Bird brain? Not really...

A few days ago, I noticed that there was a Weaver nest starting in a scruffy indigenous bush in my garden.

I need to specify that my garden is a strange mixture of English garden and scruffy indigenous plants. And yes, I planted it like that myself. I started from literally nothing – an empty stand which was built from the ground up, so I can’t even blame anyone. I just sort of changed my mind halfway and am slowly changing the look to indigenous over time.

Anyway, the birds seem to enjoy my garden because I have two scruffy trees for them to build nests in, I have a bird bath, two bird feeders, and two enormous fig trees. I say scruffy, because there really isn’t any other way to describe it. I deliberately let it be scruffy to encourage the scruffy birds to feel at home and come make nests, and they do. And now there is also a pair of Weavers there.

Unfortunately, my cat brought me, as presents you understand, the males of the only three nesting pairs of red-headed quelias. Sad, but true. She likes to sit in the tree above the bird feeders, but has only been successful at catching them when they are on the ground eating the seed that falls out of the feeder.

At the beginning of the week, as I came home, I left my door open to get a breeze inside. A few minutes later I heard a commotion outside – like many birds fighting or yelling. I went to look, and there must have been 10 to 15 little brown jobs sitting on my fence yelling at me that the bird feeder was empty.

Say what you like about birds being stupid. They do know when their food is finished, and they certainly know who feeds them in my garden.