With Intent

Can you do the birdfeeders this morning? she yelled over her shoulder as she clattered down the stairs.  It is a commuting day and Mr B is still in bed.  On commuting days F has a list she rattles through before flinging herself out the door: shower, feed ME, make a cuppa and deliver it upstairs, clean my litter tray, pack her lunch, check she has phones, spectacles, train tickets, music (choir days), do the dishes left from last night and gulp down her tea.

I sit by the French doors overlooking the lawn and the birdfeeders.  3 crows are lined up watching F through the kitchen window.  That robin is sitting on the fence also keeping tabs on the human activity indoors.  It is light early now and the sun is nearly above our horizon... 


"Oh, alright" she mutters and stumbles out to the garage, a corner of which is stocked with buckets of suet pellets, fat balls, birdseed, sunflower hulls and mealworms.  When she re-emerges, the crows don't even fly away.  These days they just hop a retreat a bit further up the lawn.  The robin never did fly away; way too familiar for its own good.  I eye it with intent.  One day it will get lazy, fat and lazy, and feel far too safe.....

F turns her back on the restocked bird feeders and the suet flung at the lawn and before she is even back down the steps onto the patio the crows are scouring the grass, the feeders are swamped with starlings, and sparrows and tits flock into the apple tree to take turns at the caged feeders reserves for small birds.  The robin and the blackbirds examine the ground for tidbits scattered there but the wood pigeons bully their way in and hoover up ground food.  We need to design a ground feeder cage; something that strains the supply of wood pigeons out of the general flow of avian life, but doing that will likely also exclude the pair of magpies that dash about opportunistically.  They are wary of the crows but are attracted to the same food.

The crows often fill their beaks with bones or lumps of suet then take off, struggling to climb at a steep enough angle to clear the house before veering suddenly through the gap between the house and garage.  One of them has a blonde spot on its back.  We have also seen the crows carefully burying lumps of food in the lawn and in the garden, and we really wonder whether they remember all the places they have hidden their stashes.  Maybe they are feeding the earthworms they will later eat as 'fresh' food.

There is nothing wrong with 'farming your food'.  My fresh food reserves live in the bottom of the compost heap - field mice.  They come out to eat fallen bird seed. They will get fat and complacent too, and then either I or the fox will make a tasty meal of them later.

Driving home from the allotment

Comments

  1. It is interesting that F feeds crows and magpies. P actively tries to discourage them from our garden as he feels they are responsible for the lack of smaller garden birds. They of course totally ignore him.

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    1. We have been feeding crows on cheap fat balls and cheap cat biscuits for years and our garden is swamped with small birds. Maybe the crows are getting fat and lazy too, but I won't be lining them up to snack on.

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  2. Very observant, Mr T - far too observant for little field mice and relaxed robins.

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    1. I am getting older and a bit slow and creaky so I have plenty of time to observe (and dream).

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  3. Hari OM
    As long as field mice remain field mice and don't decide to become house mice, all is good with this scenario... I trust your presence will do much to deter such upwardly mobile ambitions in the rodent population! Hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx

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    1. They only come indoors when I bring them indoors. It doesn't make me at all popular. I stowed a live mouse in one of Mr B's shoes once. F will tell you about it one day. Furrings and purrings Mr T

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  4. Do you carry your cat driving licence with you when driving the wheelbarrow Tigger?

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    1. No pockets Dave. And there is no glove box in the Head Gardeners Van.

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  5. The Food Chain in your yard is alive and well! that is what the birds are singing, I assume the mice will ot be singing long since you are waiting for them. I just love your RIDE!

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    1. F reckons the mice are fairly safe these days .... but I will surprise them all yet. You wait and see.

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  6. We feed whatever birds come in [the pigeons do well] unless his plumpness is sitting right under the feeders...then nothing comes in! Arilx

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    1. Ah ha we assume Humphry is lovingly referred to as 'his plumpness'. We suspect the birds here would simply sit on the feeder and laugh at Tigger - the squirrel baffle would probably also baffle a cat. Tigger is 'wary' of the crows and pigeons know he isn't fast enough to catch them.

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  7. Whether human or cat, watching birds in the yard is never a dull pastime :)

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  8. this household totally agrees. We also lie on a rug on the lawn at dusk in summer time and bat watch. Batty bat is our favorite.

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  9. It’s not ‘against the law) but frowned on here to feed wild birds…..up in the hills is slightly different but definitely here in the suburbs. Maggies don’t thrive on the cat food and raw mince people were giving them and yes the rodents found the left overs delicious. Lovely as they are to look at the cockies are best not encouraged, possums either. They have a habit of destroying anything in the garden

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    1. F says possums have a habit of destroying EVERYTHING fullstop. Most wild birds in the English suburban settling (as you probably know are either small or territorial). We don't get flocks of galahs behaving like locusts (although the starlings come in flocks which has its drawbacks). They did call up their friends and give us a tiny murmuration (a couple of hundred) the other evening; swirling above the houses in our subdivision.

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  10. Our magpies will start to get very vocal if you don’t feed them and start to knock on the windows. They kinda went away when we went on holidays for six weeks, before covid and really haven’t come back
    I will occasionally give them food. But I prefer they go looking themselves. It’s much better for them. U like you guys our winters are not harsh so there is food all year round for them

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    1. We feed our crows enough to keep them interested but not enough to get fat on. In return they eat/takeaway all the scraps that we don't want to have in the compost heap because it attracts rats. Let's call it a symbiotic relationship.

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    2. PS our crows have also been known to chase grey squirrels, which is entertaining in itself, but also very helpful for keeping the thieving little blighters out of our garden.

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  11. Crows are just too smart. The humans just need to fact facts.
    Toodle-oo!
    Nobby.
    PS Gail recommends 'Corvus' by Esther Woolfson, if F hasn't already read it.

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  12. The weather is nearly in favour of me doing a morning patrol each day. Moki clearly has his priorities in the right order. xxx Mr T

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  13. F is going out to get a copy on Gail's recommendation. She seems to have rediscovered reading these last couple of weeks. It has slowed the rate of knitting however.

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  14. It's perfect cat tv though, I'm sure Mr T enjoys the goings on in the garden, it'll be time for us to start feeding the birds here soon once it gets colder

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