Feeding the Birds

Posted on April 20, 2004 in Activity Creatures Nature

I just saw a kestrel on patrol, seeking out the house finches nesting beneath the eaves. It doesn’t bother me that my feeding the finches and the mourning doves has brought a falcon. The kestrel will ensure that there will be plenty of song by culling the house finch numbers, forbidding them from overpopulating. The more the kestrel hunts, the more the finches will breed. Nature works strangely: predation means more herbivores unless you face a factory-farming species like humankind.

I don’t know what the raven thinks he is doing here. He sits in a long-leaf pine down the street, cawing. A few minutes after I saw the kestrel, he flew up to a spot on the street beneath my deck. “What is your problem?” I asked him and he flew away.

I engage nature as it comes to me, talk to every animal which holds still long enough to give me a look at it. When I saw the mountain lion in October, I spoke to it. I owed an apology to the female black-chinned hummingbird who flew to the lightbulb-shaped feeder, then dived at me, buzzed my face, and hovered at less than arm’s length for a moment.

“It’s time to change the syrup, Mister.”

All right, all right. I’m part of the property now and it’s my task to feed. People think that cat’s are territorial? Pound for pound, I’d give a hummingbird higher marks for arrogance.

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In my neighborhood: Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary.