Feeding the Wild Birds

The staging area in the garage where I fill all the bird feeders every morning. 

"You know, birds are tough," my husband said this morning, when it was minus 28, as he watched the wild birds clamouring at the bird feeders I'd just hung in tree branches around our front yard. "They are here all summer and then all winter -- wearing the same feathers the whole time."

I suppose he's thinking of how the cattle he grew up tending thickened their coats every fall in anticipation of winter.
"You'd be amazed at the insulating power of feathers," I told him.
Those little downy feathers close to the body keep the cold from reaching them. In the summer, well, they need cool breezes as much as we do.

We've been feeding the wild birds since our first winter together, in 2007. Every year, the kinds of birds changes. We used to get a lot of evening and pine grosbeaks and blue jays; this winter, we are inundated with finches. Four dozen of them, I'm sure. So many. Plus starlings, and always mourning doves. Chickadees but not as many as in the past. The little ground feeders: juncos. They arrive early in the morning.

Ah, mornings.
My morning routine:
6 am - get up, turn on the kettle and get the fire going in the furnace
6:15 - make chai tea and do yoga
7:00 - feed the cats and make coffee (but don't turn it on yet)
7:20 - fill up all the bird feeders, get dressed and take the feeders outside
7:40 - turn on the coffee, let the dog out, feed the dog
8:00 - drink first cup of coffee and watch the new

My mornings are very busy and keep to a tight schedule. This is why I don't get upstairs to my office until 9 am, or even later.
But having the wild birds around our home is important to us. Why else would we have two huge picture windows and sliding glass doors across the front of our house if we didn't want to see what's outside?!

"Good morning, birdies," I say every morning. I can't always see them but they are there.

Do the birds know me? Do they recognize me in the long black jacket with its faux-furry hood, my blue hat, the hot pink cuff of my heavy polyurethane boots? Do they recognize me because I walk the same worn-down paths in the snow? The route to the maple tree then the birch tree, each with one large bird feeder, then the far lilac with two smaller feeders. The route to the near lilac where four feeders hang. The route to the pine trees down front where the crows and the pheasant feed on cracked corn and peanuts.
In the tops of the trees, the finches chirp. They sing for their breakfast. They tell me I'm late, that they've been waiting.

The birds show up after dawn breaks but before the sun appears over the trees on the far side of the river. And it's getting lighter earlier, but I'm not changing my morning routine. Not getting up at 5 o'clock just to feed the birds!
I do toss out a few cupfuls onto the front and back deck for those early birds, the ground feeders, who like to get there before the big birds show up and take over.

Two early birds (juncos) getting the seeds on the back deck. 

In the evenings, just after the sun sets, the only birds left flitting through the spriggy branches of the near lilac are the chickadees. They are very talkative, using several sounds.
I don't know what they're saying. 'More peanuts', perhaps; 'more sunflower chips, please'. 'Don't take the feeders yet!'
I bring all the bird feeders in every evening, otherwise the raccoons will demolish them as they try to feed. On these very cold winter nights, the raccoons don't venture out; the tracks I see belong to two young foxes. They may be the two siblings who survived last spring's doomed family (the father was shot by our neighbours, one baby I found dead on the side of the road, don't know what happened to Mother).

I'm sure I should be writing about the meditation of my morning, how how I stop to admire the vibrant colours of the morning sky as the sun rises above the river, how I breathe and the birds breathe and our breath mingles, and how their song fills my heart, and how they do know me and sing to me...
...but all I think about when I'm outside trudging my paths, shaking corn on the ground, is that first cup of hot coffee waiting for me in the kitchen...