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Saturday, May 6, 2017

Living in an Aviary

When my family was young, we always had quite a menagerie. My daughter was usually the culprit when it came to adding on to our collection of critters. We prefer furry ones....dogs, cats and bunnies....or feathered ones, shying away from reptiles, especially snakes. At one point we considered having an aviary in our home, since we really didn't like the idea of keeping our birds cramped in cages. We fantasized about a room-sized aviary that we could walk into just off the dining room. It was only a dream and never came to be, and now that I think about it, it would be one huge place to keep up, it could be smelly...... and the birds would still actually be in a cage.

The last few years, since I love to watch birds in the wild so much, I've been feeding them in my yard wherever I'm living. There's never been much interest shown at my bird feeders, though, until this year. There's a huge, fat palm tree in our patio in Palm Springs, sometimes referred to as "the elephant in the room", and this year I took a notion to hang a cage that holds a brick of birdseed on it's stubby, toothy, chopped off frond. I added a sort of suet block as well, only it's made from peanuts and it doesn't melt all over the ground like the beef suet does in the desert heat. Soon after, I had quite an audience. Mostly the crowd consisted of red and orange house finches and white-crowned sparrows, with mourning doves foraging on the ground and hummingbirds sucking on their own feeder. 
On the colored brick wall, next to the Ficus hedge, I set a little ceramic bird feeder that I made years ago and a little flat dish which I keep loaded with already shelled sunflower seeds. It seemed logical that the birds would have an easier time without having to deal with shells, and there would be less mess for us to clean up. 
It's been delightful to watch the little finches work their way down through the bushes to the wall to poke their heads into the holes of the feeder to get the seeds. We must be on some sort of flyway, or at least the word has got out about our bird buffet. If I sit quietly and write, the birds ignore me and go about their business of feeding their families.

Sometimes as I'm writing out on the patio, I have to pause to witness an argument, or bird fight over exactly who's feeders these are. Mostly I just look up to appreciate how up close and personal I am to these beautiful creatures.


Most of them gather in our overgrown bougainvillea on our patio. There is always a cacophony of chirping and chortling and tweeting. There may even be a nest in there, but it's so dense that I can't tell. They joyfully whistle and chirp and call and then they suddenly stop as one. It's as if a grand maestro has raised his arms and said "Stop". There's a startling silence, it's quiet for awhile, until a soloist starts warbling once more.


Those warblers are so amazing! Their songs are so loud and carry such a long way, that I thought they must be pretty big birds. One day though, a bird the size of a hummingbird came down to check out a Lantana plant, and warbled while he was there. I looked him up on Merlin Bird ID on my phone, and found he was a Warbling Vireo. I played his powerful song from the phone and it matched the one that serenades me in the yard!                                       

Speaking of hummingbirds though, they are very curious little guys. I have my potter's wheel out on the patio, and sometimes I'll hear the thrum of their rapidly moving wings close by and look up to see one hovering in front of me and checking me out. One also darted under the awning when we were sitting out there having our first drink since arriving in Palm Springs. "Well Hello", I said, "Yes we are back, and I'll get right on filling your feeder!"

Just a little bit of trivia.... Did you know how hummingbirds hover? They move their wings in a figure 8 about 100 times a second!
Once this season I went to a nursery to buy plants, and one of the workers there asked if I had ever seen a baby hummingbird. She led me over to a lemon tree (that was for sale), and showed me the tiny nest that had four little brown things inside. I thought they looked like little brown capsules with a fuzzy mohawk all around the edge. Their tiny heads must have been tucked under and I just saw the body, since they have to eat somehow! I couldn't get close enough to see.

Anyway, here I am sitting in the most wonderful aviary one could ever want. Sometimes I'm reminded of Cinderella, and all her little bird friends. The Mourning Doves are coo-cooing, the Mockingbird is perched high on a treetop recounting everything that happened to him last night, with many choruses, the hummers are sipping at their nectar, and the finches are climbing through the bush. Even an occasional Verdin hops through with it's bright yellow head, scavenging some of the seeds others have dropped. It's a little bit of heaven for me.....and for them too. No cages are involved.