Author’s Photo
This stone serves as a bird “restaurant”. Although the menu consists of only black-oil sunflower seeds, the restaurant, located close by a lilac bush, is a popular destination cold or snowy days. Black-capped chickadees swoop down from the lilac bush, grab a seed, then fly back to the bush to eat the seed. Titmice, song sparrows, doves, cardinals, purple finches, and gold finches fly in one by one to eat. Sometimes three or four birds are in the lilac bush, while several are on the ground hunting for seeds, their heads bobbing up and down. Blue jays are well-known bullies; when they arrive on the scene, everybody else leaves. Squirrels, experts at finding opportunities, appear often. Sometimes the birds leave when the squirrels show up, other times, the birds stay in peaceful co-existence.
The stone didn’t become a bird restaurant until twenty years ago or so. It was unearthed back in the 1990’s when a crew did excavating for a water line. Since it was nice and flat, we thought it would make a good stone for the yard–sort of a conversation piece. We got it for the asking. Some years later, I decided to make it the start of my bird-feeding route. Visible from the house, the stone is a conversation piece as we enjoy watching the varieties of birds coming to eat.
©P. Booher
Country Ripples 
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