An evergreen, in journalism, is a story untied to current events. You can run it year after year, sometimes irrespective of the seasons. It’s also a tree that maintains its foliage, hence the name. This column is an evergreen.
It’s about birds, bird feeders and hanging your bird feeders come fall, for those of us who remove them during the summer. And if you don’t have bird feeders you should. Unless you have outdoor cats.
I looked it up. I’ve written four columns on the subject for WAMC and the Berkshire Eagle in recent years and at least fifteen stories related to birds, birding, exotic birds and bird feeders in the Wall Street Journal prior to that. You’d assume, at least I’d assume, I’d run out of things to say.
But hanging my bird feeders in the autumn constitutes an annual rite of passage. It’s a way of extending nature’s vitality into the cold weather months. The commotion at and around your feeders as chickadees, nuthatches, cardinals and woodpeckers take turns at the trough, and the accompanying sound of birdsong, helps turn winter into a perpetual party.
I’m annually ambushed by the pleasure I take in the birds’ return. And it’s not as if they’re especially exotic. It’s the same suspects, or should I say species, returning hour after hour, day after day. Every few years something unusual turns up — common redpolls from the Arctic when food is scare up there. Evening grosbeaks down from Canada.
Your eyes are ever pealed in anticipation of novelty, even though it rarely comes. The impulse becomes Pavlovian. But that’s not the reason you hang feeders in the first place. A better person than me might do it to keep our feathered neighbors supplied with nutrition when natural sources run low. I do it for myself.
I once asked an ornithologist about the admonition that if you’re going to feed the birds it requires a full-time commitment. If they grow dependent on your feeders and go away or forget to fill them they’ll starve. His response: do you really think birds are that dumb? They didn’t survive millions of years of evolution depending on handouts. If your feeders run dry they’ll find sustenance elsewhere.
I hung my feeders, but just a few, in the final days of September. I had sunflower seed left over from last spring. I’ll probably buy a couple of forty pound bags to tide me over before placing my major Agway order for eight or more additional bags later this month with delivery at the start of November. That should get me through the winter, but just barely.
And then there’s suet. The birds consumer a couple of suet cakes every week. Suet feeders are an essential addendum to your birdwatching diet. Birds, especially woodpeckers, linger at them until something larger, for instance, another woodpecker chases them away. Also, our suet feeders attract birds that don’t frequent seed feeders. For example, northern flickers also known as common flickers. But there’s nothing common about them. Handsome large brown speckled woodpeckers, their plumage also includes flashes of yellow and red.
In this fraught election season bird watching also serves as a sedative. They take you out of yourself and Donald Trump. The birds don’t care who wins the election, though I have no doubt they’d be Harris voters if they knew the score.
This week I hung my feeders and left for the city. When I returned the following day I’d almost forgotten that I had. The birdsong emanating from the surrounding trees reminded me. Then I noticed that they’d already made a dent in the sunflower seed.
This is our puppy’s first full bird watching season. She’s already proved herself to be a patient hunter, almost catlike in her stalking instincts, of things like frogs and chipmunks. But thus far the birds seem to flummox her. Chipmunks are hard to catch because of their speed and frogs because they can swim. But animals that can fly, who remain perpetually out of reach, don’t seem fair.
They don’t seem to know what to make of June either. They keep a wary eye and won’t risk descending on the feeder while she sits and watches — the woodpeckers in particular — but I suspect it’s just a matter of time until they realize she poses no threat, just as they have with me, and come and go while I pass at no more than arm’s length. And June will eventually be forced to come to some accommodation with them. The heartbreak of not knowing how to fly is something that all land mammals must confront sooner or later.
I’m taking it slow. Thus far, I’ve hung only five feeders. There are at least six more in the garage waiting to be deployed. I’ve also got several squirrel baffles I need to clean simply for appearance sake before I deploy them on the poles that several of my feeders hang from. The only unknown is whether June proves an adept squirrel hunter and keeps them at bay. Based on her enthusiasm for frogs and chipmunks I’m hopeful.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found be found on Substack.
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