Unsightly cardinal holds his own at the bird feeder

By Jane Clute - Special to The Herad

Some things you don't forget. Like having an ordinary lunch on an ordinary summer day when Matt, eyes wide, dropped his fork with a clang, pointed to the vicinity of our bird feeders and stammered, “Wh-a-a-t's t-h-hat?”

I glanced, then stared. “T-h-hat” couldn't be a cardinal, or could it? Surely not. Yet if it was shaped like a cardinal, acted like a cardinal and ate like a cardinal — nervously twitching its head this way and that — then it must be a cardinal. But how…?

Either, 1) it was having a bad hair day, 2) the dye job had gone terribly wrong, 3) the stylist had missed the chapter on foils, 4) he was wearing his Halloween outfit or 5) he'd been playing paintball. And lost.

Ugly isn't the word. We questioned the bird's parentage, but you can't print the likes of that in a family newspaper. Also questioned whether he could be a she but voted on the former.

He looked so pitiful that other cardinals at the same feeder — maybe his own parents or siblings — were picking on him unmercifully. Sometimes, they'd give him the cold shoulder. Later, they'd take turns running up to him and flapping their wings or getting in his face and threatening to peck him or ganging up on him and forcing him off the feeder.

We kept asking ourselves how a normally brilliant red male cardinal could be — well, mostly brown and dark gray with a strange splotch of red here, a streak of red there, and I think I just saw a few wild silver hairs too.

Beats me. But it's been about three months since we first started watching that crazy, mottled mess of a bird and he's still ugly as all get-out. But one thing's for sure: You can tell who wears the pants on that feeder now. He's doing just fine, mighty fine, thank you.

There's been a lot less activity at our hummingbird feeders this week. I think our Boss Bird must be rounding 'em up and heading 'em out. We'll miss them terribly. But, judging by how quickly Christmas is coming, spring will be here before I turn around.

Even though most of the hummingbirds seem to be packing their bags, don't take this as an indication that you should pack up all your feeders. We leave at least one out till freezing weather for stragglers passing through, but several years ago, we had a stubborn hummingbird who got tired of traveling and decided to hole up here for the winter.

He'd come to the window and complain on the rare occasion when we forgot to keep his juice thawed. I worried that we'd have to thaw him, but he seemed to enjoy having all the attention — and no competition at the dinner table.

Told you I've wanted to yank up every last flowerbed and start over. Instead, Matt convinced me to do it in stages, so we started with a big bed in the backyard early this spring. Matt spent a chunk of last month digging out another bed where daylilies and Siberian iris, gorgeous as they are, had gotten thick as grass. So thick they could hardly breathe, much less bloom. What a backbreaking job that was, too.

Now we're getting ready to replant, but first, we've got to amend the soil. When you're starting out with pathetic dirt, you have several choices: Replace the original soil, which can put a hole in your pocketbook; build a raised bed, and add new soil on top of the old; or just improve the original soil.

We opted for the latter and are using half a load of good, dark, loamy topsoil leftover from a previous project. To this, we'll add several bags of composted manure. (However tempting, don't make the mistake of using uncomposted stuff, even if you have a farmer friend who'll give it to you; otherwise, you'll wind up with a bed of weeds his animals ate. Matt also added compost from our backyard bin for good measure.

I have been known to use just the topsoil. Mistake. While it can be great stuff, typically, it doesn't include the organic material most plants require to thrive. If you're using peat moss instead of compost, the general rule of thumb is about one 4-cubic-foot bale per 25 square feet of bed.

One more ingredient might be necessary. If your topsoil isn't pretty sandy, you should ice the whole area with a couple of inches of sand to loosen the soil and improve drainage. When you've got clay soil, like most of us have around here, that drainage business is key.

Then Matt got out the baby tiller and used it to blend all the ingredients like making a cake. Now the bed is ready for Jane; only we've both been fighting a bug, and I'm not sure Jane's ready for it.