Strictly for the birds …

I have been trying to resist boring you all with a topic that is strictly for the birds, but resistance has proved useless.

I took advantage of the Word of the Day the other day (it was drunk) to rant about how I had to stop feeding the birds with my bird-feeders because of an invading horde of pigeons, seen here in the flesh:

IMG_0291

The pigeons were not strictly my fault, as they are ground fed by a well-meaning but seriously deluded person in the commercial establishment that abuts our backyard, but their poop became my problem as it graced many vehicles on the block, especially the car fanatic’s all black collection two doors to the south, not to mention that they were taking up residence in attics everywhere, rent free.  [We had long ago found a pigeon’s egg in our attic, so we were a little more accepting of the whole situation, or I should say I was. Hubby took it pretty hard.]

It was with a heavy heart that I took down the feeders, which had brought me much pleasure, and I know had also helped make our front yard the oasis it had become for some of the neighbourhood wee ones.  The problem with the feeders was the scattered seed, and while I developed schemes in my head for vast saucers that pigeons couldn’t stand on because of thin guy wires and little nasty spikes, it suddenly dawned on this dim bulb that a suet cake might at least feed the chickadees.  And then, as the bulb grew brighter, it occurred to me that I could use up the four hundred or so pounds [kilos I know, this is Canada, but I still haven’t had imperial measurements beaten out of me by the re-education camps] of bird seed I had so wisely purchased, by making home made suet cakes.

And to the internet I turned, and with great success.  Crunchy Peanut butter and lard are the key ingredients, and then some oats and corn meal to bind it – but the sky is the limit as to the rest of it all – last time we had real cranberries left from Christmas, and I whirred them in the food processor with nuts.  You melt the first two ingredients, remove from heat, and stir in the rest.  It was about two pounds of lard and an equal amount of peanut butter.  Then about maybe four cups of oats and corn meal altogether and four cups of birdseed and a couple of cups of the lightly chopped nuts and berries.   Cool in some sort of pan and then stuff into suet cages.  A six year old and a hose would be useful at this point, or perhaps a pair of rubber gloves if that is more to hand.  Apparently I should have (and now am, yeah, more savings!) saved onion bags to use.   But next time is taking a long time to come, as the filled cages last a long time.  But a steady steam of birds comes to the porch in the mornings especially, and the neighbours cars are shiny again.

Me, I liked the pigeons, as did the merlin that ate this one

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in its entirety, on our front walk, and I never really understood the problem, but sometimes you just have to be a team player.

The birds, on the other hand, seem to prefer the new medium.  Perhaps the message they had been trying to send with their scattered seed had been erased by the multitude of pigeon feet time and again, and now they have suck-seeded, so to beak.  All that effort just to stick it to the squirrels, who are now left out of the entire seeding frenzy:

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[That funny green stuff in the background is plant material, in case you have forgotten what the ground looks like when it isn’t frozen.
I know it has been a while – I can tell by the scratch marks on my wall.]

So if it is all for the birds, it might as well be all for the birds, was and is my conclusion.

Happy feeding.

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31 Responses to Strictly for the birds …

  1. Pete Maravich says:

    I would happily trade places with a bird for a day, or longer. I have a bird bath out back, and it stays remarkably clean until the crows show up and immediately trash it, leaving remnants of things from who knows where, if i could pit them against the pigeons……

  2. Pete Maravich says:

  3. Dude Stacker says:

    A round of Turdus migratorius. Fortunately, there was a bumper crop of crabapples last year. They showed up Monday, other years almost always in February, but never in these numbers- upwards of 40

  4. Dude Stacker says:

    You were constrained by your topic to post GP w/ the Byrds. I’m not, so here he is w/ Emmylou Harris. Same song at 21:25.

  5. Pete Maravich says:

    77 here today, storms rolling in later this evening, 29 overnight, spring is trying but winter is stubborn. Shorts and flips on the menu.

  6. Pete Maravich says:

  7. xty says:

    I don’t know why that didn’t display the first time. But the inter webs were just being weird, all because I tried to post this picture of my birdbath from last summer, giving us all hope.

  8. xty says:

    These two people, Anders Drerup and Kelly Prescott, did a great show about Gram Parsons and here they are, agreeing that love hurts:

  9. xty says:

    Excuse the hideous broccoli in the front left of my garden photo – it was a poor choice but I hated to kill it. Not going to try that again.

  10. xty says:

    I forgot to say they are local Ottawa valley people, and we went and saw the show and it was excellent. Bizarrely excellent. But there was beer …

  11. Dude Stacker says:

    This should be the one for Pete, not above. Xty, may or may not have been your birdbath, I was trying to post same time and it seems that youtube made my paster get stuck. Tried to edit a couple times, always came back GP, not SM, and finally froze up altogether.

  12. xty says:

    Wow – is our dollar ever in the toilet – I hadn’t been watching things in the right currency. Interesting – either a return to an historic norm, or something else. I am sure I could figure out a way to lose my shirt on an arbitrage play. But a vacation in Canada must be looking awfully cheap when you have them big dollars to spend.

  13. xty says:

    Maybe we jinxed it by posting at the exact same time.

  14. Pete Maravich says:

    well, you guys are preventing from doing things that i need to do, like making phone calls that i don’t want to make, its ok though, once i get started my momentum is something to behold.

  15. Pete Maravich says:

  16. EO says:

    Silver is still blowing chunks. Something has to give. Either silver has to start doing better, or gold has to start doing worse. If things stay like this, there’s no end to how high the gold-silver ratio can go, which would just drive another nail in the coffin of all the faith-based stackers out there.

    Just my opinion, as always, and worth every penny you paid for it.

  17. EO says:

    gold chart

  18. EO says:

    silver chart

  19. EO says:

    My gut tells me gold is trading like a safe haven on the Ukraine, while silver is trading like an industrial metal on worries about a China slowdown.

    My snarky side says “silver is the new copper”, and that’s why I’m selling mine as fast as is practical. I need the money for tuition for two kids in college this fall, and a bathroom remodel, anyway.

    I continue to recommend Provident Metals as a great buyer. If you call, tell Sheerah I said “Hi”. We are getting to be on a first name basis now.

    copper chart

  20. EO says:

    tunes before I hit the sack.

  21. EO says:

    Found this one just now. Seems pretty good.

    3 Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode

    I was thinking about something tangentially related today. It occurred to me that next time you hear a tea partier ranting about immigration reform, gay marriage, birth control, or abortion, just ask him “Why do you hate Liberty?” Some nice head exploding action there too. 😛

  22. DN says:

    wow, that’s quite a snack you put out there xty b
    you probably have quite a reputation among the local population… they know!!

  23. xty says:

    It is so hard to know where to look, like watching 20 plates spinning, but the euro is on a tear – way up vs the us dollar, which is up vs the loonie. Gold in euros doesn’t look so hot, and in loonies looks great. I am sticking to my basic hoard as back-up plan, and not trading. Position reduced (in many senses) and being balanced by someone who is more informed. But I do find trying to figure out what might happen with commodity pricing makes me much more informed about world events than trying to watch world events. Follow the money is nearly always the answer.

    I am torn about middle child pulling it together and going back to school – I may help him with his rent when no one is looking, but it is way cheaper than university. Luckily for us, tax poor folks, offspring #1’s med school is incredibly reasonable, and she was showered with offers of debt as soon as she was accepted. But it will not amount to very much, even after the four years, and she will get employed. Doctors in four years being graduated and hired, even by our craptacular socialist system, is one of the things I knew I believed in much more strongly than the end of the financial world – not just emotionally, but rationally. Two institutions that have lasted through war and disaster, her university and our government structure. Things endure.

    I was listening to an interview with Richard Epstein who is a small government libertarian American law professor with a brain and heart discussing the importance of government institutions as they allow good ideas to stay, even when the ship of state is guided by flawed humans, drifting in either direction. I know people who think the world is marching towards communism, fascism and every other ism in-between – dangerous tilt to the left, appalling drift to the right. That is why we need good limited government institutions and it is just a constant argument about how much the state should do. But a necessary constant argument, that the institutions wearily watch, but are gently changed by. If you are lucky.

    And good morning.

  24. EO says:

    It’s getting so I have CNBC on mute almost all the time. They had Sen. Corker on this morning. Mute. Then Jack Welch. He’s an ass, so mute. Later it will be Rick Santelli. Mute the Rantelli, as always. Plus of course everything that comes out of Joe Kernan’s mouth is mute-worthy, and he never shuts up. Today I finally just turned it to “I Love Lucy” reruns instead. Oh! Now it’s “Leave It To Beaver”. We recently found this channel that has all the old shows all the time. Awesome.

  25. xty says:

    No news channels, no newspaper. It is nothing but a sideshow, and I found my brain was full of clutter. The big things still creep in but our opportunities to change the world around us are minimal, and incremental. So we take on all these concerns – it sells the news – it isn’t really all that different from watching soap operas – and the pundits don’t know what is going to happen, and they always pretend they have some insight into tomorrow or talk about what might happen – the news cycle is so fast it is now anticipatory instead of reflective.

    I liked Leave it to Beaver. Except there weren’t any coloured people that I can recall.

  26. xty says:

    But that article lost me right away – how is this meant to represent capitalism:

    The truth is actually this: Many a rich person gets wealthy just by being born to wealthy parents. Others get rich by ripping off other people. Bankers committed massive fraud on mortgage loans leading up to the financial crisis, and continue a crime spree which includes laundering money for terrorists and drug cartels, rate-rigging, manipulating the prices of commodities, taking bribes, engaging in insider trading, participating in ponzi schemes, cooking the books, and so on. Fraud has grown so pervasive in corporate America that legendary short seller Jim Chanos describes a culture in which executives think they have a fiduciary duty to cheat. The idea is that since everybody else is cheating, they owe it to shareholders to cheat in order to stay competitive!

    Beyond the blatant crimes, bankers are engaging far more in reckless speculation that destabilizes the economy than doing useful things like lending money to people who need it. Put simply, they make a great deal of money looting the economy through cheating taxpayers and screwing customers with fees and tricks. Result: Bankers get very rich, while the rest of us get poorer.

    That is not capitalism. That is a kleptocracy. He is calling anyone rich a capitalist and then criticizing their behaviour. Being rich isn’t the same as being a capitalist. Yes, the guy who was quoted on the Glenn Beck show is an idiot and shows zero compassion or understanding of alternative lifestyles. But that also has nothing to do with capitalism.

    You don’t live in a capitalist society. Maybe once, but probably not. And now how much of your economy is actually made up of small businesses? Those are the capitalists and they are not having a good time.

  27. xty says:

    And on a much lighter note, the picture I put up of Mouse on MouseCam features a great shot of my bird feeder today, looking like an enormous hat:

  28. EO says:

    Veteran web surfers will see how hilarious this is. And all the more reason to avoid the news and stick with “Leave It To Beaver”.

    Why did the stock market sell off today?

  29. xty says:

    What a great list – it is so true. Nobody seems to listen to themselves anymore, let alone the people around them. I was thinking about how polarized debate has become, and everyone thinking of others as their opponent, as though one’s country was like the mark in the middle of the tug of war rope, and people are fighting over who gets to pull on you harder and all that happens is you are dragged through the mud.

    It is all seen as a zero-sum game (which I have to admit I initially thought was “zero some gain” which better represented what I was witnessing), instead of being more like a garden that needs tending.

    Metaphor morning!

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