For the birds

It’s hard to take a picture of crystal and have it turn out like it really looks.   I actually knocked that little bird feeder off its shelf and scattered eight million teeny little Swarovski crystals all over the carpet.  I spent hours picking them up.  That’s probably why the crystals don’t photograph as sparkly as they should – they are covered in carpet fuzz.

One of the things I vowed to be more diligent about was feeding our avian friends.  The real ones, not the Swarovski crystal eating ones.  I’ve been keeping the feeders full at our house and the hummingbird feeder full at my Dad’s. 

Hummingbirds are funny – they look all sweet and innocent but you should see the turf wars that go on in my Dad’s back yard.   There is one hummingbird that feels like the feeder is his and he is determined to keep all other hummingbirds away from it.  I don’t know when he sleeps.  As soon as another bird approaches the feeder he comes swooping out of the trees and chases them off. 

I actually gave up having a hummingbird feeder up on my deck because the hummingbirds were dive bombing me when I walked out there.  Like I could be mistaken for a hummingbird.   Those advertisements for hummingbird feeders where there are eight hummingbirds happily eating out of the feeder have to be photo-shopped.  There’s no way.  They are not that cooperative.

I have wanted a bird feeder like this one for ever.  There is a great, overpriced nursery by our house and they had a version of this feeder and they want $200 for it.   So for now the birds in my garden eat out of a $30 feeder just fine, thank you very much.  It’s actually a bird feeding technological wonder.  It’s basically like a standard tube feeder only it’s divided into three sections, one on top of each other.  There are about nine feeding stations and each section has it’s own compartment of food so all three levels empty at the same rate.  Rather than having it empty from the top down (where towards the end only the bottom stations are usable).

I even filled the suet holder yesterday.  Ick.  The first time I did it I was all grossed out by the lard aspect. It was impossible to get the lump of suet into the feeder without half of it smearing all over me.  It was like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube.  Then someone told me to freeze the blocks of suet first – they just slip into the feeder with minimal mess.

I’ve always said that if I come back in another life as an animal I hope it’s a bird.  I just don’t want to be a bug or lard eating bird.  I’ll come back as a crystal eating one.