High Holy Mass of Contradictions

One of the things that intrigues me about magazines is that, taken as a set, the magazines you bother to subscribe to have an awful lot to say about who you are and what you're passionate about. Of course, not all of our passions have publications dedicated to them, but you might be surprised how many do.

For example, I just stumbled across two magazines I didn't know existed and now I'm really psyched about: Birds & Blooms, which "celebrates the joys of attracting birds and tending to beautiful backyard flower gardens" and Wild Bird, which provides "fascinating information about birds and birding from your own backyard to touring hotspots in the field."

Did I subscribe? Oh heck yes, I most definitely subscribed. OK, I don't know that I'm quite enough of a bird lover to get into the whole "touring hotspots in the field" thing, but I'm definitely excited about bird-attracting gardens. And yes, I already have subscriptions to a bunch of gardening-related magazines, and occasionally they have articles about attracting birds and butterflies, but these! These are dedicated to attracting and admiring birds. Hee! I'm actually giddy about it. (Don't tell Karsten, though. He'll roll his eyes about me signing up for yet more magazines.)

Now the trick is to actually find the time to read the magazines. Because see, that's the other interesting thing about magazines. They seem to represent our best selves: what we, in an ideal world, would be paying attention to. Instead of leaving to pile up in a corner.

I kid! I really do read my magazines. Most of them. Most of the time. OK, sometimes. But I mean to read them! What kind of obsessive nut would sign up for a whole bunch of stuff she knows she isn't going to have time to read? What? Why are you looking at me like that?

Our area lost power for a while last night. Turns out it was birds. Weird. ETA: Oh, and I also want to say that people have no freakin' clue how to drive when the power is out. When stoplight intersections have no power, people barrel right through. We had to drive out of the neighborhood to find food, and it was a white-knuckle experience getting through the intersections. Idiots.

I've just seen the cutest bird ever. (I tried to get a picture, but it was all a blur.) That is all.

The bird is free! He (she? How do you sex a chick, anyway? No, wait, smartasses - don't answer that.) must have made his way out of the wall overnight. He was sitting on the floor in the basement this morning, so I wrapped him in a towel and took him outside where he hobbled into a patch of vinca. I have no idea if he's injured or just can't fly yet, and no idea if he'll survive outdoors, but at least now he's where he should have been all along.

And I can stop being upset about the poor thing.

A bird nest must have fallen from one of our eaves down into the wall near the front door. We can hear a bird trapped in the wall chirping repeatedly for help. I ache for that bird. We keep going back and forth about whether to rip the wall open to try to get the bird out, but my guess is that he or she is injured from the fall and wouldn't survive at this point anyway.

But it's grisly and it breaks my heart.

Germantown & Salemtown friends,

After losing several bird feeders to theft a few months ago and taking elaborate measures to secure what remained, this morning Karsten and I discovered our bird feeder pole and remaining feeders were gone. Not only gone, but the thief or thieves apparently got frustrated trying to remove them intact and bent the pole back and forth to break it off near the ground.

And actually, we were forewarned: yesterday we found that a small feeder had been stolen from the south side of the house, and the handle on one of the secured feeders in the front yard was twisted, as if someone had tried to break it off from the pole.

Not only are we frustrated at the property loss (the last theft included about $60 worth of feeders -- this time, the dollar value is more like $150), but it's upsetting on a much more significant level: the feeders were a memorial of sorts to my father, who always loved feeding the birds in his own yard.

Anyway, I filed a police report, and I'm letting you all know so you can be aware of the trend. You probably already know to secure your possessions, but here's a disappointing reminder to be extra cautious.

Take care and be safe,

- Kate O' at [home address]

Someone stole our bird feeders. Can you believe that shit?

We were out for a walk this afternoon, and got back around 6 PM -- I can remember church bells ringing as we approached our block. And in between then and 10 minutes ago, while it was thunderstorming, someone ripped off three of our four bird feeders from the front yard (a tube feeder, a finch feeder, and a hummingbird feeder). Neither of the two tube feeders on the side of the house are missing, nor are any of the three feeders in the back yard. But the ones in the front were the nicest, which was probably stupid, but it made us happy to look out and see them out there. Now they're gone, dammit.

I phoned in a police report -- the woman who took down the information probably thought I was crazy to be reporting such a minor theft, but hey, they came to over $70 value together, so that's not nothing -- and Karsten and I went out to look around and see if maybe someone just threw them aside. We saw footprints and were able to see how the person crossed the yard, but it didn't tell us anything more than that. And then it started raining again, so even if it was valuable evidence, it's gone now.

I'm just so incredibly disappointed in people who would steal bird feeders from someone else's yard. It's not like they're stealing food or other necessities -- it's just a plain ugly thing to do.

Good thing I was already in a bad mood, so this isn't really ruining it.

When I was out replacing a couple of the boxwoods along the front of the yard yesterday, it was getting close to sundown and the doves and grackles were getting pretty eager to eat at the feeders that were about 15 feet away from me. There were so many of them in the trees above me - literally hundreds! - I was starting to get nervous about the possibility of attack. But at one point, I stopped digging and sat quietly on the sidewalk in front of the house, and soon enough, they all started coming in to eat.

Most of the doves swooped in to feed on the ground, as is their habit, and most of the grackles stayed back in the trees, which is not their habit except that they're usually pretty skittish around us. (It's not uncommon to see upwards of 100 grackles in our front yard at sundown, as long as we're inside and no one is walking by on the sidewalk.) Anyway, I managed to get a few photos with my Treo of the birds starting to risk flying in for some food, and I made them into a QuickTime slide show (940 KB .mov file behind the link), but they're blurry and they really don't capture the magnitude of the experience. Picture many, many times the amount shown in the photos and imagine being just a few yards away the whole time. It was very cool.