How I Became the Crazy Neighborhood Bird Lady

It all started out so innocently, as most of these things do.  I thought that since we have a yard with a tree in it, it might be nice to hang a bird feeder there.  I figured a few birds might come eat from it, and it would be a nice thing to be able to show the kids a little bit of nature.  My grandparents have lived on the river for over 35 years now, and their property includes an inlet with a dock.  Across the river from their house is a riverbank and a wooded area.  Growing up I had the privilege of witnessing all sorts of wildlife, including birds, ducks, geese, turtles, fish, tadpoles, frogs, lizards, snakes, deer, etc.  Obviously a backyard in the suburbs is hardly going to afford those sorts of opportunities for viewing wildlife, but I still wanted them to witness what nature we could at home.

So I did a little research on Amazon and purchased a sturdy, decent sized, and purportedly squirrel-free bird feeder and a jar of food.  Note: bird feeder is actually squirrel free, I haven't seen a squirrel yet!  After putting the bird feeder out the first time, it took a week for it to be empty.  Over the course of time we'd see 5 birds, then 10 birds, and now up to 20 birds in the yard at one time.  I now have to replace the food in the feeder once a day!  We had to buy a GIANT bag of bird food, the way people who have giant dogs have to buy dog food.  I have somehow managed to commit myself to feeding a very large bird population in our neighborhood.  I think our backyard has earned a reputation among the bird community for being the place to be.  It probably didn't help when I installed this bird bath, although I mainly did it for aesthetic reasons.

As if this bird situation couldn't get any stranger, I looked outside this morning while I was feeding the babies and was astonished to find two ducks!  They have been in our backyard intermittently since this morning and are currently camped out by the bird feeder along with probably seven other birds.  Our community has several lakes so it isn't surprising that there would be ducks nearby, just that they would decide to hang out in our backyard of all places.  Apparently they also got the memo about the new Ringley Family Bird Sanctuary.  I am not sure how long they will stay or if they will ever come back after today, we'll just have to wait and see.

Here is a picture of the two ducks:

Please also note how my bird feeder is EMPTY yet AGAIN, because all of these birds are eating us out of house and home!

Happy Friday to everyone, hope you are having a great day!

 

Pictures from Playing Outside

The title says it all.  Here are a few pictures from our play time outside earlier today:

Have a great day everyone!

 

Jagged Tree Stump or Beautiful Bird Bath?

In the backyard we had a random tree stump with a jagged edge where the tree had been sawed off unevenly.  I saw it when we first looked at the house and it bothered me.  I didn't like it, but I wasn't sure what we were going to do about it.  After thinking about it, I decided it would make a nice bird bath if I could find a copper bowl to attach to the stump once the top was leveled off.  Chad borrowed a saw from our friend Dustin and sawed off the jagged edge and I nailed on the new copper bowl.  Voila!  The old stump was transformed into a new bird bath!  Today I planted some pretty blue flowers around the new bird bath during the babies' afternoon nap.  I am glad that we were able to turn what was once an eyesore into something pretty and useful.  Here is a Before and After picture of our stump/bird bath project:

STUMP BEFORE:

BIRD BATH AFTER:

I hope everyone had a good start to their week!  Good night all!