Feed the birds II: The return of the lard

9 December 2008

I learned my lesson earlier in the year that birds would ignore any pretty arrangements of wired fruit I made for them. The birds in our garden are more of the fatty food-loving variety. Bring on the lard, they say. So, with half a packet left over from my January endeavours, I brought on the lard again for them. Mum had heaved out a pile of nuts, cranberries and figs from her kitchen cupboards, their expiry dates ranging into the ridiculous. I chopped them up and stirred them into the melted lard and then packed the mixture into an empty half coconut shell, a pomegranate shell and fir cones.

These feeders have now been hung up outside my office window and in the back garden and are already proving popular. The general hope was that big greedy starlings wouldn’t be able to grab hold of the coconut, but of course that was wishful thinking. I’ve just been watching one balance with one foot on the branch and the other leg stretched out and down to the coconut, while its head is bent in another direction, pecking at the food. Quite the acrobat. Except of course when he loses his balance and becomes a flurry of feathers and panic as the coconut spins round and he flies back onto the branch as if that’s what he’d intended to happen all along.