kamikazi birds & trying to keep my front window bird-face print free

Yet another poor bird has crashed into my front window. While it’s amusing to the cat, most of the rest of us feel kinda bad for the poor birds. The last one left a dusty inprint on the window that we’d kept there for a while as a memorial to him (well, it was more out of laziness – I hate washing windows).

When the sun reflects off of the window, it reflects back like a mirror and for some reason attracts the birds right to it. I finally got around to washing my front window, so I took action and made a cut-out of a hawk to hopefully deter further kamikazi dives. The cut-out template can be found here.

I’m also hoping that the birdfeeder in front of the window might give them pause for a moment and make them slow down and consider a snack before smacking into the front window. I’ve seen Hitchcock’s The Birds often enough to not want birds crashing through my windows.

And if that doesn’t work, I hope the lounging tween on the swing beside the window will do the trick.

Linking to Frugally Sustainable, Sorta Crunchy

for the birds – easy children’s project to attract birds

Yesterday started out as another typical frenetic Saturday at my household. Horses to feed, hockey game to attend, shopping to do, housekeeping to ignore – the usual.

We won the hockey game. I ignored the shopping. The housekeeping got mostly done by me and the kids with liberal doses of me saying “My name is not Dobby!”.

The afternoon was greyish, so I occupied the kids by using leftover ribbon and yarn to make this project. I remember finding beautiful little white horsehair birds nests around the barn last year after we had groomed the white pony. I’ve also read that you can leave out bits of yarn for the birds to make their nests. I found a few project ideas on line – some people poke the strings out through grapevine balls and hang them from trees, which looked great, but I didn’t have any and didn’t feel like traipsing through burdock looking for grapevine.

I bought a suet feeder cage at the hardware store and we lined the bottom with some sphagnum moss leftover from the small squeaky kid’s diarama project. We cut up bits of yarn, ribbon, raffia, jute, etc. into 4 to 8″ lengths and stuffed them in the cage until it was full. We hung it in a conspicuous spot out back and now we’ll keep watch to see if we can spot any colourful nests around this summer.

We also put out a birdhouse,

put water in the bird feeder,

and put out some birdseed.

We are still waiting for the birds to come. I think the sudden dip in temperature and the grey day yesterday had them hiding away somewhere else. The girls spent part of the afternoon upstairs in their bedroom watching the string feeder through binoculars, so I did provide some quiet time. Mission accomplished.

Linking to Tater Tots and Jello, Six Sister’s Stuff, I {heart} Naptime, Too Much Time on My Hands, Simply Klassic Home, Folk Haven, A Pinch of Joy, Bringing Beauty, Our Delightful Home, It’s So Very Cheri, Frugally Sustainable, Cozy Home Scenes, A Peaceful Mom