Quite a few years ago, sister Vicky gave us a garden ornament for Christmas.
A bowl? A dish?
I didn't quite know what to do with it, so I filled it with sugar-water and hung it from the wisteria for the delectation of passing birdies. They staunchly ignored it. For years.
The little birds at Gerolstein used to mass every evening in the gum forest, a couple of hundred metres from the house. At dusk, there would be a huge exodus, and, to the accompaniment of a noise like a jet engine, hundreds of the little things, simultaneously, rose from the tree tops and disappeared into the setting sun.
Then a storm came, and knocked the forest down.
I don't know where the birdies had their rendez-vous after that. Until ... last year, they began congregating on the wisteria, outside the dining room window ..
To encourage them to visit regularly, I got the bowl -- or is it a dish? -- put some bird seed in it, and hung it from a strong wisteria branch. They ignored it.
Just out of picture, is a 29 year-old magnolia tree. A 50th birthday present in the days when I was young. It manages some blooms every year, but it is scarcely a success. I noticed that the sparrows were using it as a stopover between Wisteria and Dusk so, since I was banging my head on the dish -- or is it a bowl? -- regularly, I shifted the thing to the mangolia tree ..
Bzzzzzing! Feathers, tails a-flying the sparrow squadrons descended ...
Sparrows are sweet, but they are bullies. There are other little birds in our gardens, and the bravest of these were the greenfinches ... and the battles of the bowl (it's really a dish) began ...
The two armies seem, at last, to have declared a cease-fire ... in fact, the creatures are just as apt to fight off one of their own kind and colour as the other team ... a bit like football players ..
Anyway, for now, the Battle of the Bowl is over. Until the chaffinches get up courage.
Time to go fill the bowl! Or is it a dish?
Careful Quintilius Quayle! There's a sentry on guard!
PS dissertation on the question of Bowl versus Dish can be found here:
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