If You Build It, They Will Come...

Kerry picked a 101 degree, cloudless day to work on the pond with me as his lucky assistant! It's been needing a tune-up since we discovered a leak in the waterfall that can empty the pond in a day with the pump on. After lots of heavy lifting of pavers and boulders, scraping off of mortar, and scrubbing of algae it was finally finished.

The birds immediately noticed and appreciated our efforts. I thought this was the perfect time to hang the new bird feeder, too. It's sleek and modern looking; but apparantly was not designed to feed the larger birds we get, like the doves and blue jays. It's been rather comical watching them try to figure out how to eat. The first contender stood on the branch above just looking at the feeder for a while. I'm sure he was thinking, "That's for nothing, lady!" When he finally attempted to fly over and land on a perch, it was painfully obvious that he was too big. I've never seen a bird look so uncoordinated before! Eventually he steadied himself and was ready to attempt eating. Again, the design conflict was apparent. Each time he leaned over to eat from the hole near his feet, he'd lose balance and almost fall off. But we've got stubborn doves and he figured out a solution: stand on the bottom perch and eat from a higher hole.

It works, although still requires special care not to fall off. Now everyone wants in on the action- doves, sparrows, blue jays, chickadees, and even squirrels. Our monkey of a squirrel has been hanging upside down by his feet and eating from the top hole in the feeder. But again, our adaptable doves find a way to make it work and wait in the grass below to eat all the seeds he drops. This week I stopped by Wildbirds Unlimited and joked that we were torturing our doves. Wouldn't you know there's a solution to our problem? A plastic tray that easily screws on to the bottom of the feeder for the larger birds to stand on. I'm partly sad that there will be no more "dizzy dove shows"; but the whole family is enjoying watching all of our new guests.