Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

A good start to the morning is NOT stepping out my door and finding a bunch of loose feathers and blood. The darned neighbor's cat is killing a bird a day, and spends the rest of the day hunting them.

If the cat were a stray or feral cat, I'd feel very slightly less bad about this, but the cat has a collar and an owner, someone is feeding it, it does not need to hunt to eat. (Though I know cats are predators and would rather hunt...)

I can't decide if I should take the bird feeder down or not. I feel like all I'm doing at this point is making it easier for the cat to kill them. If I weren't attracting them all to one small area, maybe it wouldn't be so easy for the cat. (And maybe if it were a more natural feeding setting, they might be more watchful?)

If I'm going to take the feeder down, now's a good season to do it. There should be lots of food around for them to eat. To be totally honest, I wouldn't mind saving the money I spend on seed ($25/week). I have to fill it daily, and clean the birdbath, but neither of those are much work at all. My porch area would be a lot cleaner if I stopped, too. On the other hand, I do enjoy watching them, but I don't watch them nearly as much as I used to. On the other-other hand, I'd have more privacy if I stopped (I leave my curtains all the way open so I can watch them, and my window faces the sidewalk/mailbox area, so anyone can look in).

So, what do you all think?

[Poll #1917845]

I wish I didn't feel like I had a hand in the death of the birds...

My license plates for my car finally came. While you can drive up to 30 days in a new car without them, I was starting to get nervous about my lack of them. Opening the package, I was amused to see:

Contents made by
Prison Industry Authority

I thought that was only a joke/myth! Prisoners actually do make license plates!

I got lucky with my plates, too. I got random this time instead of custom, but even after seeing it just once, I had the whole thing memorized. Usually my memory sucks, but all the numbers/letters sort of fit together.

In California, our license plate format is: # L L L # # # (Number, three letters, three numbers.) On mine, the three letters almost form a word. The three numbers are part of my first phone number in my childhood home. So all I need to remember is that first number and I have it all. It took me forever to remember my current phone number, so I was worried about remembering my license.

Birds! There was a new bird near my feeder, one with very interesting coloration. A black phoebe!

(Not my picture.)

Apparently they eat bugs and not seeds, so I'm not sure what it was doing eyeing my feeder. Excitingly, I think it's nesting in my covered parking area! I love it when birds nest there, though I worry other residents or staff might knock it down to "clean up" the parking area. (In truth, I don't like the idea of my new car getting covered with bird poop, but I'd never knock down the nest to prevent it.)

I bought a bird bath (sort of). I wanted a real bird bath, but all the ones I looked at cost $120 and up, and were made of cement. I'm in an apartment, I'm going to move sooner or later, I didn't want a big/heavy one. (And I sure as heck did not want to pay $100+ for one!) Then I spotted a plant pot holder. It was on a stand and had a dish with a lip... That would work fine! The birds have been ignoring it so far, but its only been out a couple hours.

I'm getting worried about the squirrels. I'm not feeding them (on purpose, they're still eating seed when it falls). But they're getting so bold. Bold as in not running away from me when I walk up to them. Bold like looking like they might run into my apartment when they're on the doorstep and I open the door. Even when I say "Shoo! Shoo!" and wave my arms at them, they just cock their head and eye me.

If I ever vanish, check with the squirrels...

In all my bird feeder fun, there's one thing I hadn't expected to see: Birds going at it. This is my bird feeder:



That's my living room window. About two feet from the glass is the feeder, and maybe three feet more is my fence. My porch is tiny, but in an apartment I'm happy to have one at all.

So there I was, standing at the window, and mourning doves came (or perhaps I should say they arrived). They sat on the fence as they usually do, then one jumped on the other. Repeatedly. Then he was flapping his wings to hover in place while atop the other dove. I was on the phone with my mother while this was happening. I couldn't stop laughing. Yay for a new generation of birds, I guess! :P

The second sex-related thing is odder. And Japanese.

Oh what a world we live in! We can now buy breast-scented mobile phone straps! I'd really like to know what they consider "breast-scented".

I never would have thought I'd be interested in birds. I had a parakeet as a kid and liked it, but I never thought wild birds would be something that could entertain me, hold my interest, make me smile, and make me learn.

On a whim, a couple months ago I bought a birdfeeder. If I had known how expensive the whole thing would be, I might have thought twice about it. $20-ish for the feeder seemed fine, and I bought a cheap bag of seed for $10 or so. Then came the mess. Then came the squirrels.

Oh the squirrels...

To deal with the mess, I bought a fittingly-named thing called a seed catcher ($30). Picture a trampoline with a lip suspended under the feeder by six wires. The squirrels loved it. Easy reach of the feeder and all the fallen seed right there for them. Eventually they kept tipping it over and it became pointless, the mess was just as bad without it. (I live in an apartment and strongly worried that the neighbors might complain and I'd have to take it down, so I try to keep things as clean as possible.)

So I took the seed catcher off, but changed the type of seed. (Hulled sunflower seeds.) It's a whole lot more expensive, but at least without the seed catcher, the squirrels have a harder time getting to it, and there are no hulls or wasted 'filler' seed to make a mess.

I bought a squirrel baffle (another $30), but I haven't put it up yet. I've spent nearly $50 on seed so far, but at least that should slow down and there should be no more "hardware" I need to buy.

Anyway! The birds! For all the first weeks, I had "just" house finches coming. Very small little birds, the females are plain brown and the males have red heads/chests:

They may be common everyday birds, but they're so friendly and chatter endlessly, and it's so interesting to watch them interact. Females seem dominant in their species (unless it's something that changes by season). They move in groups, but squabble endlessly with each other. There are four perches on the feeder, but two birds always try to control the whole thing -- I'd suspect one would hold it if it could, but it's too far around.

Then in the last week new species have started coming. First is the oddly named dark-eyed junco:

I think all birds have dark eyes. :P This is a subspecies of the dark-eyed junco, found from Northern CA to Alaska. It's enough different than the other juncos that it might become a stand-alone species.

And just today an American Goldfinch came:

It was even brighter than in that picture! I tried to take a picture of it, but doing it through the window screen never works.

And if all that weren't entertainment enough, there are the squirrels. Problems? Yeah, but I really do enjoy watching them as well.

And the cherry on top? Ellie New Cat is getting plenty of exercise and entertainment/torture. With only a window screen between here and all these birds and squirrels, I don't think her life is boring anymore.

Helpful hint for kitty owners: If you're worried about your cat scratching the screens, especially in an apartment, put a baby gate in the window! I have a big apartment window, so I can use a normal baby gate. I just put it in the window track and close the window an inch or so to hold it in place. Rarely she tries to climb the gate, but never do cat claws touch the screens anymore.

Edit: I forgot to mention the mourning doves! Beautiful birds, such pretty calls they make. They've been coming nearly as long as the finches, though they eat the dropped seed on the ground instead of directly from the feeder. They always seem to travel in pairs, and while I can see the gender differences in the pairs, I'm not sure which is which. If you've never heard one before, you can find a recording here. Sounds what I think an owl must sound like. It's hollower and more haunting than in the recording.