Of Blogs and Bird Feeders

 

My grandmother had a bird feeder that was the envy of all her friends. Well, not the feeder but the birds it attracted.

Oh, she had the garden variety sparrows and blackbirds but what was so impressive were the beautiful, brightly colored Cardinals, Bluebirds, Finches and others I don't know the names of.

 

It's not that she drew in a few of these special birds, they flocked.

 

Her friends loved coming over to sit at her breakfast table sipping coffee and admiring the birds through the bay window.

 

Her friends all tried, at one time or another, to put up feeders and attract my grandmother's birds to their yards but with no luck. They would always get the fanciest feeder at the store but still, no luck.

Eventually her friends all gave up trying to learn her secret. I watched many times as they would ask her what she did to attract all the birds. She would just smile and say, "I just feed them." This always baffled them. I always found it amusing.

 

You see, I knew her secret.

 

She did feed the birds, but she did so much more.

 

Maintenance

 

Her first rule was to never, ever let the feeder get empty. She said when a bird found your feeder empty it would go find another feeder and might decide it liked it there better and not come back.

 

Personalization

 

She had experimented extensively with the bird seed combinations she would use. She never used anything "off the shelf" because as she said, that was plain and the birds could find that anywhere. She had developed a custom mixture of feeds that would attract the special beauties while keeping the mass of ordinary birds happy.

 

Appreciation

 

You see, her neighbors would make a fuss over the beautiful exotic birds and kill themselves trying to get them to come to their feeders. She, on the other hand, loved and valued every single bird that showed up at her feeder and would do everything she could to keep them all happy and coming back. 

 

Work

 

She put in a lot of effort to hold "her flock", as she called them, and I never once saw or heard her try to get anything in return. She considered her reward to be being able to watch the birds..., and maybe being the envy of the neighborhood ;)

 

Moral

 

Your blog is your bird feeder and your content its seed. How seriously do you take it?

 

 

If you enjoyed your read, grab my feed!