Bird Feeder, birthday gift replacement

I'm sure the birds don't care what that feeder looks like so long as it's full.

It's not much to look at now, but it was handsomely painted with a mighty fine shade of Hunter's Green at one time. I suppose outdoor things will take a beating over the years, especially if they are moved about by wind, rain and squirrels. That feeder has seen both the front and the backsides of the house over the last few years, but I think that it has finally found a home at the edge of the yard, perched over the dahlia bed, overlooking the neighbor's spread.

I know I that I wasn't aware of birds before I got that feeder. Well, aware is a strong word, it's just that birds came and went and I didn't pay really close attention to the types and kinds that were all about here in the Northwest. I could tell the difference between a gull and a sparrow and could tell by the tap-tap-tap when a woodpecker was about, but any more than that I was somewhat clueless. I suppose that somebody had to clue me in, and that appeared to be M's job.

It wasn't overt, those lessons, but it had to start somewhere, and they did the day a piliated woodpecker made hash out of a telephone pole by the library. I was out walking on my break and saw it up on high. Not hard to miss it for all the racket it made. I mentioned it in an email and it all went from there. See, I didn't know that M was a birder, and had been for many years. She knew about flickers (had spotted one on my roof one day) and about all the different kinds of feeder birds that I hadn't been feeding. She was the one that turned me onto kingfishers and towhees and chickadees and such, practically with a wave of her hand. Actually, that's what helped it all along. The hand of hers pointing things out to me. That and the guide books.

After awhile the guidebooks became indespensible on our outings, but it was the feeder, the bird poster and the squirrels that put all learning into play. On my birthday eve she passed along to me a green tube feeder, an oversized poster of Northwest birds and a very nice attachable bird bath for my trellis. The feeder went up the very next day, on New Year's Eve, but by end of day it was down and broken thanks to the voracious and mischevious nature of my local squirrels. I went down to the Wild Bird store the next week and picked up the feeder that's currently doing duty in the back yard. The most frustrating part of it was that I couldn't find a good place to mount it for the longest time. The front porch was a nice place for it for awhile, because I could watch the birds feed from my living room while sitting on the couch. But vermin found it's way under the porch slats and into a storage space, and the squirrels just climbed the Yew and went up and over the roof and into the feeder. Not a very good place after all.

I mounted it on the trellis but that was laughably easy to conquer, and so was the backporch eave and the phone wire to the back house. Finally I achieved success with a jerry rigged contraption that was set up high above the patio. Tacky, ugly, but it worked until this summer, when the local rat population, making good of the spillage, showed up in mass one bright and sunny afternoon. The feeder took a sabbatical, and so did the birds.

But this morning I was able to sit at my kitchen table and look out my window and watch the chickadees and the sparrows and the finches feed once again. A neighbor of mine had a double hooked plant hanger sitting idle by the alley, one with a metal contraption afixed to the mounting pole. I can tell from the teeth marks that it's already been frustrating the squirrels. Knawing at painted metal must be a complete and total drag for them, but for the moment it's working, which please me and the birds very much.

So, that feeder. Serviceable but fairly trashed. One half of the "roof" broken off from a fall. Scratched and pecked and weather beaten. It's a humble piece now, functional and very much filled with character. But it gives me pleasure like almost nothing else I own. It's a giving thing, that feeder, somewhat like the birding lessons you gave me years ago. Yeah, it's the little things that matter, M, little things like shared knowledge, millet seed and golden finches.

Your WHMB