How to Help Birds

This is not a good picture but it illustrates what birds want during this droughty autumn-styled-winter: water. There are three birds, robins, crowded on the clay water dish and another, on the left, flying in. Right next to this water stand/bird bath is the hanging cake of suet that used to be the star attraction at my bird buffet. No longer. The very second I put some water out, birds surrounded the water, perching, drinking, flapping, flying in. Birds are thirsty. No wonder they'd rather eat berries than suet or seed.

Set out a dish or bowl of water if you love your wild creatures. For them it's in short supply.

Meanwhile I don't dare start up a nice cozy outdoor fire. The other day I panicked seeing thick woodsmoke crossing Highway FF but it was a homeowner -- I could see him -- burning leaves and wisely attending to the fire. Lack of water is not only causing thirst but the woods are a tinderbox.

Bird Dishes

Besides not knowing the words, hummingbirds can't do dishes either, so once a week I'm scullery maid to a pile of nectar feeders gluey with drowned ants, moldy sugar, and germs that God made invisible because He knew we'd freak if we could see them. Bird systems are tiny, and feeding responsibly means washing their dishes, especially in very hot weather. Black mold grows most cleverly in the crevices beneath the feeder "blossoms." Do scrub there, topside and underside; it's the nectar-feeder equivalent of washing behind your ears.

Washing aerial tableware.

Glass feeders last longer than plastic and get visibly clean. Use regular dish detergent and a dish brush. Remove traces of mold inside the bottles with an old, clean toothbrush. For stubborn goo I dunk glass pieces in an extremely mild bleach solution, but one must then rinse rinse very very well and allow the feeder to air-dry completely so the fumes dissipate.

• After handling bird things, anytime, wash your own hands really well.
  

Homemade nectar: Add one part sugar to four parts boiling water and stir until dissolved. Boil three more minutes. Allow it to cool. Do not add color; they don't need it. Never use any sweetener except white sugar. (Honey is lethal.) Proportion three parts water to one part white sugar if you want more hummers or you want your hummers livin' large.

I Never Give Up

Sure the birdbath bowl was badly cracked (see August 30) so I bought a new bowl at a concrete works, and the birds gratefully took baths and drinks, but that old, more artistic bowl, considering I couldn't move it except to flip it over, sat there and I thought, I hate to give up, I hate to give up, so for the fourth time, to the hardware store. I simply confessed to the clerk: "I'm trying to fix a concrete birdbath. Nothing works," and she led me to concrete putty stuff and DAP quick-crete. I patched a big chip at the bowl's rim with the putty stuff. Bet you can't find the patch in the picture! (It's at the 11 o'clock point.) Then all gloved up, with much unskill I laid readymixed QuikCrete on with a trowel and let it dry overnight. The next morning I poured water into it. IT HELD. Glory be! Some spots were not quite perfectly covered. so I applied a second coat just now, with great skill and in five minutes. When it's dry I'll sand it a bit and find somebody to help me lift it onto the pedestal, and it will be just like old days for the birds and me.

White-Trash Repairs, Example # 37,633,881

Tried to fix it, but most anyone could tell you that this concrete birdbath bowl, much loved but now 10 years old, and been outdoors all that time, is too far gone to save. That didn't stop me, though, from buying a tube of silicone and loading it up in a caulking gun, and somehow not piercing the foil inside the nozzle, and then squeezing the caulking gun harder and harder and getting nothing out of it, then realizing I'd broken open not the pointed end but the bottom of the tube, and a full load of silicone goop was coating and hardening inside the caulking gun chamber.

Realizing I had a narrow window in which to salvage my pride and any claim I have to intelligence, I grabbed craft sticks and smeared the silicone into the cracks in the birdbath. Mess City. Tried valiantly to remove the tube from my orange caulking gun, which was the gift of a former boyfriend who never bought me anything else, may he burn in hellfire for eternity, but it was also too far gone. Got a garbage bag so nobody would ever see it (too embarrassed to take a photo) and wrapped up the tube and caulking gun now stuck together forever, unlike me and the former boyfriend. The one nice thing about trash is most of the time nobody will be able to tell whose it is.

I'd have been better off using duct tape....