My wife and I like to feed and watch the songbirds around our place. During the winter, I am sure the birds need all the help they can get.
I am all for helping nature where it needs it.
But there came a time in the spring when I decided there was enough food in the wild and we were creating a generation of welfare recipient birds.
Why go out and look for food — they had to be thinking — when that nice lady will come feed us if we wait long enough.
When my wife finally ran out of bird seed, she stopped refilling the feeders rather than making an emergency trip to town. The grandson started becoming concerned when a week went by and he did not help Nanna refill the feeders.
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The mood in the trees and on the fences near the feeders was turning ugly. I would go out in the morning to leave for work and there would be assorted little birds giving me a dirty look, as though it was my fault they had to go into the pasture to look for food.
It WAS my fault, but how were they to know. My wife would walk down the driveway to get the mail, followed by an assortment of birds doing their best to look pathetic. This was the nice lady and
she was not being nice to them. I am old and tough. I could ignore a bunch of free-loading birds. My wife is much too kind.
While at the store, she found a type of bird seed that contained fruit and nuts. It looks and smells much too good to feed to birds. She also found thistle seed that contained cracked and chopped sunflower seeds. This combination of feed made all the little birds happy, and they told their friends about it.
The nut and fruit blend has attracted an assortment of birds we have never had at out feeders. I have seen rose-breasted grosbeaks in the timber, but did not know they would come to a feeder. We now have several pair. The sunflower nuts and thistle seed draws in about 50 pair of goldfinches, but also some purple finches and a pair of indigo buntings. When the buntings appeared, I decided I might as well quit begrudging the birds a free meal and join in with the fun. I bought some grape jelly for the Baltimore orioles, and helped my wife set up the hummingbird feeders.
To drink a cup of coffee on the porch in the morning now is a show of color and sound. We have more birds of a larger variety then ever before. The persistence of a group of angry little birds has paid off, both for them and me. I enjoy the show as much as they enjoy the food. My wife no longer has to feel we are being mean to the birds and the grandson is learning about a wide variety of birds from the experience as well as what it takes to make a dependent society.
