Feeding birds 'changes evolution'

First of all, I've been working and only have this little, 10.5", screen so I've just been peeking in but I have to tell you, MISS BLUE, only the front of the Animal Crckers are kosher.
 
Remember the jingle from Hebrew National, the kosher hotdog maker, "No butts about it".
 
Only the front of the cow is kosher. The other animals, well I'm not sure but I'd say NO.
 
As for brownies I don't like them if they are cakey. I can't explain what I'd call them but I like my Mom's the best. You'd have to make them to decieded.
 
That was for yesterday, now I'll check today's topic and if I can stand this mini small screen I'll have more for today.

100,00 to a million years!!! I think we can keep feeding our feathered friends unless I missed something in my really tired state.
 
And in the end the birds are the ones who benifit from our feeders, as much as we do.
 
The ones who hang around our different areas aren't likely to travel far. Only to the next closest feeder if ours is empty. 
 
Now I'm going to go outside to smoke one and then go to sleep.
 
I'll look in again in the AM.

OK who else was reminded of the Hitchcock movie while reading that?

Is it Tippi Hedren's birthday or something?

Its nice to know that humans can do something right.  That BBC artiticle at least gave us credit for helping  the birds who might starve without us.

The photograph of the cardinal at the top of the page has put me in a very sentimental mood.  The Cardinal was one of the first poems my father was ever paid for publishing:
 

Winter, and all my fields lie under snow.

Dull sparrows pluck what little life they know

                from earth as drab as they.

A killer comes this way, just passing by-

                there's little sport in shooting those

                condemned by cold to die.

And then a sudden swoop of scarlet plummets from the sky

                to strut as if he owns this world,

                to catch the killer's eye,

                to fall midsong, his feathers furled,

                in mingled blood and ice.

You brave and foolish cardinal,

                your pride comes at what price?

Could you not like the sparrows choose

                the muted life, the quiet nest?

The killers have a rule they use,

And when they kill, they kill the best.

KORTHAL- You are quite funny this morning. I will keep on filling my feeders too!
 
DPR- What a beautiful & sad poem. Puts one in a most wintery, melancholy mood. Thank you...

Just  filled  my  feeder  with  oil  base  sunflower  seeds,  locally  grown  &  purchased  in  50  pound  bags  at  the  feed  store,  then  the  computer  pops  awake,  and  the  topic  is  bird  feeding!     I  think  that  this  little  gesture  towards  nature's  small  creatures  makes  us  better  people,  brings  out  the  better  side  in  us,  and  teaches  our  children  not  just  the   study  of  birds  but  how  to  be  kind.   All  of  this  w/o  dark  roast,  from  a  man  too  gentle  to  live  amongst  wolves.....

BERT- we must be channeling each other- I too just filled mine w/ oiled sunflower seeds. It makes me so happy to see their tiny, fat selves having a feast. The cardinals are pigs!Some of these birds are jumbotrons!!!

Being from the South I have spent many many days relaxing outside and watching the different kinds of birds feeding and sitting in the trees. I use to want to have a bird or two as a pet in a cage but I always came back to the idea of watching them in the trees. Over the years I've gotten excited to see the new species and kinds of birds coming to my area and just enjoy their song and beauty. I set out feed for my little friends to have something in their bellies. They continue to come back every day and I continue to watch them as they eat. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter I feed them. Not because it's a staple of their food source but because I choose to...they make me happy.

Bebe:   Do  you  run  into  woodpecker  traffic  competing  for  the  same  sunflower  seeds?   I  love  my  cardinal  &  thrush  customers,   the  thrush  comes  in  every   costume  from  "dowdy"  to  "festive,"   but  the  woodpeckers  stand  alone...........
 
Then  in  the  Summer,  we  have  bluejays,  and  hummingbirds.  Each  species  is  combative,  it's  incredible.   I  think  that  the  humming  bird  is  to  birds  what   the  Siamese  fighting  fish  is  to  fish.  They  need  anger  management  classes.   For  them,  of  course,  we  are  talking  about  thistle  seeds.....
 
 

Miss Blue, if you're there today, I'm sorry I didn't get back to yesterday's discussion until just now.  Peanut butter on Animal Crackers sounds wonderful!  I love the combination of sweet and salty -- I like to dip pretzels in vanilla yogurt . . .

 
A couple of decades ago before we began winter feeding, A cardinal sighting was still something of an event and seemed to be a symbol of great good luck.

One appeared in a nine foot blue spruce on Christmas Eve day. I cut that huge and heavy tree, dragged it out in deep snow, paid for it and brought it home atop the car.

Later that evening, I was out with the three dogs who used the vacant lots next door for purposes of relief.

The neighbors across the street, having returned from church, called out: "Merry Christmas!"

Our young, sweet and beautiful Gordon Setter, Chrystal, thinking that she was being called, took off toward the voices, cleared the high snow bank on our side and was struck and killed, almost, by someone in a long, low, black car speeding inches from the curb.

Later at the vet's, I held her head in my hands and cried as the light in her eyes went out.

Skipping ahead about fifteen years: I had gone downtown to meet a couple of friends for a beer or two and a visit when an unusual couple entered the bar.

The man, a nice looking guy in his mid-forites was well dressed and well spoken insofar as anyone that drunk or stoned could be. The woman, scrawny, ashen, shaky and frail looked as though she had been picked up off a street corner in a not very nice neighborhood.

It turned out that she had. In a cell phone conversation, the man explained to someone that she had been brought along to pose as his fiancé with an eye to horrifying his sister and her husband.

The crack ho had retired, long since, to the ladies room and the man was in the process of knocking back his third shot of vodka when the barman thinking that he recognized me, asked where I lived.

When I told him, the vodka drinker belched out that he had, years ago, killed a dog with his car in that area... on Christmas Eve. 

He hadn't bothered, he said, to stop because if the dog had not been in the road, it wouldn't have been hit.

He had a point there and while I was looking up at the pressed tin ceiling pondering it, his high-backed stool tall tipped inexplicably backwards landing his head, with a load crack, on the hard floor.

He asked for some ice and the barman, removing all doubt that he needed to spend any time polishing his Eagle Scout First Responder merit badge, lobbed about a three pound bag of cubes right square onto the fellow's face.

His self-assurance gone along with most of his voice, he looked up at me and croaked: "I believe I am hurt."

"And I, I responded, "believe in God."

And it is so. I believe again in cardinals and I believe as well that Pirate's Dad's story is the best thing ever posted here.


 

Yes, stoney: in our home, a cardinal in your backyard means good fortune and blessings on those within the house.
 
Luckily...in the woods than run along our property, we've had a family of cardinals for 3 years now.  They're a joy to watch, the color against the black and white, and explaining to eldest grandson which is the *boy* and which, the *lady* bird...and hearing him explain which is which last Thanksgiving Day to his younger brother. 
 
As for Pirate's Father's poem, it's chilling and warm and truly a poem worthy of recognition.  Clearly, DPR comes by his own talent with words directly via the limbs of the family tree.  (Thank you, DPR, for putting that down, here.)
 
I don't know where you got yours, stoney, your ability to turn the common word into something decidedly uncommon, but each vignette you give us is a jewel.  I can never thank you enough for telling your tales to us all, here in the Village.

Stoney, my Dad would have been very proud to know that my posting of his poem had inspired you to share that story with us.  He adored dogs more than anything in the world with the possible exception of coffee ice cream.
 
I remember the story he told me about driving along country roads and accidentally hitting and killing a dog.  Unlike the lout in your story, he was very contrite.  Seeing the collar on the dog, he knew it must have belonged to someone nearby and there was only one house visible from the road.
 
Dad picked up the dog in his arms and knocked on the door of the farm house.  A little boy answered and it was clear that the dog had been his.  Dad apologized profusely and assured the stoic child that it was the most innocent of accidents.  The boy was brave and understanding, saying "I understand, sir.  My dog was careless."
 
Then, Dad made the big mistake... he offered to get the boy another dog.
 
For the first time, tears streamed down the kid's cheeks and his mature-beyond-his-years composure melted away.  Another dog???  There would never be another dog!!!  And so the child taught the adult a hard earned lesson that, even when you do your best to make up for a loss, some things are truly irreplaceable.

I spent the sixth grade living with my grandparents outside my tiny home town, away from the big city where Mom and Brother resided in fear behind a restraining order to escape an evil in our life. My grandmother, who taught fourth grade in another wee town a few miles down the road, drove me back and forth to school with her every day.
I learned how to coast-she'd drop the Three-in-the-Tree '56 Ford Crown Vic into neutral whenever a low hill let her save some petrol. Mini and I still do that. 
I learned pragmatism: expect nothing and you'll never be disappointed, Momee would say. That one didn't take all that well, for I have expectations of some people, such as my kids, my relationships, that sort of thing. Students.
I learned about persistence, faith, stubbornness, economy, reliability, and spelling and grammar. She could give you a look like a needle if you misspelled or mispronounced.
I discovered that my metabolism makes a hummingbird or a steam shovel look torpid, and that fried baloney and Mountain Dew every day for dinner are survivable.
I learned how to make my poor, sad grandmother smile occasionally. She had the responsibility for my retarded uncle Sonny, she had a hardworking alcoholic husband (Pappy was always wonderful to me, and let me do things on the farm that my mother would've fainted to know.), she had a difficult and demanding job, and lots and lots of broken dreams.
But she loved birds, and even though I wasn't sure that she loved me, since she never told me or touched me, I would point out the robins and the finches and the red-winged blackbirds in the fields beside the long flat delta road. I tried to find thrushes and crows (dirty brutes! she'd fuss) and jays and the odd hawk. She'd have an answer and sometimes a laugh for every sighting, and we'd make jokes about their doings.
And sometimes, a cardinal. "That's good luck!" she'd declare, "you're going to have good luck today."
"No YOU'LL have good luck!" I'd laugh back. "That's your bird!"
A small smile was a major victory.
When we got home, we'd put the crumbed biscuits from breakfast out by the wellhouse. The birds and squirrels duked it out for the best bits.
And I worried, in my wee child's way, who'd make her happy when I went home.
She was beautiful in her college picture, an off the shoulder gown and a tulle wrap and marcelled hair. She was a concert-quality pianist, I was told, until she got married and a suspicious fire burnt down the house, piano and all.
She traded her dreams for...what? Surely not my unpredictable Pappy? Teaching fourth grade forever as her body thickened and she gave her life to bitterness and the multiplication tables? Hard to know...she wasn't saying.
She fried everything, and took no exercise, and died of sadness and a massive heart attack when I was away to college. She lived long enough for my mother and my cardiologist Dad who'd tried to help her against her stubborn resistance, to hurry to her side. She was barely conscious, mumbling about something they couldn't make out.
I hope it was something that made her happy.
Maybe the birds...
 

Bert:  I admire your ability to get so much done before you have coffee. I have a cardinal outside my window.  Believe it or not its snowing in NYC right now. 

 
Peter Lake,

"Miller's Crossing" is on tonight. An embarrassment of riches, it plays back-to-back... to back.

And we, being fed something much better than before, will change our patterns to drift in and out like winter-fed song birds. Fat & sassy.

Park & Dread Pirate,

Here's to that red bird and those as loves him!!

Olivia,

Hard to know whether to squeeze you until you beg for mercy or open a bottle of red and get out two jelly glasses.


 

Olivia,
 
You were wiser than your Momee.  To expect nothing for fear of disappointment is like refusing to love for fear of getting hurt.  That's what it's all about.  As C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham say in William Nicholson's Shadowlands:  "The pain of then is part of the happiness of now.  That's the deal."

OLIVIA & STONEY- Strange, sad, wonderful stories. Many thanks for sharing & for the tears.
 
STONEY- Karma, karma, karma- I do believe in it.

How is that true, DPR and everyone, what Lewis said: "The pain of then is part of the happiness of now."
 
I feel that it's true, but I don't know why, that happiness should rely on past sadnesses.
 
Is it our memories of the hurt that spurs us on to do better, is it to drown out the tinnitus-like ringing inside the head pictures of how it felt then, the pain?  If we had no sadness, would be not have happiness either?
 
I dunno.
 
But I do believe in what DPR quotes Lewis as saying, it's awfully wise and has the ring of truth to it.
 
I'm a person who will always ask "but why?" why is that so?"
 
I drive people crazy with my "why's" I always have, but here's another one:"the pain of then is part of the happiness of now."
 
I like it, but Hmmm.
 
?

 
 

On TCM in a few minutes, at the top of the hour:
 
 
Random Harvest (1942)
A woman's happiness is threatened when she discovers her husband has been suffering from amnesia.
Cast: Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, Philip Dorn, Susan Peters Dir: Mervyn LeRoy BW-127 mins, TV-G
 
Garson and Colman were said to have the best voices in film history to that date.  Watch and listen and see what you think...Other than velvet voices, I think Random Harvest is a wonderful movie, romantic, well done, and well worth watching.  I think you'll enjoy it as much as I do.
 
 
 
good night, Village

No PARK- don't go, I will be bereft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Park,
 
In the case of Lewis and Gresham, he fell in love with her and married her (having been a bachelor living with his brother all their adult lives) in full knowledge that she was dying of cancer.  Instead of turning off his heart in order to avoid the pain that her death was guaranteed to bring, he allowed her into his life and they enjoyed a very happy time together.  They knew the price would be steep but decided it was worth it.
 
You may be right that memories of hurt spur us to do better.  But I think it's even more fundamental than that:  In order to have great happiness, you must also have great pain.  My father died nearly four years ago.  I could have avoided the pain I experienced at the time of his death by choosing not to love him, to distance myself.  But, if I had done that, I could not have shared his verses with you today.
 
Pain is the price we pay for pleasure.  You can have both or neither, but you cannot have only one.

Thank you DPR.
 
I was unfamiliar with Lewis' life and this story.  Obviously.  Thank you for taking the time --
 
I have to close up here now, it's dinner time in Wisconsin, but one more thing:  your father.  I'm sorry, it was only 4 years ago, and I'm sure especially at this time of the year, it doesn't seem like any time at all since you lost him.
 
And again, thank you for sharing his poem here. 
 
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I wish I knew him -- and that I'm ever so glad I know his son.
 
p.

Sometimes it's not necessary to say anything except 'I'm listening'.... yes, and others are listening, too....

Greetings:  Thanks Stoney, DPR & Olivia.  That (those) was (were) AWESOME!

Thank you Park.  Your grace and kindness are a perfect example of what keeps me coming back to Peterman's Eye even as the dishes pile up in the sink, the books go unread, and the alarm is set for an earlier hour each morning.
 
After my father's former secretary (a charming old Irishman of 70-something) spoke the last words I remember hearing before leaving the church:  "So long as I am alive and remember all his stories, he will be alive too."  I feel exactly the same.  So in a sense, my friend, you do know him.
 
I hadn't meant to turn today into a eulogy.  It just sorta happened.  Thank you all for your indulgence.

Park, 
 
As Lieutenant Columbo would say:  Just one more thing!
 
William Nicholson's play, Shadowlands, about the autumnal romance between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham began as a British television drama in 1986 with Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom.  It was later adapted for the stage with Nigel Hawthorne and Jane Lapotaire and then, in 1990, moved from London to Broadway.  The very British Lapotaire dropped out of the role of the American Gresham and Jane Alexander took over.
 
In 1993, the story was made into a beautiful movie by Richard Attenborough.  It stars Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger and they both give career defining performances.  I highly recommend it.

Good Evening all,   Pinky and I delighted in watching the many kinds of birds at our feeders. We had them on those staff looking thingys after the sad falling of our pear tree in a storm. The squirrels commandeered the sunflowerseed feeders,and it was always a battle to try and outfox Don Squirel-e-own-e, the don of the squirrel gang...I finally figured it out,and hung the feeders from the basketball backboard and hoop,which stands on a pole in the driveway ; I greased the pole. It was a stitch watching the squirrels try and climb it,then do a belly drag along the ground to try and rid themselves of the greased belly fur.  .  Now I have a seperate squirrel feeder,filled with out of date nuts from the Fisher Nut outlet store. I believe the fattest squirrels in the county hang out here,and the BluJays fight them for the booty,while there are at least 18 sparrows regular,and 4 different Cardinal families - - I can tell because they wait in que- - and there are chicadees,and finches,and downey woodpeckers,as well as the Red Headed ones.And Morning Doves...and an occasional hawk and pussycat- that think it's the greatest treat.  .  .I am sure the fat squirrels will feed an occasional hawk  -  -natures way,you know. I watch them over my dark roast,it's like we breakfast together.  .  I wiil photo their tracks in the next snow to show how busy they are.