Thursday, May 11, 2006
Welcoming the birds
Gardening and birding are the top two outdoor activities among Americans. Combine them to make your landscape more attractive and entertaining.
During winter, when the landscape is dormant, let our winged friends become your gardening focal points. They offer beauty and life to the yard, and the songs they sing can brighten even a gray, blustery day.
As temperatures dip, natural food supplies dwindle, and birds must scratch the leaf-littered ground in search of seeds and insects to sustain them. Now's the time to give them a little help. Try these tips on attracting and feeding birds.
Richard Melton of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and his mother-in-law, Bev Vogt, know a lot about birds. Richard designs gardens to attract them, and Bev owns a Wild Birds Unlimited store in nearby Northport. In fact, Richard built a habitat garden behind Bev's store that attracts a great number of birds daily. The garden seems to be in perpetual motion as birds dart around the feeders and plants.
Bev says the most effective way to attract birds is to feed them. Richard stresses that to keep them in and around your yard, you must create a bird-friendly environment. They need four elements to stay healthy, happy, and wanting to hang around.
Food for Birds
Just like everything else, birdseed has become specialized. Bev's shop carries 15 different types of feed. In addition to that, you can buy suet cakes, dried fruit, peanuts, and even mealy worms. Her premium-blend seed is very popular with customers, but if you're confused about what to buy, look for black oil sunflower seeds. These attract many different types of birds. Remember, buying the cheapest birdseed isn't always a bargain. Inexpensive seed can contain filler, which birds won't eat. So you end up with unused seed.
To prevent the little green weed patches that appear in your lawn, use a No-Mess blend, which has little or no waste and won't sprout in your yard. If you really want to spoil the birds, put out fruit or shelled peanuts.
Along with an assortment of foods, Bev also sells different types of bird feeders. She has squirrelproof feeders and cone-shaped baffles to prevent raids by these pesky rodents. Hang feeders at least 5 feet off the ground and 10 feet away from trees, shrubs, fences, or houses to keep squirrels at bay and eliminate ambush areas for cats.
A flock of odd birds
Scrap metal never looked better after it's crafted into these lawn-friendly works of art at this Louisville studio.
Bicycle gears and broken garden shears. Pieces of rakes and car parts. You wouldn't think these rusty bits of junk would be good for anything but the trash. Au contraire, oh artistically challenged one. Meet the Yardbirds-reconstituted metal crafted into birds, cats, dogs, and other critters that will grace your lawn, warm your heart, and not nip at your heels.
In August of 1991, a Louisville father and son picked up a heavy metal habit, as it were. "Dad owned a business that made metal farm gates. He employed welders who made silly chairs and animals from metal in their spare time. After Dad sold the business, he wanted to duplicate those fun creatures," says Richard Kolb.
His father, also Richard, welded a peacock out of scrap metal and named him Rupert Rakewing. The fowl created a nest of talk, a flurry of interest. More Frankensteinian birds followed suit. Soon a veritable flock flourished.
These days Richard, his father, and a group of artists continue to make birds (60 different types), but they have also expanded the menagerie to include snails, sea serpents, deer, mice, dogs, and cats. "My favorite is the toucan," he says. He points out the ingredients involved in this particular bird's body. The toucan's head is a kid's shovel, its beak is a mowing machine guard, its feet consist of rebar, and the eyes are lug nuts.
Richard and his crew paint some of the earthbound creatures by hand. They also sell unpainted critters, which begin life rusty and grow rustier. These items are popular-the natural color blends in well in the garden.
The business, in a brick and metal building south of downtown Louisville, welcomes visitors to choose from the large selection.
Richard says, "The things that make us happiest are not always the necessities of life, but usually the things that we do not need." In other words, you may not need a scrap-metal peacock, but it's bound to bring a smile and make you as proud as.. well, you know.
Something to purr about! Cats claw their way to the top in this special cat-lovers' edition
Albert Schweitzer said, "There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats." Not everyone feels that way, of course. With cats there is no middle ground. Either one loves them or one does not. But it's all academic to our master cover artists who have borrowed from both pro and con to come up with their amusing cat images.
Whether it's a night out on the prowl, an ear-rending midnight spat, or a surprise cache of precious kittens, each cover captures the subject to purrrfection. A search of our archives has turned up cats and kittens a-plenty. So grab a ball of yarn and join in the fun.
Charles Livingston Bull's alley cats bring to mind the lines of Orlando Dobbin's diatribe in A Dithyramb on Cats: Confound the cats! All cats-always--Cats of all colours, black, white, grey; By night a nuisance and by day--Confound the cats!
This J.C. Leyendecker scene begs two questions. What is the cat doing in the cage? And what happened to the cage's original occupant? Did the little show-off boy put the cat there to be the "caged lion" in his carnival act, or did the artist paint him in to fill the blank spot on his canvas?
It is the natural-held assumption of all cats that any food in the immediate vicinity belongs to them. The wise old hound may be holding back out of courtesy, but more likely he's learned from experience it's best to let sleeping land eating) cats lie.
As this Charles Livingston Bull cover shows. cats come with built-in handles--which is good. since cars with kittens always decide sooner or later to move them.
The old saying that curiosity killed a cat may be a little too severe in this scenario painted by Charles Livingston Bull. In any case, we'd predict that here's kitten about to get a lick'n from a chicken.
A fowl circumstance has arisen in this barnyard scene by artist Paul Bransom. Cats are supposed to chase birds, aren't they? Unfortunately, the grumpy old gobbler isn't cottoning to any cat-and-mouse games.
Let take a cat, and foster him well with milk And tender flesh, and make his coach of silk, And let him see a mouse go by the wall, Anon he waveth milk, and flesh, and all, And every dainty which is in that house, Such appetite hath he to eat a mouse--Geoffrey Chaucer
It's too bad cats can't talk or at least point back. What's certain is this little kid is learning fast about the old pass-the-blame trick. He's obviously bound for some top CEO spot or maybe even the U.S. Congress.
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