Terry Coombs wrote:
....
Â* Miss Kitty isn't feral , but doesn't like to be held , and will only
take a little petting before she jets off . That's just right for us .
We feed her , but not necessarily enough to totally meet her needs .
Some may disapprove , but she also manages to catch and eat an
occasional bird . I call that natural selection ... and it hasn't seemed
to affect the local population other than to make them more watchful .

there's a lot of difference between 1 and
x when x is greater than a few...

i'm ok with the one being around at times
but we don't feed it (it is probably the
neighbor's kitty), but i don't want more than
that one.

we have a pretty diverse bird population
and used to have a very nice time viewing them
in the birdbaths.

then the grackles started showing up when the
cedar trees/pine trees got taller and they
could nest and soon took over as the major
force until i started hunting them to keep their
population down. otherwise we'd have a large
flock of them and they do really make a mess of
things and will eat anything of the smaller
birds they can find. if you've never seen what
a single nesting pair of grackles will do to a
birdbath imagine what half a dozen or more
nests are like.

so far they have not come back this spring
and that is unusual. perhaps, and i'm hoping
i finally deterred them enough that they found
another northern summer home. if not, i'm
ready...

the more recent fun with the birdbaths the
past few years is that the land owner to the
north of us has a beekeeper putting hives
back there and it is blocking my access to the
back field and also the bees are swarming the
birdbaths so that the birds will no longer use
them.

just by chance yesterday someone was back
there with a chainsaw and so i walked back to
see what was up and it was the beekeeper. he
thought he was all square with the land owner
and he is, but neither of them thought to come
talk to us about it so within a few minutes i
had a visit from the land owner and we looked
at the platt/map so he could see that yes we
do own a part of the access road and that i do
need to be able to get back there from time to
time and not have it blocked by bee hives.

i think we're all square now, but i'll be
curious if they put bees back there or not this
year. we'll see... it has been dry enough
that i might be able to get back there and get
some brush cleared this week for a change.
i've wanted to do it all winter but the ground
hasn't been dry enough or had a lot of deep
snow on it. no rain or snow the past several
weeks so i'll give it a chance in a few more
days when i finish up with the other thing i've
started.


songbird