Save the backyard songbirds! Feed the dang fool squirrels

Springing From A Boise Backyard

By Jill Kuraitis , 5-22-06

It’s spring and the squirrels in Boise are on crack. Exploding from their stinky winter nests with squirrely joy, they’re streaking across parks, riverbanks and neighborhoods raiding bird feeders, staking out territory, picking fights with each other and chasing off rival gangs.

And lordy, they are famished. Greedy for anything to fill out their winter bones, our house squirrels are doing their annual turn as little predatory maniacs. The kitchen window is the screen to our distinctly Western backyard habitat, which is home to fox, heron, the occasional hawk, owl, bats, damnpies (damn-magpies) chickadees, snakes, mountain bluebirds, raccoons and our Gang of Seven: Marvin, Aretha, Ike, Tina, Gladys, Smokey and Little Richard.

Experts claim that squirrels are solitary animals, but I swear to you that Marvin and Smokey team up against Little Richard and that Ike is a whipped boy toy who is allowed to follow Tina around. I’ve also seen Aretha gossiping over the fence with Gladys, who has Pips twice a year, as opposed to Gladys’ one litter. And they all gang up for damnpie retaliation, slinging back verbal “oh, yeah?s” at the smarmy tuxedoed pests.

My husband likes the squirrels, but mostly he is amused at how involved I can get along with them. He scoffs at my ability to tell one squirrel from another (who can’t?) pretends to listen when I give him the latest RSS feed from Squirrelville, and can’t disguise a smirk as he watches me rigging up yet another “squirrel-proof” bird feeder that I’ve made with instructions from the internet. He knows – as anybody with squirrels knows – that there is no such thing as squirrel-proof. The little bastards will puzzle out a problem until they can chew it into a woody goo.

But I soldier on, because I want songbirds to come to our yard and not next door, where there is a bird-murdering cat. Of all my goals in life (get elected governor, learn to speak eight languages, sit on the Supreme Court etc.) this one seems actually possible.

All this bird conservation is partly in memory of my mother, who scraped struggling earthworms off the sidewalk after a rain, rehabbed them in a plastic box full of dirt kept on top the washing machine, then released them into the wild. Baby birds fell out of the sky into her hands, and she could coax them to survive. My children have this gift as well.

Me, I just want to feed songbirds, and perhaps save a few. Help me out, wouldja?

Learn about saving birds here.
I like this book: “All the Backyard Birds West”
And then there is this.

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