A Monday Memory....

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag....

The Englishman and I drove up to the nearest Wild Birds Unlimited store this morning to replenish our bird feeding supplies.  We find great enjoyment in watching the loyal flocks of birds who frequent our tube feeders, which hang from a post in the front yard.  Cardinals, mourning doves, sparrows, chickadees and starlings are among the many varieties stopping by throughout the day.

My Dad was also a huge fan of feeding the birds in our yard.  He and my mother had a particular love of cardinals.  Having both been raised in New York City, they were amazed the very first time they spotted a pair of cardinals, who were looking to set up residence in their newly acquired front yard in the suburbs of New Jersey, shortly after their marriage.  Their delight each time they saw the colorful red birds never waned during the rest of their lives.

At their second house, and what turned out to be the family home of over fifty years, my Dad set up a bird feeder just outside the picture window located in the kitchen.  It was similar to the one pictured below.  My Dad would faithfully fill it with seed, in all types of weather, throughout the year.

I recently recalled a childhood memory of that feeder.  My siblings and I discovered that if you grabbed onto one of the perches for the birds, located on either side of the feeder, and pulled it back as far as you could.....

the feeder would then violently rock back and forth, casting the seed far and wide.

We thought it was hilarious!

My father, to our great surprise at that time, did not.

Well of course he wouldn't find it funny, I later realized.

Not only were we wasting the seed, there was a real possibility we would snap the pole and/or  break the feeder.  Getting ourselves knocked in the head may have also been of concern to him.

Amazing, isn't it, the number of times we may have viewed our parents as being unreasonable or overreacting to our childhood antics.   

Their reactions certainly seem perfectly understandable to me at this stage of my life, long after  becoming a parent myself.