(not) feeding the birds

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the location of our house is that our back yard abuts a natural area with a state-owned fence giving us a barrier to large wildlife. We’ve used this relative protection to feed birds year-round, watching them swooping down for seeds and suet and then back into our trees.

our backyard bird feeder system

That sense of protection was shattered last week when we awoke to find the central pole snapped and the mostly empty feeders on the ground. The plexiglass of the hopper feeder was broken, making it unusable. The copper suet feeder was bent and had been taken across the yard to one of the large trees.

Our assumption is that a bear had come around the end of the fence and entered our neighborhood and used our feeder station to fatten up for hibernation.

Although it wasn’t the first time a bear had been sited near us, it was the first time we had ever had our feeders raided. Because our local Wild Birds Unlimited store recently closed, B and I trekked up to the store in Fayetteville on Saturday to get the supplies we needed to repair our system.

I had thought that, given the rarity of bears in our neighborhood, we were safe to resume feeding the birds who need the food even more as the weather gets colder and the growing season ends.

I was wrong.

Sunday morning, we awoke to find our new pole broken and empty feeders scattered around its base. Fortunately, this time, the damage to the feeders is repairable without needing to get new parts.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to put them back out until winter is setting in and the bears are hibernating.

The back yard seems empty without the feeders there and the cardinals, woodpeckers, blue jays, nuthatches, finches, juncos, titmouses, and my favorite chickadees flying in and out, especially at dawn, midday, and before sundown. I know, as wild things, they will be okay without our seeds and suet set out for them but I feel badly withdrawing a food source they have relied on for so long.

Maybe in a few weeks…

SoCS: trees

From the time I was very young, I have loved trees. When I was growing up, our house was in the woods, so I spent a lot of time playing and daydreaming among the trees – white and yellow birches, sugar and striped maples, hemlocks and spruce. Our grammar school had a naturalist who visited every week and I remember compiling a book of different trees with pressings of their leaves.

Today, I enjoy the trees in our yard. We have two maples, two cherries, and an oak. We used to have an ash tree but it was killed by the emerald ash borer and had to be cut down. I’m pleased to say that we did add a new tree last year, a dogwood which we chose because it is the flower for the birth month of our daughter E. (We already have an heirloom rose which is the birth flower of daughter T.)

T also loves trees and all plants so much that she has a master’s degree in conservation biology of plants. I don’t think that love of trees is genetic, but I’m very proud of her advocacy and caretaking for our environment here in the Northeast US.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “tree.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/12/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-11-2021/

SoCS: for the birds

We have been feeding the birds in our backyard for years. We also wind up feeding the squirrels, who eat the seeds that fall from the feeders.

We do our best to not have the squirrels eat the bulk of the seed we put out for the birds, so we have some safeguards in place. This year, though, some of our safeguards failed.

We store our bags of birdseed in our backyard shed. In the warm weather, we leave the louvers on the windows open so it doesn’t get too hot inside. This year, an enterprising squirrel chewed through the (metal) window screen to get into the shed, where it chewed through the plastic bags holding the seed and proceeded to eat a lot and make a mess!

We had a metal can inverted on the pole that holds our birdfeeders to act as a squirrel guard. It had worked well for years, but now at least one squirrel – not sure if it is the same one that breached the shed or not – has managed to learn to jump on the side of the can and quickly scramble to the top, whence it can get to all the feeders.

Our large hopper-style feeder is its favorite.

So, in order to keep feeding the birds, we needed new options to protect our seed from ravenous squirrels.

We closed the windows into the shed. The squirrel, remembering there was lots of food in there, then tried to chew its way through the wooden door. Fortunately, the door is too thick, although it does now sport edges that have had the green paint gnawed off.

For the feeders, we went to our local bird feeding store to look at options.

We tried to get an additional cone squirrel guard to put on top of our can one so the squirrel couldn’t get over it to the feeders, but our pole diameter was too large to attach it.

We moved onto option B – to buy a new pole system. (Our original one had been out there at least twenty years and was beginning to have some rust showing, so a new system with a smaller diameter pole seemed to make the most sense.) This also gave us an opportunity to relocate the feeders. When we had placed them initially, they were centered to be seen from the sliding glass doors in our dining room. Since then, we added an addition that houses our kitchen, which has large windows overlooking the backyard. B was able to place the new pole centered in those windows, so our view of the feeders is much better.

The birds are loving the new feeder placement! Some of the birds we see regularly are cardinals, blue jays, chickadees (my favorite), tufted titmouse, downy and hairy woodpeckers, nuthatches…

None of which you can see in the photo I just took, but at least the squirrel is on the ground.

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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “opt.” Join us! Learn more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/11/27/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-28-2020/

tree trimming

Today, we had a tree service come and trim the large trees in our backyard. They are all at least seventy years old and some of them had some dead branches that threatened to get blown down during storms. There are two maples, an oak, and a cherry.

The company we hired was recommended by the landscapers who are going to give our yard a major makeover this fall. They have certified arborists and we were impressed with their work and their observance of safety protocols. T’s environmental science background informed her appreciation of the helmets, rigging, ropes, chaps, etc. involved. Bonus: They did a great job with cleaning up after they were done.

It’s nice to have a bit more sunlight making it down into our yard, especially where we have my mom’s heirloom rosebush, while, at the same time, still having these big shade trees on the south side of our house.

It’s also nice not to have to worry so much about being impaled by javelin-sticks when it gets windy.

SoCS: on our yard and climate

Unlike many people in our area, we keep our yard as natural as we can. No pesticides or herbicides. Big shade trees on the south side of the house – maple, oak, cherry, and ash. a few bushes – lilac, rhododendron, forsythia. We do have a mowed lawn; going full meadow wouldn’t be allowed by our town, but along with the grasses, there are wild strawberries, violets, daisies, and, of course, dandelions. There are animals – squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks, and the occasional skunk – and lots of birds – chickadees, nuthatches, bluejays, mourning doves, several kinds of finches and woodpeckers, tufted titmouse, and, this time of year, robins. At the moment, a robin is building a nest on the bend of the downspout near the back door.

This has been a good year for our forsythia. It is usually a bit anemic. We inherited it when we bought the house and have a suspicion that it was actually a variety that was more suited to a warmer zone. Lately, it seems to have more good years for blossoms than bad. It’s probably not a coincidence, as the climate is warming and growing zones shift.

Of course, this is a particularly appropriate day to talk about climate change, as there are many climate change awareness marches happening today, here in the US and around the world. I wish that I were able to be in Washington DC for the main US march. There are people from my area who boarded a bus at 3ish in the morning to get there to participate.

I will be joining them in spirit. I have been writing, studying, protesting, lobbying, etc. on phasing out fossil fuels, banning fracking, increasing renewable energy quickly, and combating climate change and greenhouse gases’astronomical rise for many years now. With the current administration, we are redoubling, tripling, quadrupling, or exponentially raising our efforts.

If we are wrong on climate policy and the effects of climate change roll on out of control, people will die unnecessarily. Coastal populations and those living in poverty are most vulnerable. There are already climate refugees. Some island nations are under threat of losing their land entirely. Even in the US, there are already some people needing to be relocated due to rising sea levels.

We are all in this together. Every single person throughout the world. The heaviest burdens financially in the cleanup efforts, and mitigation, and relocation, and all the other effects of climate change, should be borne by the countries and companies who were enriched by exploiting fossil fuels beyond what the environment and climate could absorb. Developing economies don’t need to follow the fossil fuel pattern of the industrialized countries. They can build up their communities using renewable and energy-efficient technologies and the wealthier countries must help them to do that.

When Pope Francis released his encyclical Laudato Si’, he addressed all people and called for an integral ecology that would aid the natural world and human communities, with special emphasis on aiding the most vulnerable people and environments. Many people of all spiritual traditions and those who do not follow any faith path have joined together in this endeavor. One-hundred ninety-five countries signed onto the Paris climate accord. Each pledged to all the others to implement goals to combat climate change, help the environment, and support people, especially those most at risk. Progress is being made and many places are reaching beyond their stated goals to effect further greenhouse gas reductions.

We are already feeling the effects of climate change in increased severe weather, droughts, floods, heat waves, wildfires, and species extinctions. Even if the US government unwisely abandoned its promises in Paris, many of our states and localities, our companies, and our citizens and residents will keep going, moving forward with energy efficiency, renewable energy, and preparing our towns and cities for emergencies.

We will continue to march on, literally and figuratively.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “yard.”  Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/04/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-apr-2917/