Face Each Day as Resolutely as This Cat

Training Birds for the Creation Garden

Birds are extremely intelligent. They are also paradoxical. The largest (crows) are the most wary of danger, and the smallest (hummingbirds) are the most daring. I have had a hummingbird dart in and out of the garden hose spray, a few feet away, as I watered plants.

People sometimes observe birds without really engaging in their well-being. The Creation Garden depends upon their help, so the birds are trained to help out.

The first necessity is water for bathing. Birds have to bathe to re-arrange their feathers. Without the feathers washed and lined up (preened), they do not fly well.

We keep three birdbaths in the backyard. Two are children's pools on the ground and one is a shallow cement dish off the ground. The baths require regular hosing because they get dirty and moldy from sunshine and bird organics. However, that also proves how valuable clean baths are to birds and other creatures.

To keep birds around the yard, we give them an abundant water supply.

Birdfeeders do not work well for us because the squirrels empty or break them. The most I will do in the winter is to hang suet (animal fat) in metal mesh boxes. Squirrels may take a few licks, but the biggest demand comes from bug-eaters like the woodpeckers, starlings, and chickadees.

Letting bushes of all types grow and letting the garden remain trashy are ways to feed birds and have them discuss their paradise on Letha Dive. Larvae overwinter on stems and bark, so birds have something to snack on. A warm wet winter also means earthworms near the surface, moving the mulch and spotted from perches, pure protein for the discerning. Word gets around. Crows and starlings occupy high branches and scout for food. They are like the all-seeing eyes of Dr. Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby.

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic— their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose." 

I have always loved to see bluejays in the yard. They were plentiful in Midland, a city of birdf-eeders and well fed birds. I enjoyed the bell-like sound they made when contented. They sounded for me in the yard and even in the neighborhood.

We had bluejays nesting in our bush in Bella Vista. I made a point of delivering food to the parents  daily, who watched me drop off piles of sunflower seeds.