I don't mind the birds eating from the bird feeder, but I wish they'd dispose of husks elsewhere.

[Rabrrrrrr]

I mean, seriously - they just leave the husks of the sunflowers seeds under the bird feeder.

I'm generous to feed them - why can't they be polite enough not to fuck up my patio?

[brendan120678]

1. Back in my day, the birds...

respected the homeowners property!

None of this dropping seed shells on the patio, or poopin' on the hot tub cover. It's amazing what birds these days get away with!

[cyberswede]

2. Get sunflower hearts - no hulls to worry about!

I had 6 blue jays on my feeder yesterday - never had that many at once (this is in addition to a bunch of juncos and about a million sparrows).

[whistler162]

3. Well if you don't put a trash can out there what do you

expect?

[Call Me Wesley]

4. Oh, sure,

like when you're eating in a restaurant, you take the used dishes with you? The napkins? Table cloth?

It's your responsibility to clean up after them. It's included in the sunflower bag price. ;)

We'll always get some nice sunflowers growing in spring under the bird feeder. And hemp. Lots of hemp. A jungle of hemp. We switched to some greasy nut balls lately which the birds seem to enjoy more. Less of a mess.

[rebel with a cause]

5. We have squirrels which we feed and a bird feeder

that is suppose to be squirrel proof. Some days I look out the window and wonder where the bird feeder went to, and then realize that it is being blocked by the fat gray squirrel hanging on it eating the bird seed. I then realize it is time to refill the squirrel feeder unless I see another squirrel feeding on it at the same time. Then I know the birds will have to fend for themselves. They (the birds) are usually on the ground eating anything the squirrels drop from both feeders. I also throw out food on the ground for both species.

My daughter, who bought the bird feeder, says she wants to take a picture of the squirrel on it and send it to the manufacturer asking them how this is squirrel proof. :eyes:

[UTUSN]

6. HaHAH!1 Finally, somebody GETS me when I criticize birds!1

They're beautiful and amazing and all that, not to mention their symbolic dimensions of HOPE and ASPIRATION, so I get it when I have STUNNED conversations to a standstill by saying that birds can be a pain in any unwanted place.

When I explain, they get it, but it becomes a sort of Debbie DOWNER scene afterwards.

Right now I have only 2 dogs, both of them Inside dogs. In past years I've had up to a maximum of three Outside dogs, which meant an outside water container that was also visited by birds. The dogs and I didn't mind in the least that birds would also make themselves at home to drink up. Even if it were just a matter of guzzling down, even if they drank it all dry and if I had to fill it up a lot.

But, no, they don't just DRINK. They SWIM. They drop FEATHERS and TRASH in it, and most of all, POOP in it.

So, translated into the nitty gritty deep meaning of it, I had to change the water sometimes up to FIVE times per day, and sometimes wash the container. And not just the QUANTITY of pain-in-whatever, but the QUALITY of grossness when particular pieces of bird poop were the poop-of-the-day.

All of this is not to say that I'm frequently struck by the astounding beauty and plain amazingness of the creatures.


*****************THAT said, I must (yes, I must) add that as big a dog lover that I am, I have also stunned other conversations into the ground when I have declared that I suspect that drug sniffer dogs are actually ADDICTED!1 Well, when you put their to-the-thousand-power scent capacity together with DRUGS, doesn't that spell HUH?!1 Even cadaver dogs---think about how excited any kind of dog gets over the grossest things that smell!1

And on the topic of my driving conversations into stupification--uh, stupiFACtion?!1-- I'm not no THREADKILLER for nuthin'!1