Reflections on the Sixth Week of Winter – For the Birds

Spence Hanging Double Decker Suet Feeder

    The Friday before Christmas, I ripped off a handful of paper towels and grabbed a spatula. Because Spence loved bacon, but didn’t want grease clogging his arteries, he baked bacon on a rack over a cookie sheet. And because he didn’t want grease clogging drains or the septic tank either, I scraped hardened drippings off the cookie sheet. Talking to my kitchen window reflection, I said, “There’s got to be a better way than bagging grease and tossing it into the garbage.” The image of cat shapes on my apron sparked a memory of Great Aunt Edith.

    Wearing her gingham apron in the 1950s, Aunt Edith washed her hands at her kitchen sink with soap she’d made from lard. An empty coffee can for collecting cooking grease sat on the counter under shelves of African violets.

    Did I want to wash my hands in soap that smelled like bacon?

    No.

    I rubbed the paper towels over the scraped baking sheet, yuck, and listened to a ScienceFriday podcast. Ira Flatow’s nasal voice announced, “The temperatures are dropping. The days are short, which means it’s time for the winter bird migration and . . . bird nerds around the country will be participating in the Audubon’s Annual Christmas Bird Count . . . .”

    Birds.

    Woodpeckers.

    Maybe I could make suet with bacon grease.

    I left the bag of grease, icky towels, and baking sheet on the kitchen table. After washing my hands, I plopped into the Adirondack chair and tapped laptop keys.

    Four websites confirmed making suet from bacon grease worked well if the birds had a fresh water source–not a problem at Wells Wood. I fetched a quart-size mason jar, emptied the bag of congealed grease into the jar, and stuck it in the refrigerator.

    Nearly five weeks later, on Wednesday, I pulled two quart jars of congealed bacon grease out of the refrigerator and set them on trivets over the wood stove to liquefy. Then I unpacked the squirrel proof feeders my sister had given me.

    Spence had misgivings about this gift. “Don’t hang them near my garden. The seed will attract voles and mice.” Our only seed feeder hangs on the sliding glass door well away from his garden. That feeder did attract voles, mice, and even a bear, but the animals didn’t harm the garden.

    I assembled a clear plastic feeder and held it up to show Spence. “Look. Isn’t the feeder cute?” But I didn’t wait for him to praise my engineering skills. “Darn. The opening between the top and bottom is too small for woodpeckers.”

    Spence reached for the feeder. “Turn the dome upside down.” He unscrewed the connecting rod, flipped the dome, and reassembled the feeder. “Now you have two bowls for suet.”

    I didn’t say, if the birds find it before the squirrels.

    Following Melissa Mayntz’s Internet recipe that read, “Once the suet is rendered, it can be fed to the birds as-is or you can choose to add simple ingredients to make it more appetizing . . . ,” I mixed together five ingredients without bothering to measure like other recipes directed.

• dust from the bottom of a walnut bag
• dregs from one almond butter and two peanut butter jars
• cornmeal
• oatmeal
• liquefied bacon grease that I’d poured through cheese cloth three times

   Aroma of bacon and peanut butter made my mouth water for a peanut butter bacon sandwich. Luckily, the tubes sticking out of the middle of the feeder domes distracted me.

    What if the suet clogged the tubes so I couldn’t insert the connector rod?

    Sheesh.

    I opened the silverware drawer and dug through the back for drinking straws. After I fitted the straws in the holes, I poured the suet in the bowls and carried the tray of bowls to the porch desk. Snowflakes drifted over the setting suet.

    Four hours later, I interrupted Spence from his computer work. “Do you have time to help me hang the suet?” I wouldn’t hang the feeders by myself because of his reactions to a hairy woodpecker in the summer.

    Spence had shaken his fist and shouted at the bird. “You ungrateful wretch. I kept you alive last winter, and now you’re pecking holes in my house.”

    Spence pulled his feet off the coffee table, set his computer on the empty space, and said, “I’m following you.”

Junco in Flight

    Bundled in winter gear, we stepped onto the porch. I pulled the straws out of two bowls, stuck the connector rod through the tube in the top bowl, and fitted a spring around the bottom of the rod. Spence screwed the rod into the bottom bowl and lifted the double decker feeder off the desk. The top smashed onto the bottom.

    Spence chuckled.

    I didn’t. “The suet’s too heavy for the spring.”

    Spence set the bowls down. “Take the spring out and use the straws to space the bowls.”

    That worked.

   We walked across the road, stepped over a frozen drainage ditch, and climbed a snowy bank. Briars grabbed our hats and scratched our faces. Spence paused. “Where do you want the cage?”

    “Across from the bedroom and loft windows.”

    He pulled wild grape vines off a young cherry tree and threw a chain–a quarter inch thick–over a branch. “This is closer to the house than I’ve been hanging suet,” Spence said stretching his arms overhead to pinch the chain closed with needle nose pliers.

    Next he took the suet cage off the hook at the bottom of the girasole patch to hang the second set of bowls. “Birds don’t eat from this cage as much as they do from the one at the end of the south garden.”

    So he reached above his head a third time to hang the last set of bowls near the suet cage on the ash tree.

Shivering, I hustled to the log house and gazed through the windows.

    No woodpeckers.

   No nuthatches.

    I needed to wait.

   At the beginning of every winter, a chickadee always finds the sunflower seeds in the feeder within hours of us first hanging it on the sliding glass door. Then the chickadee calls the rest of the birds in its feeding group to share the bounty. Would a chickadee find the new feeders? The enticing peanut butter bacon fragrance wouldn’t attract chickadees, woodpeckers, or nuthatches. Their sense of smell is weak to nonexistent.

    Maybe I’d have to wait a day.

    Thursday morning, I clumped through the snow, stood on tiptoes, and peered into all six suet bowls. No beak marks. No wing or three-toed foot prints on the ground under the bowls either. I’d have to wait longer.

   Thursday afternoon with the camera hanging over my shoulder, I clumped across the street, up the snowy bank, and through the snagging briars. Smooth suet surfaces. Figuring birds would find the suet faster where they’d eaten suet before, I traipsed to the girasole patch. No pecks.

    Discouraged, I crunched through the snow to the end of the south garden. A lyrical trill coming from high above distracted me. I tossed my head back and peered into the sky. Half a dozen juncos and one chickadee flitted in the tree tops. Through the zoom lens, I spied a slate-colored, dark-eyed junco puffing its chest three times normal size and singing louder than a scolding chickadee.

    Had the juncos and chickadee found the suet? Six steps took me to the ash tree with the old suet cage and the new suet feeder. No pecks.

    Friday, discouraged by countless window checks of hanging suet feeders with no birds attached, I lugged laundry baskets asked Spence, “Will you check the suet feeders for me?”

    He gave me a salute and marched out the door.

    “Either they don’t know it’s food,” he reported when he returned, “or they can’t figure how to get it.”

    Sunday, after the sun burnt through the thick morning fog, I pulled on boots, grabbed my camera, and slipped across the gravel driveway. Ducking around briars and tripping over branches, I reached the first suet feeder. A thin layer of ice covered the top bowl. I brushed the ice off with my fingers. A quarter inch of ice covered the bottom bowl. I broke the ice with a stick and dumped it out with some water. No peck marks.

    Maybe at the second feeder?

    Breathing in mixed aromas of mud and snow, I trudged to the girasole patch, cleared ice, and dumped water. No peck marks.

    Without hope, I baby-stepped along icy tractor ruts to the end of the south garden and peeked into the top bowl.

    “Yes!”

    Scratches marred the suet. Two bird foot prints. Had a bird stood in the feeder rather than perched on the side?

    So, I tweaked the suet project. With a serving spoon, I pried suet out of the bottom bowl of the feeder across from the bedroom window then mashed the gooey mess into the suet cage. Spence hung the suet cage in the ash tree next to the bowl with the bird tracks. Maybe the cage would tempt the birds.

    In the meantime, I lifted the baking sheet off the top of the wood burning stove and poured this morning’s bacon grease into a mason jar. A few dribbles oiled my hand, but I didn’t mind. I can wait awhile longer for birds to eat the homemade suet. No need to stuff bags of congealed bacon grease into the garbage–yet.

Marks in Top Suet Bowl