Sparrow me the details

We hung up the birdfeeder May 20th and waited for the birds to show up.

And they did not.

Maybe they were waiting for the raccoons to invite them to the party: Hey, look, we know this seedy joint.  It’s a real dive, but the chow is great.  C’mon in!

I woke up this morning to find the handle pulled straight up on the mini-trashcan, but with the new tape (next step: bungee cords) it was firmly keeping a lid on it.  And then, finally, this evening, a sparrow was darting around the porch, checking it out. But–but–guys! Isn’t that always how it is! You hear of a great new place, you finally go, and the health department or something shut the joint down already!

Crum.  It pecked uncertainly at the concrete next to the can.

Bird. The seed. It’s hanging, right up there above your beak, don’t you see it? You know? Where you fly?

Nope. It flitted hither and yarn like a knitter with a bad case of startitis.

That did it. I’d been thinking about it for awhile.  There was a loose spot in a metal brace, part of the awning near where the feeder was hanging from; I tried to push some twine through the gap.  It wouldn’t go. I went back in the house, got a dpn that hadn’t been used on a sock in a long time, poked at it, and finally, got it cast on.

I looped that twine around the top of a small dead branch and hung it up there.  My thought was to give them something woodsy and comfortable for them to perch on and then make the jump over from.  Maybe they like to zigzag their way in, the way we’d seen some feeding their young.

Not three minutes later that sparrow, which I’d scared off, had come back and had found its way to it and another bird had flown straight to the feeder.  Three minutes.  After waiting nearly three weeks and getting, after that jay had been twirled off like a two-year-old on a carousel the first morning, not one single one.

All it took for the bird life to respond to food in plastic packaging was to add a little nature to the scenery in the restaurant. Who knew.