I made the slightest change to the bird-feeding stations. The hanging feeder was often out of sight when I was relaxing in my spacious office-bedroom-digital publishing center.
To change this, I installed two screw-hooks into the eaves and moved the
Jackson EZ Bird Swing closer to the house, using one vacant hook for the hanging feeder from Lowe's, the best $10 I ever spent. This placed the most-used feeder in the line of sight for Mrs. Ichabod and me.
She approved, but the birds did not. The area, often teeming with birds and squirrels. became vacant, as if I had put a
Kitty Training Center sign on the Butterfly Bush.
Birds do not trust anything new, even this slight adjustment in all the feeders - hanging, platform, Finch, and suet baskets. The configuration changed and they stayed away in droves.
Birds follow a distinctive pattern in their feeding behavior, easily noticed among flocks. The scout bird lands first and is quite tentative. If the scout spots anything new, different, or moving, he is gone.
If all is well, the others slowly join. But if a scout bird takes off from anything strange, everyone leaves at once. If doves are in the mix, there exit noise (wings and distress call) make quite a racket.
Flight from movement presented a problem for the birds when I first set up the feeders, since we create movement in the background by walking by them. But they became used to it and now feed happily as we watch from a few inches away.
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Old Buckeye could not be startled from his meals,
and used my squirrel baffle for standing on and shaking loose seeds
from the squirrel-proof birdfeeder. If he jiggled the closed gate,
he could get the seeds to drop into his ruthless, rodent mouth. |
Squirrels are the most tenacious in time, reacting in stages according to their familiarity with a feeding place:
- Pushing off as soon as anyone appears or moves.
- Waiting until something noisy or dramatic happens.
- Flinching and waiting a few seconds, then feeding - no matter what.
The Bella Vista squirrels were shameless, fearless, and impossible to distract from their raid of the squirrel-proof bird feeder.
I moved the hanging birdfeeder yesterday morning, and the area became quiet. Sunflower seeds filled the hanging feeder and mounded up on the platform feeder, but no creature arrived. Late in the afternoon, one squirrel sat and ate from the platform. Annoyed, I opened the window and he jumped away, not returning to the newly designated danger zone.
Today should mark a slow return to the feeders, but I am patient. Those who install a birdfeeder for the first time will wait weeks for the birds to call it a regular stop, but those birds remember and expect to be fed. Jays and Robins have called to me, from close-up, to remind me of my responsibilities, and Chickadees have made themselves known.
Birds are not dependent on us, as some warn, but we are dependent on them. They appreciate extra food in relation to the shortage at the moment. When trees and bushes are coated with ice, they are almost completely bereft of those tasty insects lodged in the bark and wintering in bushes. Leaf litter and mulch are also sources for birds and other creatures, so a variety of natural food will attract and keep a diverse selection of wildlife.
Supercold will also make birds and all creatures eager for extra food. They burn too many calories to stay alive in 20 below weather with strong winds. Then the little bits of food scorned before will be treasured by the hungry creatures. In New Ulm I saw squirrels chew kernels of corn from the ice when the weather was cold and sleet coated everything.
Creatures may seem thankless when scooping out food to get what they want most, but God does not waste anything. The food on the ground will be patiently picked up by doves and other ground feeders. I noticed Jays landing on the ground to eat corn loosened from the feeder by squirrels. The wet and gummy old birdseed from a long rainstorm will sit in piles on the ground, but sparrows will glean all the nutrition from that source and leave nothing, except sometimes a kernel of corn or a sunflower will later germinate in the soft litter around the feeder.
Our gardening birds and squirrels planted corn in the rose garden and a lone stalk was growing vigorously in the sun until I cut it down.
People are now more grateful for the Word, not that there is a drought in the land. Unbelievers and rationalists can go through the motions and use the faith-words like magic wands, but they offer nothing satisfying. A current graphic has Joel Osteen's Bible (unused) for sale on eBay, but worse yet is the hollow language used by apostate Lutherans to mislead believers.
Like sparrows, many of us are scrounging in the used market and book sales for real classics. The great books of the Reformation are scooped and pawed away by the big birds of Lutherdom. They want to be current on megachurches, multi-site, and marketing.
For almost 100 years, the Synodical Conference has growled "False Doctrine" when anything outside their UOJ circle was mentioned. Granted the Muhlenberg tradition (General Council and General Synod) could be obtuse about the
Four Open Questions, but even the rock-ribbed Wisconsin Synod - a member of the General Council for a time - could have pastors who agreed with the wobbly Iowa Synod.
Wiki:
In the 1860s, the Wisconsin Synod became increasingly conservative along the Lutheran viewpoint and against the Reformed. In the synod convention of 1867, the synod joined the General Council, a group of Neolutheran synods that left the General Synod because it sought to compromise Lutheran doctrine in order to join with non-Lutheran American Protestantism. However, some pastors in the Wisconsin Synod agreed with the "open questions" position of the Iowa Synod that some doctrines could be left unresolved and good Lutherans could agree to disagree about them.[4]
More importantly, the Synodical Conference slowly moved away from
Justification by Faith, which was taught in its 1905 German Catechism - and still is in the KJV Small Catechism from CPH.
As we all know - wink wink - the Masonic Lodge remained a major force in the ELS (George Orvick's parish), in WELS (welcome lodge members kicked out of Missouri!), and the noble, haughty, holier than thou Missouri Synod. John Brug told me how his Pennsylvania parish was full of Masons, and so did a Missouri Synod circuit pastor. Orvick grew his Madison parish by taking in lodge members.
Justification by Faith - in contrast - is not an Open Question. Justification by Faith is the Chief Article of Christianity. But these seminaries -
- The Sausage Factory in Mordor, WELS,
- The Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie, ELS,
- The Surrendered Fortress - Ft. Wayne, LCMS, and
- The Pope's Own - St. Louis, LCMS -
teach Justification without Faith, Universal Absolution without Faith, and Universal Salvation without Faith.
The Synod Presidents - Mirthless Mark Schroeder, Matt the Fatt Harrison, and Pope John the Malefactor - are scared to death of actual doctrinal discussions, where laity and pastors can question and study what is going wrong among the Lutherans.
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"Happy to serve you -
as fresh mutton for the Kingdom of Satan." |
The current Synodical Conference teaching is like those bottled up seeds I found in large glass jars in the closet in the CLC church in New Ulm. The living seeds had been stored so long that no birds or squirrels would touch them when dumped on the ground. The seeds were dead and moldy from being stored in the dark, dank closet and left alone, perhaps for decades. We let the bacteria, fungi, and bugs reclaim what was once a treasure.
The members and seminary students are being starved, fed the putrid seed of rationalistic Pietism, the very dogma of ELCA itself. To dress it up, the LCMS-WELS-ELS machine garnishes the moldy meal with Church Growth, Emergent Church, entertainment, and the hellish lure of popcorn and soda at the seeker services.
The pastors sit numb and mute, waiting for someone else to ask about the acceleration of decline, the burial of the Reformation while celebrating the 500th year in 2017.
