When we first moved into our house, we had a bird feeder. Our cat at the time was elderly; the juncos looked at her perched by the cat door, shrugged, and went on eating, even on the ground. Over Winter Breaks, Mabel and I were transfixed by the feeder. There was something soothing in the flutter of wings, small dances of dominance, and occasional new sight. We at in the window for hours. When Mabel died and we acquired young cats, we put the feeder away. It didn’t seem fair to lure the birds in with the promise of sunflower and thistle seed and then have them caught and hauled into the house. Besides, the dropped seed attracted rodents.
This winter, the young cat has become older—she’s sixteen, after all. And it has been a lonely time, without human visitors in the house. Last week, as the sun set at four thirty and the clouds came down, I bought a bag of bird seed at Fred Meyers. Not the fancy expensive stuff, but decent enough to lure in juncos and finches, the big jays occasionally. I spread it on the top of an old ladder that doubles as a sweet pea trellis in the summer, right outside the living room window. Within two days, the birds had found the seeds and were swooping in once more, resting on the bay and plum tree branches, taking turns, tossing seed hulls into the garden bed below. Once again, I watch, transfixed, as the wings flutter outside the window. Life in dark times.
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