Feed the Birds?

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Feed the Birds

I‘ve always preferred to see birds feeding off natural sources in my garden: flowers, trees, plants—(please click on first photo below to enlarge the photos and to read the rest of this tale🙂

Then, my next brainstorm was that the somewhat leafless plumeria tree next to it would be a great place for a hummingbird feeder. I had one that generous housesitters had bought a few years ago but that I rarely filled, so the first step in this plan was to fill and hang the hummingbird feeder,
then to go buy bird seed for my alternate two ton bird feeder!
Morrie was the first to express interest in the project.
Something in that bag of seed interested him,
and he even offered to help me open the bag.
I scattered the seed and retreated to my desk, hoping to see the first birds descend.
Then there was Morrie,luckily, to join our family, for a few years later, Frida passed away..
First a sniff,
then a taste, during which he brushed a few sunflower seeds off onto the stones of the deck.
then found he had no problem at all reaching the seed up on its original level and soon both seemed to be grazing on bird food!!!
Side view of felon
all too soon, they had exhausted the supply of bird food
as quickly as they had scarfed down their own food fifteen minutes before.
But when I returned to the house, the scavengers returned, hoping I’d left more provender.
Morrie, a stubborn little guy, returned to his former feeding place.
I watched from inside the house as Morrie discovered a new potential source of nourishment–the hummingbird feeder! Luckily, it is just out of his reach, but I doubt any hummingbirds will investigate it too closely with him as watchman.
Not quite the feeding frenzy I had expected to watch. Definitely a new species of bird. The End.

In a nutshell: the little dog stands on his hind legs to examine the high stone slab sculpture for evidence of seeds. I’d put them out the morning before for the birds, thinking the three-foot-high stone sculpture placed 20 feet away, but directly in front of my computer table, would be perfect for observing birds. Wrong! Within ten minutes, every single seed was gone–completely eradicated by the vacuum cleaner tongues of Diego and Morrie. On to the next plan! I try again, after having fed the dogs. This is the result. (If you click on the first photo, you can see the photos in a larger form and read the entire story.)

 

 

17 thoughts on “Feed the Birds?”

  3. slmret's avatarslmret

    That hummingbird at the top is an excellent shot! There must be something in bird seed that the dogs like — or is it just that it’s in small enough pieces to eat? What a fun story that made though it would be more so if the birds finally had their chance!

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  7. Marilyn Armstrong's avatarMarilyn Armstrong

    I know it’s nice to see birds feeding naturally, but over the past 10 years, we have lost 30 million birds to habitat changes, climate change, and pet cats (they kill about 3 million birds every year). In a “normal” world where we were constantly building more and more places that make the bird’s habitats non-habitable, natural would be best … but these days, we feed them or they will die. The experts expect a loss of several million birds THIS year alone and more each year to come. With each year of climate change and habitat change, a few more species move from “common” to rare and then to “probably extinct.” I try to urge EVERYONE to feed the birds because if we don’t feed them, we won’t have any. You can look this stuff up. It’s not just me being irrational about birds.

    And we are going to lose a lot more animals too. Because the bigger our cities and suburbs grow, the less room for rabbits, wild cats, squirrels, fisher cats, ferrets and so much more. There’s a very good chance we’ll lose all the polar bears and elephants and lions … and tigers are very rare now. All large mammals are probably doomed simply because farmers take the land, turn it into farms, and kill the animals when they try to live in their natural environment.

    I find it so discouraging that people don’t seem to understand: CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING NOW. It’s not at some vague future date. It’s here and unless we get this clown out of office, there won’t be much of a world left. As for nature? if we don’t stop building, cutting down forests, BURNING down the Amazon, dumping garbage in the water … well … it looks very much like the arctic is collapsing. Literally collapsing. It was in the news today. They don’t know where the cold water fish will go.

    So I feed the birds and I let the squirrels have a turn at the feeders too. We used to have dozens of chipmunks. Now, we have two. And I haven’t seen them in a couple of weeks, so I’m not sure they are still alive. The rabbits are gone. They used to sun themselves in our backyard. I haven’t seen one in years. No more fireflies, either. Butterflies are disappearing even faster than birds because they are very selective about what they eat and the special weeds they need are vanishing as everything gets civilized.

    The birds need food. It’s a small thing, but it’s something I CAN do. Maybe it’s not a big deal, but it’s as good as I can manage.

    At least think about it.

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