Christmas and winter are for the birds ~ December 29, 1994

David Heiller

My brother-in-law, Randy, and I were playing catch with a Frisbee on Christmas Day. Actually, we were playing catch with our dog, MacKenzie.

One of us would throw the Frisbee, and, Mac would race after it. Sometimes the Frisbee would float slowly over the snow, and the dog would leap and catch it.

The Frisbee was a gift to Mac from my sister-in-law, Nancy, who has a big heart with pets. MacKenzie’s acrobatic catches were fun to watch. They were her way of saying thanks, her gift back to us.

The turkey was on the grill, and the house was filled with the smell of dressing and sweet potatoes. The sun shined brightly on a 40-degree day, the second warmest Christmas on record, I learned later.

All of a sudden, the trees outside the house were filled with birds, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, and grosbeaks. It was noon, and they descended on our feeders like it was time for their Christmas dinner.

We always have some birds around our feeder, but this was like someone had rung a dinner bell. They stayed for about five minutes, long enough for me to sneak in the house and tell my wife, Cindy.

Evening Grosbeaks

Cindy is a bird lover too, so she had to get up and tell me they were evening grosbeaks. I can never keep pine and evening grosbeaks straight. (Here’s a trick to help: evening grosbeaks are yellow, like the sun in the evening.)

I don’t know why those birds came in and left like they did. Some bird expert could tell me, but I don’t really care. Just watching them made that gorgeous Christmas day even more beautiful. It was like a Christmas present from Mother Nature.

WE ALWAYS HAD BIRD FEEDERS when I was a kid. I don’t think Mom bought much bird feed, because we didn’t have a lot of money. But any bread crumbs or cracked walnuts or hickory nuts or corn would go out to the backyard by the big elm trees. Grandma would fill grapefruit skins with peanut butter or suet and set them out for a special treat.

Lots of birds came, and all were welcome, except the sparrow. Grandma was a bird racist. She hated sparrows, which she called “sparrah” with disgust in her voice.

Once I got a BB gun for Christmas. I snuck up to the feeder and shot a bird. It was a sparrow, so maybe I justified the killing. Mostly though, Ι was responding to the instinct to kill that most 11-year-olds possess.

My sister, Mary Ellen, saw me, and came out and said it was wrong, unfair, and just plain rotten to shoot birds at feeders, even if it was a sparrow. She was mad!

Maybe it was a lesson about prejudice. All I know is I never shot another bird at a bird feeder, and I passed the instructions sternly on to our 11-year-old son when he got a pellet rifle last year.

My favorite bird was always the cardinal. It’s the prettiest bird in Minnesota. They would look flashy with their red coats against the white snow. Someone would holler for us to look whenever a cardinal landed at the feeder. Unfortunately we are too far north for them, unless you are lucky like Liz Espointour in Askov, who has three at her feeders these days.

THERE ARE A LOT OF LOGICAL reasons for feeding birds. You feel good feeding them, helping them survive. They are fascinating to watch. Each is beautiful in its own way, even the sparrow. Sorry, Grandma.

But there is a serious side about bird populations that we need to keep in mind, painful as it is. Laura Erickson of Duluth writes about it in her book, “For the Birds, An Uncommon Guide.”

This excellent book is written like a diary. Most days the author tells fascinating tidbits about bird encounters that she has had. But her December 27 entry is more somber. She writes: “When we moved to Peabody Street in 1981, our feeders overflowed with birds. This time of year we had scores of grosbeaks, hundreds of siskins or redpolls, several chickadee flocks. Twelve years later, squirrels outnumber birds, we’ve only two chickadee flocks, and the last two winters we’ve had no finches at all.”

On December 28, she writes: “The destruction of the rainforest is tragically obvious, but fragmentation of northern breeding habitats may be equally disastrous...” She goes on about all the forces that are causing bird populations to dwindle.

There is something you can do to help in this important fight, besides keeping your feeders filled. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has a nongame wildlife program that you can donate to on your Minnesota tax forms.

Donations are used to help preserve wildlife species that are not traditionally hunted or harvested, but are in jeopardy because of habitat loss, illegal killing, or other environmental threats.

Last year six percent of all taxpayers donated to the fund. The average donation was $8.14.

Editor's note: Laura Erickson's website
https://www.lauraerickson.com/