Unexpected Aftermath

In my back garden stands a lone tree. Nothing too special, just your standard tree. No one really thought anything of it, after all, what can you really do with a tree? Of course we love it to a certain degree, it has been a staple of the garden for nineteen years, yet it took that same amount of time before we put it to any good use. Naturally, that ‘use’ I’m referring to is as a place for birds.

My bedroom window gives me a perfect line of sight to this tree, and up until a year ago I never really gave a second thought about it. On dull and rather slow days I would find my attention drifting to it, though there was never much to really see. From time to time a pigeon or two would perch themselves and eat the yellow berries from it, on the rare occasion a magpie from across the green would pay us a visit purely just to yell at our cats for trying to relax in their own garden. Other than that, for the majority of the time, it just stood there never really serving a purpose. This isn't to say nature has to have a purpose, in actuality nature has more of a purpose than me most days, but I hope you get what I mean. It wasn’t until the very first lockdown in March 2020 that me and my mum finally decided to do something proactive in the garden.

Whilst online shopping one day my mum saw a cute bird feeder, a double tiered wired thing which came with a plastic bowl for the top half and a mesh table for the lower. The intended purpose of this table was for robins which, I’m not sure if you know, have trouble eating on surfaces that they have to grasp as it’s difficult for them to do so. This table’s flat top was made so that they could eat in peace. After a few days of waiting and buying some cheap-ish bird sewett and seeds, the table arrived. We (I) assembled it, and we immediately hung it on a secure branch outside. We filled the water bowl and stocked the table with bird seed, heading inside after the job was done. Five minutes after heading upstairs, I took a casual glance out my window. Surely there wouldn’t already be a bird there, right? Wrong.

There were three.

And so began our year and a half of bird feeding. Long story short, I’ve always had birds (that I now know to be starlings) nest in the corner of my part of the roof, and despite the tables intended customer of robins, the residents of my room were more than happy to take what we were offering. Then more came, and then more, and then some more. After a few months an entire family of Starlings were using our little tree as a feeding ground. Word must've spread fast from the ones living in my roof as they clearly invited all their friends over to try out the new table. After thinking such a thought, I aptly named the tree “The Twitter Hub”. A few days after noticing the abundance in starlings, I began noticing other species too. Robins and blue tits were regulars to the Hub; pigeons were a fan of the swing element to the table; and magpies and crows put aside their differences to eat the sewett together. Due to so many customers we ended up buying more and more feeders, which were all lovingly used by our feathered friends. We even had the pleasure of hosting all of the baby starlings once they had hatched, and though it was nice, it did cause some issues.

Issue 1 : The Noise. Though I can’t speak for the others in my family, the noise was something I did find myself to have a small problem with. As mentioned briefly before, my window is directly opposite the tree, so any noise in the garden will be heard quite clearly by me. Boy, did those little guys make a lot of noise. I’m not talking 3 or 4 starlings, I’m not even talking 10, when I say the entire family dined with us for three meals a day I mean the entire family of 20 or so birds. They were so cute to watch, but waking up to their aggressive squawking was not something I looked forward to most days.

Issue 2 : The cats. We always had a gut feeling that they might be an issue, cats hunting birds is a tale as old as time so when it inevitably happened, as much as I was devastated with the circumstance, I was also not overly shocked. As time went on we all grew a bit more accustomed to keeping an eye out for any cats stalking towards the tree. There were regrettably still casualties in the next two or so months, but during winter it died down a lot, and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t let my cats hurt another baby before it had the chance to grow. Technically, I kept that promise. My cats didn’t bring in a bird this year, though that isn't for lack of trying. The neighbour's cat is a bit of a different story, a situation which I will most likely write about in the ‘Pets’ Category, but in short, there was a baby starling casualty brought about by a cat not my own. I did all I could to save it and make it as comfortable as possible, but it was too late.

After the last bird died, we stopped feeding them more and more. They would still come but we didn’t put out as much food as we used to, fearful of another baby being caught out. Over time, they stopped coming all together. I still hear them in my roof, but they must feed elsewhere now. I didn’t realise how much I’d miss them, to be honest. Yes they were loud, and yes, their food cost was growing more and more, but being able to say you helped raise an entire generation of birds, being able to help so many grow up safely with full stomachs, is very rewarding. My mum feels the same too. So much so that a month or two ago we put out a small amount of sewett and seeds again. Not many birds came back but the handful that did still gobbled it all up like the greedy, lovable bastards they are.

Fast forward to now, we’ve gone back to not putting any out. We’ve been busy with our own things and never really found the time despite having it. One day I came downstairs to see my parents in the back garden, crouching down around the tree and curious about what they were up to, went outside. They were taking photos. At first I didn’t know what of, it seemed like just some flowers. My mum noticed me and told me to come take a look. The flowers they were photographing weren’t just any flowers, they were sunflowers. A group of about sixteen or so with two beginning to fully open up. How could they have even gotten there? I wondered to myself, but the quite obvious realisation soon hit. Directly above the flowers was the bird table. The seeds from the tale must’ve fallen to the soil below and from there nature just took over. I can’t forget to mention the wheat either. Interspersed amongst the sunflowers were a few lone stalks of wheat. God Damn wheat. We had actual wheat growing in our garden, all because of the bird seed. All because of the birds.

This truly was an unexpected aftermath of The Twitter Hub experiment, but one which I’m glad with. The experience of it all has taught me so much, and I’m so thankful to have been able to help the life in my garden thrive even if it was only by a little.

Some advice, if you want to start helping the wildlife around you, just go for it. We did. Yeah the road could be rocky at times but it was well worth it in the end because nature will always be worth it.