The birds and a brawl at the feeders

by Roland D. Hallee

It’s a new year!

Boy, that was a news flash.

Anyway, we’ve turned the calendar to a new year, the holidays have passed, and we are now settling into the reality of at least three months of winter.
Over the recent week or so, we’ve experienced some messy weather, and the aches and pains of moving the snow – and anything else that nature throws our way.
With all of this turbulence, there is one thing that still brightens my day, and that is watching the birds at the feeding stations.

Following a couple of years where my wife stopped feeding the birds because of the constant battle with squirrels (I know, squirrels have to eat, too), she decided to give it another try. This year, she was introduced to a new bird seed (Spiced Food), one that repels squirrels, and decided to try it. Besides relocating the feeders that make them less accessible to the little gray rodents, the new seeds have been a success.

I have seen squirrels (that would be Martha and Stewart) sit on the porch railing and assess the situation, knowing that what is going through their clever little minds is trying to figure out how to attack the stations. Well, they have tried, and they have failed.

Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), Mitch’s sister Cathy (Veronica Cartright), and his mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy), prepare to escape Bodega Bay while the birds gathered by the thousands, driving every resident from the hamlet. Internet photo

In the meantime, the activity around the feeders has been remarkable. Every day we see a plethora of birds coming and going: chickadees, nut­hatches, gold finch, cardinals, house finches, the occasional titmouse, and the most unlikely of all, a hairy woodpecker. We have lots of crows and bluejays around, but so far have stayed away from the feeders.

Sometimes there are more birds than there are feeding stations. That causes a problem, for the birds that is. They engage in a little bit of rough housing. Maybe that is what is keeping the crows and blue jays at bay.

That is fine with me.

Ironically, my wife and I, following a hectic weekend, sat and watched the Alfred Hitchcock classic film, The Birds, last Sunday night. As we watched the birds, mostly crows and seagulls, take over the small hamlet of Bodega Bay, supposedly located north of San Francisco, driving out all its residents, I really didn’t make a correlation between that, and the birds that have, literally, taken over my side porch at the house.

What if…?

That could never happen, could it?

Monday morning saw me standing at my kitchen window, watching as the onslaught continued at the bird feeders. My imagination, which has been described as a little on the strange side at times, began to take over. What if those little feathered creatures came to the conclusion there wasn’t enough food or feeding stations, and decided to try to enter the house to get at the feed bag? Maybe they could even engage the cooperation of the squirrels.

Slap! Slap! Wake up, and get a hold of yourself. They are only tiny little creatures. They couldn’t possibly do the kind of damage those big birds did in that film. Could they?