Bird Feeding Beginnings (Part 2)

How did you get your start feeding birds and/or birdwatching? Here are the stories of some of my friends, continued from last week. I encourage you to post your own Beginnings story in the discussions area!

SHANNON, FROM MICHIGAN: My oldest cat "Pebbles" is credited for getting me interested in birds. We had several large windows in our bedroom, and I would watch Pebbles jump up onto the ledge of one of the windows and just stare out for hours. This is, as you might know, not unusual behavior for a cat, but when I noticed her sitting up there for hours at a time, I knew there was something fascinating outside that was capturing her attention. Finally, I went over to the window and crouched down next to her in a cat-like position to see what she had been watching. From that moment on, I was hooked. In the middle of a snowy patch underneath the evergreen tree, there was a pair of gorgeous cardinals, looking for food on the ground underneath the cover of the evergreen trees. They just looked so beautiful, strong, and yet somehow dainty and vulnerable.

VICKI, FROM ILLINOIS: I lived in a little town at one point, and I noticed these pretty little yellow birds in my neighbor's yard. Of course it was summertime. They were on tube-type feeders. SO I thought, gee, it might be kind of nice if I could steal some of those birds, so I found out he had a tube feeder with thistle in it, so I put that out, and pretty soon I was pretty proud of myself when some of those yellow birds started coming to my feeders. And I started out with one feeder, and then two, and now we have a couple of this and a couple of that. I think in my yard alone over the course of the year we've been able to attract over 50 species of birds.

KAREN, FROM NEW YORK: I don't know how I got started feeding birds. I think I saw some finches on my fire escape, the house finches, and I started putting down a plate of seeds for them. Then they attracted Mourning Doves, and then the winter of '96 was the winter that the NE had a tremendous amount of snow, and I remember when I was out on the fire escape putting out the seeds I noticed a lot of sparrows on the ground, so I would throw seeds down onto the ground to them, and eventually they started looking up, and that's when I started getting the sparrows.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic