When the bears go to sleep there are decisions to be made. Even before we make the first decision, we begin prepping Luna just in case. Luna's vet is a fox hunter, is fond of calling Luna, "Lou" and at every visit she reminds us that our coonhound's ribs are buried too deep in a layer of fat. So it was, that in October, we began cutting back on her chow in anticipation of putting out the bird feeders.
Luna is 6 years old, 69 pounds and is a rescue Treeing Walker / Redbone cross, who was bred to be a bear dog. When she didn't make the cut, she was placed for adoption at MHS. She was adopted and returned (for stealing toddler food) before we took her in. It seems that the only interest Luna has in bears are the birdfeeders that bears dine upon. As way of a side note, Wayne and I now intimately understand why the Basset Hound was bred, for Luna's head often rests on our dining room table while we eat.
Birds don't need us to feed them seed, and neither do coonhounds and bears. Feeding birds is purely for our enjoyment and sometimes to their detriment. I'm a bit of an experiential learner when it comes to these things, so it took a hummingbird feeder full of black ants and yellow jackets to convince me that growing Bee Balm in front of my window was far better than making syrup, dodging stingers and scrubbing ants out of feeders.
I was reminded of this lesson this week after Mary Miller contacted me. I had commented on one of Paul's stunning bird photographs in which he had used Oriental Bittersweet as a prop. Though attractive, Mary wasn't satisfied with Paul's decision to use an invasive plant. Mary hoped that I had some Winterberry to share as locating colorful berries in November is challenging. Though I have always fancied a native Winterberry shrub, I already had "inherited" plenty of an ornamental variety of holly and I couldn't justify the substitution. I offered Mary some of my holly and juniper branches instead. Planting native flowers and shrubs for insect pollinators is a given; but planning for berries in the winter for birds during planting season requires delayed gratification.
Decisions indeed; finch eye, window strikes, routine sterilizing and refilling of feeders, mounds of empty shells tracked into the house, not to mention sprouted millet in the yard and yes there are those perennial marauders; our neighborhood cat, squirrels, bears, mice and coonhounds. This was going to be the year that I stopped the insanity! Wayne however, knows me better than I know myself; and when I came home from work I skeptically eyed a 50lb bag of Flyer's Choice in the mudroom. This was not the system that I had developed and it seemed that Wayne was finally chiming in.
The suet feeder is out front hanging from a chain secured by a double clip from a dog cable that prevents squirrel entry. My home mix of seed hangs over the steps where it can be viewed while washing dishes and yet is not too close to the slider so as to limit the amount of shells needing to be excised from the door's tract in the spring. Developed after years of trial and error, my home mix begins with bags of black oil sunflower seed and ends with those cheap bags that contain mostly white millet. It's important to not buy the red millet, as the millet is for my much loved, ground feeding Dark Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves who don't seem to care for the red. The black oil seed, to my mind is less messy and is included for everybody else. We store our mix in a lidded metal trash can that we keep in the garage. Weekends are to be spent shopping for bags containing white millet which are added to the can at the precise time when I judge that the can is too heavy on sunflower seed. Good grief, Wayne's choice contains safflower and stripped sunflower!
Why do I even bother?
This is why:
Denny who is head of facilities at the school, found a nest out front and brought it into our kindergarten classroom. Mrs. Eriksson asked me to present it to the class and this is what they had to say: I think it's a black and white peeper's nest. I think it's a Red Jay's nest, a Blue Jay's, a Robin's...The bird wonders where it's home is. I see mud. Where was it found? We should put it back so that the bird can find it! The mom doesn't know where the babies are! Did the babies fall out? What if they are dead or if the mom saved them? I think 3 or 22 babies. Maybe the babies fell out of the nest when the nest fell. And my favorite comment showing wisdom beyond their kindergarten years was, "A teenager bird built the nest." At five and six young years, Vernon's smallest scientists observed the nest, looked at it's size and makeup, making contextual and experiential based guesses, followed by statements of compassion. One student even proposed a possible plan to fix the perceived misfortune.
On the same day, our Principal Mary Ross told me a story about how she found a stunned bird in front of her door. Not knowing what she could do to help the bird, she called her husband who is a bird biologist. Cory told Mary to pick up the bird to see if it would fly away. Instead the bird remained in her hand motionless. Cory then suggested that Mary gently jiggle her hand because, "sometimes they need to be reminded that they have wings to fly." Don't we all Cory?
Caring for those who are smaller, suffer misfortune, seem to be stuck out in the cold or seemingly hungry for our help, makes us better humans. Helping feathered others, distracts us from our long silent winter months and rewards us with a sense of stewardship. It reminds us that though we are often removed from nature (and like Luna longs for birdseed), we still long for a connection with nature. -Norma Manning
Blue Jay by -Paul Miller
Black Capped Chickadee by - Paul Miller
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