I love living in the country and will probably never move back to the city. There are things you can see here that you never will in the city, like what happened one morning this fall while I was on the porch drinking coffee. I witnessed an explosion of Blue Popcorn!
Several years ago I read some articles about attracting more songbirds to the area around the house. There have always been a lot of Cardinals pecking around, in the winter you can see little red dots all through the brown and gray woods. That got started with me collecting the pumpkins from a close friend and my neighbor’s post-fall and Halloween decorations, splitting them open and scattering them around the yard. As the seeds dried, the Cardinals convened in mass and had a major convention on the fading green of the yard and in the meadow beyond. I also found some great recipes for attracting all types of wild birds on the internet like the Wild Bird Seed Recipes you’ll find here.
Well, anyway I read an article about creating a Bluebird trail (not those pesky Blue Jays who like to dive bomb you and your pet in spring when you set out to cross the yard, these are a very different bird). Bluebirds are especially pretty, with wings of a pastel powder blue contrasting with a chest full of rusty reds like a Robin’s breast. I set out on my new project by cutting a number of cedar posts from the old hardwood forest on the west end of my place. Then I bid on and won some Bluebird houses on eBay. (You can also find good ones at Home Depot and Wal-Mart.) After they arrived on our trusty Big Brown delivery van, I put up 5 houses at the prescribed height and distance from each other – okay, I did crowd them a little – well, I wanted to be able to see them, didn’t I?!
Since then I’ve been watching Mom and Pop Bluebirds setting up residence each spring and summer. And best of all, this particular morning all the little ones sprung from two of the little cedar houses in an Explosion of Blue! Now you might think that’s the end of the story, but you’d be wrong.
Mr. Black enters the story here – yes, Mr. Black, the same feral ebony cat I took in, in the freezing cold of winter year before last. The same Mr. Black I have fed and raised as if one of my own, also witnessed the sea of Blue fluttering down from the nest, bobbing up and down, up and down, desperately trying to gain altitude on their first flight, bouncing across the brown grass lawn like Blue popcorn. I could just see him from the corner of my eye — startled by his motion, Blackie and I simultaneously leaped from the porch. I was in my winter long-john underwear and knocked over the table getting up and over went my fresh brewed cup of Sam Choy’s volcano roast Kona, scratch that, “ROYAL KONA from the Big Island” coffee. There I was, racing around the yard trying to prevent Mr. Black from having a Bluebird muffin feast right before my eyes. I was able to grab Blackie and place him inside the ranch house screen door so he could watch but not participate in the lawn activities.
Momma and Poppa and all the little ones finally achieved their goal of flight that morning, I’m happy to say, and even though Mr. Black wasn’t happy, he did get to witness a once in a lifetime event. I guess you won’t be seeing a commotion like that at the crack of dawn in the city, will you!
