Go Watch Birds

My kids started in a new pre-school this week. It was a pretty big change for the entire family. The new school is a Montessori franchise. My kids are in the same room, we are happy about that feature. We have to pack a lunch every day now, the other school provided a lunch. This new school adds about fifteen minutes to my morning commute. The new school is also close to one of the Phoenix public libraries. Tonight when my wife picked the kids up they returned some books and got some new ones. The first book was about some kind of bird that breaks it’s leg on a trampoline. I had to read it twice to my daughter before dinner. The second book I read to her before bed and it led me to thinking about this post.

The second book was about a family of rabbits. I lost count but there were more then five bunny children in this family. The eldest had many chores he was supposed to do before he would get his allowance so he could go to a movie. Well he did not focus on his chores during the week so none of them were complete and his mother would not give him his allowance until they were all finished. One of his chores was to fill the family bird feeders. As it happens the family of rabbits had two, not one but two, tube bird feeders in their back yard. This got me thinking about how birds and all thinks related to birds fill our lives more then we even notice. Now I have an interest in bird so you would image that my back yard is full of many styles of bird feeders. and of course you would be correct.

My kids new school is very bird friendly.  They have bird feeders all over the property. In the kids previous school they made bird feeders of every form and fashion. They made their own suet to put in on of the many suet bird feeders available on the market. They used peanut butter to stick bird seed on pine cones they collected from the neighborhood. One day at my house we finished a bottle of juice and instead of throwing the juice bottle away or recycling it, my kids decided that we should turn it into a bird feeder. So we did this. Our design had some flaws. All we did was cut one side away and fill it with seed and hang it from a tree. The bird would go nowhere near this thing. The first night it was out there the sprinklers filled it with water and the seed proceeded to rot. We were in the back yard trying to figure out where the horrible smell was coming from. It smelled like there was a dead animal in the bushes. Note to self, poke drain holes in the bottom.

The bottom line is that even if you are not a “bird person”, everyone is intrigued by birds in one form or another. We have been feeding them and housing for years. Most people have owned and operated a bird feeder at one point or another. And in school we all made bird feeders and could not wait to get home to hang them out on a tree and watch the bird come and eat the snack we left out for them.

Filed under: Bird Feeders on September 3rd, 2009