Therapy Or Diversion: Bird Feeders Are Fun

Call it therapy–from the mundane and stressful.

Or call it a quality diversion–from reading, writing, landscaping and pondering politics, Putin and the Polar Vortex.

If you’re fortunate enough to have some greenery where you live, consider buying a bird feeder. Seriously. Frankly, I don’t know how my wife and I had gone forever without one. Now call it omission impossible no more.

We have a backyard corner of mature crotons, a schefflera and a large ligustrum that is more thick tree than untrimmed bush. Plus, there’s some open, ideal bird-feeding space as well as a nearby statue of St. Francis of Assisi, who, we are now reminding ourselves, felt as one with all creation and was said to communicate directly with animals.

Hopefully, it’s not a sacrilege that St. Francis is still bedecked with Gasparilla beads.

Anyway, after some online research, we settled on the $30 Squirrel Buster Standard. It’s cylindrical, hangs via a negative grip tube from a pole and has a weight adjustable closing mechanism that shuts out–although it doesn’t totally discourage–squirrels.

First, you feel good for doing something helpful. Maybe the bar is set too low for good feelings, but you do. You like to think you’re abetting nature–not messing with the backyard version of the law of the jungle. Rudyard Kipling, if not Charles Darwin, would approve.

Second, it’s entertaining. When it’s not, it’s mesmerizing. On second thought, this should be first. I love seeing the pecking order and avian protocols. We–OK, I–have already assigned names, starting with (Cardinal) “Spellman” and “Claudia” (Cardinale). Yes, those names are generational. You’ll want to leave your opera glasses near the closest room with a view.

Blue jays and cardinals definitely predominate, but morning doves are more than bland bystanders. There are four feeder perches, but typically only one is in use at a time. Not that others aren’t interested–or looming. They can be seen on nearby bushes, fencing and trees waiting in the wings for next up. New, ever lower flight paths and perch patterns can be easily observed.

Protocol busters are the squirrels. They don’t discourage easily. It’s a hoot.

But, you know, they count too. I mean, what would St. Francis say?

So, you guessed it, we now have a separate, squirrel-friendly feeder with peanuts in another corner of the yard. Rocky and his gymnastic friends scarf ’em up in a heartbeat–but still take those frustrating, perversely entertaining flyers on the Squirrel Buster Standard.

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