I will say this right now: birds, in general, freak me out a bit. 

In my opinion, they’re the sketchiest creatures on the planet. Their heads move around rapid-fire, they have daggers as mouths, and they do insanely unpredictable things like slam right into windows and die. 

Or they don’t die. They lie there, in mock-death, and then seemingly come back to life right in front of your eyes.

I don’t trust them at all. 

But the girls – especially Lucy – have started to become fascinated with birds. I mentioned it before when we were talking about tidying up the backyard – Lucy is increasingly curious about things like gardening and planting and the animals that hang out in our yard.

Just recently, we put up a bird feeder. 

And I got so excited at the sight of little birds chirping and pecking and being happy little sing-songs that I got all caught up in the bird-love. 

I bought more feeders. 

Our squirrels think that this is the best development ever. I have essentially opened the latest and greatest all-you-can-eat buffet in our backyard. And I’m encouraging my girls to replenish it daily.

Follow that logic. 

We put peanuts out today for the Stellar’s Jays. Which also means that we put peanuts out for the big fat squirrels who are already gleefully running into our yard every morning. We have both varieties of squirrel – the black native squirrel and the grey invasive species – and just recently, two of them got into a scrap in our backyard.

I kept thinking, “Please go into the neighbour’s yard if one of you is going to kill the other one. I don’t have the guts to clean up yours.”

But I need to sort that out. It’s not incredibly helpful for us – or the neighbours – for squirrels to be fed in our yard. They’ll just keep coming back, and they – according to the Google machine – sometimes eat bird’s eggs or nestlings. That makes me look at squirrels in a new way. Here I was, thinking they were just vegetarian yard-dwellers, when it turns out they’re actually velociraptors with fur coats. 

Gah. 

Squirrel-saga aside, we also put out some suet, which made the birds go nuts with happiness. They swarmed it and all took turns pecking at it. 

Lila and Lucy held bird seed in their hands and tried to coax the birds to pull a Snow White and sit upon their fingers, but it didn’t happen. I admired their persistence, though.

Lucy got a little toy called a DigiBird this Christmas, and she brought it outside in hopes of tricking the birds into becoming her best friend. 

She even brought out the little DigiBird whistle and then waited for them to respond with song (as her electronic bird does). She wants so badly for the birds to flock around her and sing her little tunes. I let her blow her whistle until my ears threatened to bleed. 

Lila, on the other hand, had a different way of showing her bird love. 

She built them a nest in the yard. 

Outfitted with seed, twigs, leaves and a few peanuts, she was sure that the birds would love their new home.

And I just don’t have the heart to tell her – or Lucy – that ground-nests and ear-piercing whistles aren’t going to bring the birds. But it doesn’t hurt to let them believe it for a while longer. 

But I ask of you, my bird-loving (and perhaps squirrel-hating?) friends, how can we do this without feeding the entire neighbourhood squirrel population?

Is there REALLY such thing as a squirrel-proof feeder? 

And finally – suet. How do you feed this way without having to buy an entire case of the stuff? They go through it so quickly!

The girls and I are going to be getting crafty with the bird-feeding set-up this Winter and Spring. We have so many ideas. I can’t wait to share them!