Birds Love a Fountain

 

            We bought a bird house about twenty years ago, which occasionally was used by birds over the years, but not every year.  This year, my daughter’s mate used cedar fence boards to make sills for our new windows.  He had pieces of scrap that he built a new style of birdhouse with and hung 3 of them along the east wall of our house this spring as sparrows mobbed to mate.   All the boxes were quickly taken.

            A couple years before, we built a chicken run around 3 sides of our toolshed with nest boxes in the east wall of the shed, shaded and sheltered by our neighbor’s tall timber bamboo, and put perches outside under the bamboo and a large south overhang.  Hens are well-insulated birds; they do fine outside in winter here.  That winter, I started feeding them cooked brown rice and meat along with kitchen scraps, grains, greens and mulch for growing worms.  Sparrows found the soft rice very much to their liking as well.

            This summer, I traded $300 worth of gardening labor for a wonderful heavy fountain that had not been filled for years.  We put it in my front yard near a sweet gum and a witch hazel full of evergreen China Blue vine, out front of our picture window.  Having to top off the fountain every day helps me remember to water my potted plants and pull weeds out front. 

The sparrows love the fountain.  Other birds also visit: hummingbirds; chickadees; a flock of quick, tiny birds; and a jay.   We have watched the smaller birds eating pests off our garden plants.  Recently, we added a hummingbird feeder outside our dining room window which is being well used.

The "quick, tiny birds" were Ruby-Crowned Kinglets. I finally got a good look at one and found its name by searching "tiny gray birds with red spot on head."

Having water, food, and bird houses and a huge twisty willow tree in our yard has filled our yard with birds.  This fall, our sparrows and hummingbirds raised an extra set of young in October because they had everything they need.  A hummingbird was recently singing his territory.

We have cats outdoors.  They haven’t made a dent in the bird population.  What has been depleting the number of birds, bees, and bugs in our city and our world is lack of water.  We rarely see or hear mosquitoes in Grants Pass anymore.  Because of water-rationing rates, we haven’t been watering our yards or our birds like we used to during the 50 years when water was so cheap to use, we thought of it as free.

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 11-17-2021, shared with the Josephine County Commissioners,

 published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com.

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040           rycke@gardener.com