Recycled Container is for the Birds

Late last fall, I bought some bay scallops from the market on the corner. They were delicious in a clear stock with carrots, celery, and leeks.

The plastic container displayed a 5, which meant I couldn’t put it in the recycling. So I nailed it to the wooden sill outside the bedroom window and filled it with birdseed. Sylvie and I were soon watching small winter birds eye-to-eye.

Last week a marauding squirrel, intent on the peanut mother lode, made a daring leap from the porch roof to the makeshift birdfeeder. I hardly believed my eyes when I saw it scrabbling for a paw-hold on the smooth plastic rim, half a second before it fell twelve feet to the earth, pulling the cup down with it.

Too bad the cat was asleep - she would have enjoyed that spectacle. I poked my head out the window to see if the audacious little rodent was okay. It sat up on its haunches, wiped its whiskers, and bounded off for the neighbor’s yard.

This morning I finally got around to tapping a new nail into the sill and reinstalling the container. Even though I continued to fill the other feeder - the expensive wooden one from Audubon - apparently many birds, including most of the tufted titmice, prefer the open cup. As soon as it was back in place, a flurry of feathered visitors dropped by. Air-traffic control was sorely needed as a chickadee and the red-breasted nuthatch narrowly, and noisily, avoided colliding mid-air. An enthusiastic white-breasted nuthatch overshot the landing strip and bounced off the window into the bowl.

At the bowl today: black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, red-breasted nuthatch, Carolina wren, white-breasted nuthatch, brave-hearted (aka dark-eyed) junco (never seen ‘em on the windowsill before), house finch, blue jay (teetering precariously).

On the feeder: downy woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, red-breasted nuthatch, black-capped chickadee, American goldfinch. Last year’s male red-bellied woodpecker has not yet made an appearance.

There was also a pair of cardinals on the ground, probably feeding on the spillage. The nuthatches in particular seem to throw a lot of seeds aside, almost as if they weigh them and only take the heaviest ones away to be hammered into hiding places beneath the walnut tree bark.