Last weekend I was assigned the task of priming and painting our bedrooms. The previous owners had decided to use bold, garish colours, which meant that I was doomed to prime and reprime before I would even have the chance of adding some of our own "style" to the house. Somewhere between coats one and three I ran out of primer and had to go to the nearby Canadian Tire to pick up a fourth gallon of the stuff. i decided to treat myself to a mental break and picked up a bird feeder for our backyard.
Now, here's where my foolish notions kicked in: I thought it would be a delightful surprise for Lynn, because we've only been living in this house for a couple of months and so far we haven't even looked at the backyard. It's just a pile of snow, with a stand of birch trees off in the distance. Not much to look at, and certainly no wildlife. I imagined sitting at the dining room table, drinking freshly brewed coffee, and watching the birds (chickadees, finches, cardinals, and jays) gratefully cluster around the feeder.
I also imagined Lynn holding our yet-to-arrive baby by the patio doors, pointing out the birds and beaming as s/he gurgles in response. And of course our poor neglected cat Spook would find some comfort in pressing himself against the window, switching his tail as each tantalizing feathered treat flits past. Yes, this bird feeder was going to be an excellent addition to our family, one of the touchstones of our day-to-day experience.
After hanging the feeder in a relatively safe and visible location, I scattered some seeds on the ground to attract the birds' notice and waited with great anticipation.
And waited some more.
By the time Lynn returned, three days later, not one bird had shown up. Not a single seed had been taken. My offerings had been spurned; my surprise for Lynn was not the hub of winged life, but simply a hunk of plastic and metal swinging in the wind. Spook noticed nothing. I turned my mind to other things, ignoring the slight disappointment and accepting that any birds that had survived the winter so far had probably already located sufficient food supplies.
Fast forward to this weekend; I'm painting once again (albeit with actual coloured paint, not merely primer), and casting a defeated eye upon our bird feeder when... lo -- in the birch trees in the background I see birds darting from tree to tree. Can they see this source of sustenance only 75 feet away? Yes! A black-capped chickadee flits by and lands on the feeder! My heart leaps, and I hope that this is not a secretive bird, but one that will sing his song of found food to all his brethren. After taking a single seed, he departs, and I am left to wonder whether this is just a chance visit. Will the seed be to his liking? Will he return?
For the rest of the day, every time I wander past the window I look hopefully at the feeder. To my delight, two and sometimes three birds visit at a time; all chickadees, but all welcome. I try to show Spook, but he seems more interested in the window frame; he does not develop an awareness of life on this side of the house.
Not until this morning, when, sitting at the breakfast table with a fresh cup of coffee, I spy a visiting bird at the feeder. Scooping up Spook, I hold him towards the window -- and as the chickadee flits from stem to stem, his body stiffens and he moves smoothly onto the sill. His tail twitches, and the picture in my mind acquires a little more colour. Now, all that it needs for completion is the return of Lynn and the arrival of our baby. I can't wait.
So the thing sat, and sat. And sat. Our older son wandered away and stopped looking at it--after all, it was just a little house on a wooden pole that was starting to blend into the background. About 2 months later, the weather finally got warmer and the birds suddenly discovered it. Within a few days, they had emptied the feeder and we enjoyed every moment of watching the birds.
So we bought a big bad of bird seed and refilled it. The birds kept coming, and I kept refilling it. More birds started making the feeder part of their routine, and soon there was enough flurry around the feeder that they could empty it in one day. One day! Each refill took 2 litres of seed. A huge bag of seed would only last a few days at this pace.
The birds would sit on the rooftops of the houses and watch me refill it, then swoop down and start a feeding frenzy. They would peck each other to get to the feeder and make a mess of it--seeds everywhere.
Then mowing season started, and I noticed that the grass around the feeder was always lush and dark green, to the point that it would grow much much faster than the rest of our lawn. Then I noticed the amount of bird poop these birds were depositing in and around the feeder. Poop into your own food and then eat it? Yech! The poop kept amassing to the point where I dreaded refilling the feeder--it just plain stank now.
So here we were, feeding a plague of locusts who would descend en masse, empty out the feeder in a hurry, fight with each other, and litter the place with scattered seeds and plenty of bird poop. All this at the low price of a huge bag of seed every few days. Needless to say, I was feeling quite disillusioned by the whole affair and feeling increasingly unenthusiastic about the whole thing. This was a far cry from the romantic vision of chirping birds fluttering about and pecking gracefully at their seed as they sang.
The final straw came with the first reports of the bird flue in Ontario, having migrated north from New York and New York state within a year. So now not only did I have a mob of hungry birds who were cleaning me out whenever I refilled the darn feeder and pooping all over the lawn--and increasingly also on the house, where they sat before and after their frenzy, and on anything in between--they were also posing a serious health threat to my young family. We had a small baby in the house now, our second son, and suddenly I wished nothing more than for the birds to go away (and not to come back). So no more bird feeder refills for them.
Did they feel threatened or remorse? I doubt it. Within a few days, they were all gone and stopped coming around. The yard now was a deserted place again, and the feeder sat empty and unattended. It was like nothing had ever happened, except for the lush spot of lawn around the feeder and remnants of bird poop scattered around everywhere.
I never saw them again. About six months later, we sold our house and moved out west. I still have the feeder, but it is sitting outside, empty and serves only as decoration.
--N.