats would scurry to that window.  Birds spit.  This cardinal spit on everything.  The windows were covered with bird spit to the point where we'd have to wash them much more often.  The top half of the garage windows was just spit covered.

When the windows weren't good enough, he started attacking our van's rear view mirrors.  If my husband didn't remember to turn them inward, by the next morning, he couldn't see out of the rear view windows.  We went through a LOT of Windex during that time.

One spring/summer old spitter didn't return.  Guess maybe he wore himself out in about three years' time.  Is that about the lifespan of a wild bird?

The birds are amazing, beautiful, and very special.  St. Francis loved them.  I love them.  On two different occasions during the winter, a bird hit a house window hard enough to stun it, but not kill it (some have been killed).  My husband went out with gloved hands and put each of them up on the feeder to get them out of the cold snow.  After about 10-15 minutes, they were okay again.  That was a good feeling.

Feeding the birds is wonderful, but you have to keep up with it in winter.  They rely on the feeder at some point in time, so running out of seed for several days is not an option.  I think St. Francis would like our backyard.