Growing up in southern California, birds were pretty much just seen as a nuisance. I mean, we had a pool, and flocking birds=bird poop in the pool. At our high school, we had no covered area for eating so it was practically a guarantee that you would get pooped on sometime during your four years there (I never did, but probably about 80% of graduating seniors could declare that they’d had the honor of a seagull pooping on them).
Then we moved to other places, with pretty birds other than seagulls and pigeons and I came to appreciate them a little bit. I guess they’re not all bad.
Mike and I were Cub Scout leaders when we lived in Lubbock and one of the activities that we did with the boys was make little bird feeders from a pre-assembled kit. Once we opened the boxes we discovered they were pretty cheapo, the nails included with it were teeny tiny and a lot of them bent as we pounded them in. But still, the boys had fun and I must have had some sentimental attachment to it because somehow it followed us to San Antonio, then our rental house here in California, and finally this house. Uncharacteristic of me to hold on to something that we don’t use and is falling apart, but it was in a box with some other items in the garage and I didn’t really think about it.
Three coats of Rust-Oleum’s colonial red (which I already had on hand, and yes, it took three coats to cover up all the wood grain and everything) and a couple of extra nails for security and that bad boy went up in a tree to attract all the flying poopers in the neighborhood.
And yes, I realize that it’s supposed to have birdseed in it. I’ll get there, one thing at a time people, one thing at a time.