A Few Words About the Birds That Visit My Yard

A number of birds visit my backyard. While I always kinda suspected I had what it takes to make me popular with birds, now I have scientific proof. Since Christmas, we’ve had a bird feeder with a camera in it that sends me alerts every time a bird shows up.

And by the way, it’s not just like “10:34 am: bird” or anything quite so prosaic. It tells you what kind of bird and it even gives you video.

It also lets you know when people or other animals cross its path. It cannot determine what kind of animal though. Brown Headed Cowbird or White Winged Dove? It knows. Common Grackle or Myrtle Warbler? No problem. Golden Crowned Sparrow or Northern Raven? Check.

But dog or squirrel? You’re on your fucking own.

And by the way, putting a camera on the inside of a bird feeder, from a bird’s point of view? A little creepy. Like why not just put a camera on the inside of the refrigerator and make a tiny clip every time I rummage around looking for what I call a “nibbleton” with a dumb look on my face.

I’m not saying the birds look dumb. Not all of them at least. I’m just saying if I were a single bird I would not be uploading any of these clips to Bdate.

So since January when we installed this thing, we’ve been visited by 12 species of birds. Which is exciting except we’ve been capped at 12 for what feels like too long. The bird we’ve been visited most by, like I almost think it’s stalking us, is the house finch. It sounds boring but it’s got a bright red head and chest which means it’s male. HELLO, I’M TAKEN!

We’ve also been visited by this Mourning Dove who wanted to convert us. To what exactly, I’m not sure, but the intensity is unmistakable.

And let’s not forget the Northern Raven! I tried to make some Poe references but it just straight up ignored me.

The real heartbreak is that we’ve been spurned by hummingbirds. I even purchased fancy hummingbird nectar concentrate which I’m 99.9 percent sure is just sugar and I reconstituted it myself. (This is the one I bought but I just discovered there is one called Hummer’s Galore and I mean, come on.)

I even hate sticky stuff but I made it anyway because I felt like we were missing out on the most exciting part of being bird spies. What is even the point if you aren’t getting hummingbirds? Hummingbirds are like the lady bugs of birds! They’re symbolic and pretty and goddamnit I deserve hummingbirds!

So I mixed up the nectar and poured it into this weird hummingbird breast and asked Daniel to affix.

Ok it doesn’t actually look like a breast I don’t know why I said that. So anyway we hooked up this groovy 60s feeder ball thing and then NOTHING.

We’ve even seen hummingbirds in our backyard and they haven’t quaffed from our flower boob! Are they opposed to surveillance? Are they opting out? What the hell, hummingbirds.

Also I was getting alerts ALL THE TIME and a thing you should know about me is I have all alerts turned off. I’ll log into Facebook and see someone wrote to me 8 months ago. But my phone was lighting up constantly with bird alerts. And at first I thought, Yes this is the point and then I quickly thought, But I hate it. So I turned if off. Mind you this is a service we are paying for.

So now I remind myself every few days to click into the app to see if we’ve been graced by any hummingbirds and it’s just disappointment city.

Why am I telling you? I guess I’m hoping you could put the word out to any hummingbirds that we’d appreciate a drop in or two. Thank you in advance.