“The last bird I saw on our Costa Rico trip was the Turquoise-browed motmot, my dream bird.”
–Ruth White
“Migratory birds will start coming this month,” he said. “Last year I fed four pairs of rose-breasted grosbeaks.”
Joe Morgan lives up near Aberdeen on the Tenn-Tom Waterway. He used to live off Coontail Road before he moved closer to the marina. Joe is a birder, and birders like to talk birds to other birders. Joe also describes himself as “83 years young.” I like that.
Joe not only loves nature, especially birds, but he crafts things like birdhouses. A few years back he made 89 birdhouses and gave them away to people who pick up litter in Monroe County.
At 83 years, Joe is proficient on his computer. I find that impressive since I still have difficulty operating my “too smart” phone. Joe has a profile photo of himself looking quite dapper in his military uniform as he was getting ready to deploy to Korea in 1951.
Noting my difficulty with squirrels, Joe sent the following suggestion:
“For more than 60 years I have had feeders of all kinds. The one I currently have works quite well. I used a 4-inch diameter PVC pipe about 7 feet long. Drilled a 3/4-inch hole near the top end. Dug a hole about a foot deep to plant the PVC. I put a 3/4-inch galvanized pipe about 5 feet long through the hole. I hang two quart-sized feeders and two gallon-sized feeders filled with black oil sunflower seeds; then I sit back and watch. The feeders are high enough that squirrels cannot reach them, and the PVC pipe is too large for them to climb. They share the droppings from the feeders. All birds love black oil sunflower seeds.”
Joe also reminded me that once I had wondered if bluebirds migrate.
“The ones at my place stay here,” he said.
Joe made a couple of birdhouses for the bluebirds using discarded license plates for a roof. He bent the plates in half and said, “The birds enjoy a nice hip-roofed top.”
I’m thinking as soon as Sam slows down on fishing the crappie spawn he might find time in his retirement activities to construct one of those PVC bird feeder devices that Joe came up with. Sam’s been wanting to move the bird feeders back away from the porch. He’s thinking the seed could attract mice, and he’s forever suspicious of mice chewing the wiring, which in fact the varmints did down by the cabin at the lake.
Sam discovered the electricity was out in the boat shed when the lights didn’t come on. That meant the refrigerator where Sam keeps his crappie catch would soon start to thaw. The thought of losing our crappie harvest was alarming. Sam started cutting openings in the wall, looking for the source of the outage. Meanwhile, I walked to the lake to feed more birds, only to find no power in the cabin — which turned out to be the source of the dad-blasted mice chewings.
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