Chilly here, with icy rain, sleet, and maybe snow forecast for Monday and Tuesday. The birds are flocking to the feeders: redwing blackbirds, with cardinals (so bright), chickadees (so dapper), titmice, and a gazillion sparrows. The blackbirds can be a nuisance, but I love their spring song. I feel the same way about the bronze-headed cowbirds (a few of them out there, too), which are brood parasites: the female lays her eggs in the songbirds nests and the growing cowbird chicks out-compete the smaller songbird chicks for food.
But while I might have reservations about the cowbird's family values (What is that cowbird mama doing with herself while other mamas sit on her eggs? Is she enjoying a career? seeing the world? finding a new lover?), I certainly admire their sprightly, complexly choreographed song-and-dance routine, which they perform in pairs on the wires along our lane in April and May. Scientists think that female cowbirds prefer males who can dance as well as sing, so the Gene Kellys of the cowbird world win out. But since male cowbirds aren't raised in cowbird families, the larger question arises: who teaches the teenaged male cowbird to sing cowbird songs, let alone dance cowbird dances? Fascinating questions on a chilly December morning.
But thinking of April and May and spring birdsong won't warm up the day, for me or the birds. So I put on the kettle for tea and trek out to the cedar tree in the back yard with a bowl of bird pudding, made with equal parts lard and peanut butter, with a couple of spoonfuls of molasses and enough cornmeal, oatmeal, and birdseed to make a very stiff batter. (It's easier to stir this up if you stick the whole thing in the microwave for 20 seconds or so, to soften the peanut butter and lard.) Years ago, back in the days when you could go into a meat market and ask the butcher for a bag full of beef trimmings, I made bird pudding from suet. No more. Meat comes ready-trimmed to the supermarket, and there is no suet to be had, at least in my corner of the world. The birds don't seem to care. By the time I'm ready to pour my cup of tea, they're busy on the limbs that I've buttered with their pudding.
If you do this, be aware that the fat will stain the limbs dark. If this matters to you, choose limbs that won't be seen by your neighbors or your company or whoever you are trying to impress.
Reading Note, from Henry David Thoreau: Birds were very naturally made the subject of augury, for they are but borderers upon the earth, creatures of another and more ehtereal element than our existence can be supported in, which seem to flit between us and the unexplored.