The birds of the air ... nibbling my nuts

Photo by Yomex Owo on Unsplash

There are so many confusing questions out there these days, aren’t there? Are you young or old? Left or right? Milk in first, or tea? It’s hard to keep up sometimes. As always, it depends how you define your terms. When you reckon old age begins, for instance. Fifty, sixty, seventy or, in my mums case, ninety two. Either way, who knows? Same with politics, it’s hard to know which side is which in these confusing times. All very tricky.

Even the tea conundrum is a tricky little minx, with arguments on both sides. Spoiler alert, my own preference is for milk first when you’re using a teapot, milk in afterwards when you’re using a tea bag in the cup. But I digress.

Point is, the reason I’ve been asking myself such silly questions recently is because I’ve been spending some very happy moments watching birds on the feeder in my garden. Or rather, on the feeders, plural, in my garden. If you’re even vaguely confused and wish to find out more, I humbly suggest you put the kettle on, make yourself a cuppa and grab the biscuit tin. And, for what it’s worth, I’m not going to judge you whenever and wherever you wish to put the milk in. That’s totally up to you. Guess that makes me a right wing libertarian these days. Or maybe, a tea-totaller?

Either way, back to the birds. Regular readers may remember that a while back I put up a bird feeder at the bottom of the garden. It’s well used by a whole host of little brown birdies. Not too many different species, admittedly. My main customer base is a cheeky and chattery quarrel of sparrows who turn up regularly to eat, argue and give me something to watch. They also seem to put other types of birds off. From time to time I’ll see a robin, great tit, or goldfinch appear, but they never stay long. And now, I think I’ve worked out why.

It’s my considered opinion that the birds of the air have a class system. Just like humans. And I reckon other breeds of bird don’t much like hanging out with sparrows, because, as Hyacinth Bouquet might say, “they lower the tone.”

Reason I came up with this theory is because I recently put up a second feeder, right next to the first one. (Forgive me if things get a bit technical here. But I feel I should explain myself.) You see, I was watching some nature show on telly and the presenter started going on about diet diversity. Basically, different birds like different foods. So I went out and got a second feeder, different to the first, so I could put some bird food in it, different to the first. There. Phew. Technical bit finished with.

Long story short, my original feeder has seeds and nuts in it. Sparrows love it. Nibbling my nuts, that is. However. My new feeder has suet pellets in it. According to the telly lady, this different food should encourage different birds to visit my garden. Which would be nice.

Of course, birds being birds, their first reaction to my new feeder was to ignore it completely. Like it didn’t even exist. Then, after a couple of days, I noticed a little brown bird nibbling on the suet pellets, got out my binoculars to see what sort of sparrow it was and discovered, to my joy, that it wasn’t a sparrow at all. It was a dunnock. Spoiler alert, dunnocks and sparrows look very much alike. To the casual observer.

However, I was not casually observing. And I quickly worked out that a dunnock is like an upmarket sparrow. If they were human, sparrows would wear tracksuit bottoms and trainers. Whilst dunnocks would wear cords with brogues. If they were shoppers, sparrows would go to Asda, whilst dunnocks would prefer Waitrose. I could go on, but think you get the picture. Dunnocks travel in pairs, sparrows, in packs. Dunnocks would probably prefer cricket. whereas sparrows would go crazy for football. It’s that sort of a deal.

Either way, for the next couple of days, I watched a pair of very smart and upmarket dunnocks helping themselves to suet pellets from the new feeder, whilst the sparrows ignored it completely. Very nice it was to watch too.

But on the third day, the sparrows decided to give it a go. To copy their smarter compadres. Sure enough, they found the new food was good. Good enough to eat. Which is exactly what they did. And, like upmarket humans since the world began, as soon as the tracksuit bottoms and trainers moved in, the dunnocks picked up their brogues and hot footed it out of my garden.

Which brings me, finally, to the latest question that has been taxing my brain. Sparrow or dunnock? Which am I? Hmm. It’s a confusing question. How about you? Which way do your tastes incline?

Until next time, all the best

Stan