Seaway NEws
You no doubt remember Julie Andrews singing ‘Feed The Birds’ in 1964. When I moved from Toronto to Eastern Ontario about a baker’s dozen years later I started doing just that.
Since I officially became a resident of Ingleside, our bird feeding has taken place on a 17′ by 20′ deck enclosed by a tall wall of cedars, a brick wall and a patio door, and shaded by an enormous maple tree older than the St. Lawrence Seaway.
In Julie’s song, the little old bird woman cries out, “Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag!” We do, but by a barter system (of photography) we are rewarded with a large bag of dry, harvest-ready corn on the cob. Plus, we purchase several 50-pound bags of mixed bird seed and peanuts in the shell. That costs us about $400 a year to feed ourfine feathered friends. That’s less than most of our friends spend on green fees, attending NHL games, or keeping bartenders busy.
Who are our customers? In alphabetical order, they include blue jays, cardinals, Carolina wrens, chickadees, crows, downy woodpeckers, goldfinches, grackles, hairywoodpeckers, mourning doves, sparrows and starlings.
The raucous blue jays are the most skilled at plucking peanuts out of the Slinky-toy type of dispenser. The chickadees are the fastest at coming, snatching andgoing. Our three crows merely make noisy reconnaissance overflights to attract our attention. We feed them scraps and cat food on the back lawn. The downy and hairy woodpeckers dine only on suet. We admire the grackles for their iridescent blue shoulders. They amuse us by their habit of staring upwards with their beady eyes. The mourning doves aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree. They peck at the absolutely bare sections of the deck, apparently oblivious to the little mounds of feed we place out. The sparrows make their rounds, content to glean whatever they can. They are first to arrive at dawn, and usually are the last to leave at dusk. Our band of starlings have as many freckles as a fawn and Meghan Markle (Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry’s wife) combined.
To date, for some reason, absolutely no cormorant, great blue herons, not a single passenger pigeon nor penguin come for handouts. Do any of you birders out there have any explanation for their complete absence?
Our feathered friends seem to be of Spanish origin, as most indulge in an afternoon siesta. We do too.
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