Nature Notes: For the Birds

The winter birds are here and hungry. The Pennys haven’t had a winter feeding station out for more than five years running — no more rats, but very few birds. Having been recently stimulated by watching visitors feed the birds at the Morton Wildlife Refuge a few blocks down the road in Noyac, I decided it was time for me to return to the practice. My understanding of avian ways had become blurred because I had stopped observing them at close range. One bird was just like another, just as all the different gulls are called seagulls, all trees are oaks or pines, and all Americans are European, Asian, African-American, Latin American, or American Indian.

So I erected a feeding station outside my bedroom window made from a four-foot-diameter plastic tabletop mounted upside down five feet off the ground on a single iron fencepost. The table had a two-inch-wide down-turned lip, which became upturned when the table surface faced down. The underside had plastic ridges acting as spines and holes from which the four plastic legs had been removed. The compartments created by the supportive spines and pockets for the leg inserts would allow me to put different kinds of seeds, berries, and corn kernels in each area. The pockets could be filled with water so that the bird could eat, drink, and be merry at the same time.

I would keep the pesky squirrels away by situating the elevated feeding table six feet away from the nearest tree. I bought a big bag of mixed birdseed and added it to my smaller bag of black sunflower seeds, put the seed out, and waited for the birds to come. The first day not a single bird showed, but a gray squirrel did. It had no trouble jumping the six feet from the longstanding black cherry onto the feeding table, where it sat up nonchalantly and chowed down the black sunflower seeds one after another. It obviously had been watching my efforts to create a squirrel-free birdfeeder from above and quite possibly was amused by it.

I opened the window and growled and banged on the panes. The gray squirrel correctly interpreted my animated growls and knocks, quickly jumped off the feeding table on to the cherry, and up it went. I had clearly underestimated its ability to raid the site.

I scratched my head, got a role of aluminum flashing from the basement, and wrapped and nailed several strips of it around the cherry trunk. Ah, I thought, I wouldn’t let wily squirrel outsmart me two times in a row. Just as planned, the flashing worked, the squirrel couldn’t get a grip on it. Failing to do that, it merely climbed up the shingles on the side of the house facing the feeding table and in less than 20 minutes was back atop the table eating the sunflower seeds.

I spent the next two days growling out the window and banging on the panes. I was not going to move the feeding table. I was not going to let the squirrel get the best of me. After keeping the squirrel away for two days, the birds began to show. At first two tufted titmice came, one at a time, each taking a sunflower seed and departing as quickly as it arrived. It began to rain, and the compartments filled with precipitation. I drilled several weep holes through the bottom of the table, and the water drained out slowly.

After three days, five different species — titmice, white-throated sparrows, song sparrows, male and female cardinals, and a pair of blue jays — were routinely visiting the feeding table. On the fourth day a black-capped chickadee showed up. I was in business!

Once or twice each day I would have to throw open the sash and growl at the gray squirrel, which was determined to get the best of me. That methodology, although hard on the neighbors, worked to a fashion. The squirrel’s raids became fewer and fewer. More birds showed up, and I was happy that they were getting most of the food and that I could still tell a sparrow from a jay, a male cardinal from its much duller mate. I had succeeded, notwithstanding the bungling and poor planning, the birds were back and feeding to their hearts’ content, and, yes, an occasional squirrel, but not a rat in sight.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].