Build home for birds, watch stress fade
With one small change outside your home, you can transform your world and how you feel about it.
All you have to do is add a feeding station for birds, maybe a hummingbird feeder, a birdbath and a birdhouse. All the struggle and strife that seem to carry the day for most people will wash away like dust in a summer rain.
Over the weekend, just 30 feet from a window, we watched a mated pair of warbling vireos put on a show in our backyard.
It started with the sweetest voice of all songbirds, the mating calls of these warblers, perched on opposing limbs of a tree, discussing their future plans. The male returned with a twig, and in minutes, they started building a nest in a birdhouse we’d hung 30 feet from the dining-room window.
We watched them fly in and out of the little birdhouse, and by Saturday evening, the twigs had formed a nest inside, rising up to the small entrance. While one of the birds would be inside, arranging the nest, the other would be perched outside on a nearby limb, singing.
By Sunday, it seemed the little female was laying her tiny eggs. It will take only two weeks for them to hatch, then another two weeks for them to leave the nest.
This is not front-page news, but watching a scene like this develop can impact how you feel far more than anything in the news.
To make it work, start with a predator-proof feeding station. Several of the commercial seed blends, including those available at Best and Ace Hardware, have been improved in recent years. Stay away from bags filled with the white seeds (millet), which is for ground feeders. Examine the ingredients and make sure they include black-oil sunflower seeds, sunflower chips and pieces of peanuts, plus the filler, millet and milo.
For lesser gold finch, American gold finch and pine siskin, use Nyjer seed in a screen feeder. For nuthatches and woodpeckers, hang a suet feeder block in a hanging basket. Hummingbird feeders, filled with a 3.5-to-4-to-1 mix, sugarto-water, can be a must-do.
The end result is a daily show that with lift your day, lighten your load.