The birds in your garden, they told me the words to this song

June 3rd, 2006
Saturday night in Brixton. It’s a warm evening, the pubs are full. BBQs have been in full-swing. Me, I’m at home and VERY excited. I’ve just spent an hour constructing a sling device for my camera, using equipment I found around the house: an empty strawberry punnet, masking tape, scissors, the pink cord from a jD woman carrier bag. I feel like MacGyver! To colour in the background, we need to go back in time….

January 2006
From the day I moved in here I’ve been keen to attract wildlife to the garden. I know that rose-ringed parakeets are fairly common in South London and they are my no. 1 target. Unfortunately, there are several cats that roam around the gardens and all possible sites for a bird feeder in the garden would be within easy reach of a feline paw. The only solution would be to get a feeder that can attach to my bedroom window. Tesco sells bird food and I bought a big bag, in anticipation of the avifauna that would soon be flocking to my window.

March 2006
The bag of food remained glumly unopened in my cupboard. After weeks of fruitless searching for a window feeder (Natural History museum, Science museum, Brixton Woolworths, B&Q and ASDA on Old Kent Road), the internet came up trumps and I received delivery of my bird feeder, complete with window-attaching suckers. I eagerly attached it to the window, securing the safety string to the window handle (to prevent breakage in the event of sucker failure) and filled it with an appetising mix of seeds. The separate water compartment was also filled, to provide all the refreshment my feathered friends could possibly need. I sat back and awaited a display of nature from the comfort of my room…

Later, March 2006
No sign of any activity yet. The seeds look untouched. The water has gone down but evaporation would explain that. Oh well, they probably just need time to get used to it.

April 2006
Still nothing. Plenty of birds coming to the garden, and even on the washing line near to the feeder, but there is no evidence that the food has been touched. Give them more time. If I built it, they will come.

Later, April 2006
Perhaps I need some different food. Maybe the South London bird fraternity aren’t too keen on my ‘Field Fayre All Seasons Mix’. The fact that it has been ‘prepared by British farmers’ obviously doesn’t interest them. While on a visit back up north, I consult a man selling bird tables in Lower Peover. He recommends sunflower seeds. With renewed enthusiasm, I ditch the old mixture and replace it with the new seeds.

May 2006
For god’s sake! I’m now thoroughly disheartened and thinking of removing the feeder.

Thursday June 1st, 2006
0730: alarm goes. Ignore it.
0810: Shit, should have been up ages ago. Just rest the eyes a bit longer…hang on, what’s that? I can hear a strange mixture of taps and tweets. Where’s it coming from? I’m wide awake now. It sounds like there’s something knocking my window. Can it be? Although I often sleep with the curtains open (form a queue, voyeurs), this morning I can’t see out of the window because I’ve used the curtain rail as a rudimentary clothes dryer. If I get up and move the shirts, I’ll surely scare anything away. So I end up crawling slowly across the floor until I can get a view of the feeder………YES! There’s a bird there! A real live goddam bird! AT LAST! For anyone who is interested and still reading this far, the first bird to be sighted on my feeder is a Great Tit. I watch from my vantage point until it leaves (peeping Tom) and then take the shirt down so that I can see it properly. This is a bit rash though: it soon returns and instantly spots that it can now see into my room, after a couple of seconds it decides that it doesn’t like this, possibly because I am semi-naked, and flies off. The shirt goes back up.

Friday June 2rd, 2006
The great tit is back again and I’m still excited about it. I’ve now manoeuvred the shirt so that I can see the feeder while still blocking most of the interior view. I decide to provide a mix of sunflower seeds and the original ‘All season mix’. I learn from ‘Birds Britannica’ that the Great Tit’s latin name is Parus Major. Which is interesting, as the latin name for Useless Tit is Parus Hilton.

Saturday June 3rd, 2006
0545: I’m glad you’re enjoying the food on offer birds, but please, try not to be so noisy about it.
What feels like every 20 minutes until 1030: still hungry Mr Great Tit? Good for you, now please just shush.

Which brings us back to the present. I’ve been planning to write something about this topic since the major development on Thursday. I decided that I needed a picture of the feeder in action though and that’s where my craft skills came in. I need some way of positioning my camera in front of the feeder while triggering it remotely. Fortunately my laptop possesses just such a function, but I still need to somehow get the camera into position. The nearest shelf won’t work and I realise that if I could somehow suspend it from the curtain rail I should have a perfect view. My plans of work are cast aside in favour of some DIY using the items mentioned above. Eventually, I suspend an empty punnet from the curtain rail using the cord from the carrier bag. Because of the weight of the camera this has the habit of spinning away from the window, so I end up fastening the punnet to the wall using masking tape. I take some practice shots and it seems to be working well.



Tomorrow morning I’ll need to turn on the camera (when the birds are not there) and the laptop, and then just sit and wait…