An opportunity to bribe birds for wings

TWELVE MONTHS by Scott Morgan: Our reporter is delighted it’s National Wild Bird Feeding Month — it’s his chance to convince the birds to teach him how to fly.

   Here’s my fantasy …
   FADE IN:
   Scott Morgan, abs chiseled in high-grade granite, scrounges shirtless for seashells on Wrightsville Beach. Suddenly, he finds a genie in a conch shell.
   Genie: Hello, handsome, you brilliant, charming, wealthy math whiz — I’m a genie and I’ll grant you one wish.
   Me: That’s a cinch, G — I want to fly like Superman.
   The sound you are about to hear is the bucket of ice water hitting my face.
   Much to my deep regret, I can’t fly, which probably explains my love for my birdie little chums. I love birds with exquisite envy. My admiration of the human form inevitably ends with an asterisk like the one Roger Maris died with. Humans simply cannot fly. And don’t give me any jibber-jabber about jets and hang-gliders. Our bare, basic forms are unable do what birds can do at any whim.
   Still, I hope, and where there is no hope, there is always bribery, which is why I like to ply my feathery friends with food. I figure that if I keep feeding them with tasty treats, one day they’ll realize how much I envy them and they’ll teach me to fly. Or at least they’ll catch me if I take a header off the roof.
   So happy day, February is National Wild Bird Feeding Month, a 28-day effort to sway the avian vote in my favor. I confess, I had no idea such an opportunistic celebration existed until the end of January, but now that I know, boy…
   The trouble is, I’ve never been an ace bird feeder. I’ve mostly spent my time hucking bread and crackers at the Canada geese in a vain attempt at garnering sympathy. "Love me! Love me," I would say. "Make me be like you." I didn’t know there was actually, like, a right way to do it.
   Fortunately for me, there is Debbie Miller.
   Debbie’s more an indoor bird person, but anybody who likes macaws enough to pamper one is OK with me. I’m not sure her specific title, but she at least is resident bird expert at Precious Pets in East Windsor. I dropped by Precious Pets to find out a little more about Wild Bird Feeding Month and, being quite a David Bowie fan, knew I’d come to the right spot when I heard "Fame" playing on Debbie’s radio.
   Debbie showed me around the store and explained that I was doing the whole bird feeding thing really wrong. You can’t feed birds bread — bread swells in their bellies. Same with corn. You have to feed them rape seed or Niger seed so little finches with the beautiful tunes will drop by for a visit. No wonder they don’t love me back, chump that I am. I might as well be throwing meat at a flock of vegetarians in the park.
   Apparently, word about National Wild Bird Feeding Month has gotten around. From what Debbie tells me, and from what I’ve read online, nearly a third of North American adults actively partake in bird feeding. And the reason February is National Wild Bird Feeding Month is because so many people (no doubt with the same cunning plan as I) fill bird feeders this month to help offset the harshness of seeking food in the winter.
   There are drawbacks, of course. Squirrels, for one, but you can buy a squirrel-proof feeder. Let the fat little rats drag their puffy tails to the Dumpster like any other rodent, I say. Then there’s the birds’ reliance on your feeder as a source of food.
   But those are minor beefs. As much as I love the serenity of my pet goldfish (Adolph, Gwen, Widget, Midget and Idget), I love the plumage, the songs and the cleverness of birds. And if that means I have to put up with a couple of squirrels (or, as in Debbie Miller’s case, crows who steal her dogs’ food), it’s worth it to be able to find such joy in creatures so lucky and sublime.
   And I sincerely hope that as this column finds its way to the bottoms of bird cages this month, word gets around that I’m on your side, buddies.
Scott Morgan is a staff writer for the Windsor-Hights Herald. Twelve months looks at items or events with their own "month" designation, such as National Wild Bird Feeding Month.