This is for the Birds

THIS IS FOR THE BIRDS
By
Deborn Luzer

If you’ve missed me for a couple of weeks it’s because I haven’t been here. I seem to have been the victim of an early outbreak of spring fever, I guess, plus it seems that I’ve been more under the weather than over it. Actually, when someone is as basically as lazy as I am, it doesn’t take a whole lot of persuading me not to do anything. All of the above are factors; those, and the fact that I bought a couple of new woodworking tools; a table saw and a jig saw.

I bought the table saw using the excuse that I needed some way to make my own picture frames. I bought the jig saw because, if you have a table saw, you naturally need a jigsaw. You also need a planer, a joiner, and a router if you have the other two but my budget won’t tolerate those just yet. The reason that I’ve waited until now to buy any tools at all is that I’ve not had any place to put them. I acquired a storage shed last summer and, after storing all the junk that a person has to keep for that “one day”, I still had a small corner to build a small work bench and a place to hang a few tools.

At one time I was fairly knowledgeable using any type of woodworking tool but since I spent most of my life working in electrical and electronics I’ve gotten out of practice. Seldom have I ever had to use any sandpaper, or skill saws, or levels while performing electrical work. I’ve often had to perform electrical work, though, while using woodworking tools because I seem to have a nasty habit of sawing my power cords in half. I’ve often heard it said that a carpenter isn’t really an experienced carpenter unless all his power cords are covered with electrical tape. According to that philosophy I should be really seasoned.

There are not really a lot of things that you can make with just a table saw and a jig saw except for picture frames, bird houses, feeders for squirrels and birds, butterfly houses, or bat houses. After making several picture frames in all sizes and shapes and colors I found out that just making the frame is the easy part. After that come the staining or painting, cutting the matting, the backing, and the glass, and then putting it all together. The whole process takes about four, or five hours. I wanted something a little more craft-like so I turned to birdhouses.

Once I found that I could cut out the pieces for the houses two at a time I went at it with a fever. Of course I had to make several trips to the lumber yard because of cutting a lot of the angles wrong to start with. As I said, I’m out of practice. After a few times, though, I seemed to get the hang of it and began to assemble a fairly passable birdhouse. A minute, or two, with a can of spray paint and, voila, a birdhouse ready for nailing on a tree or post! I now have birdhouses in various colors all around my yard, nailed to power poles, and hanging in trees. The only thing I seem to need right now is more birds willing to humble themselves and live in them. Actually, I don’t mind if no birds care to inhabit them; they make nice decorations around the place, anyway.

I haven’t started on making feeders, yet, although I have made one butterfly house. That’s where I should have had the router tool but I don’t really believe that butterflies ever go into one of them, anyway, so what if the slots are a little out of kilter? It does look nice sticking up out of the butterfly bushes, though. I also have the plans for a bat house and a set of wind chimes but I’m holding off on those until I get more practiced.

I even bought a dozen plastic gourds and put them up on a pole to house purple martins in this year. Maybe it won’t matter to them if the cross arms aren’t exactly horizontal and that the pole sways a few feet with the wind. It’s the looks that count, right? With all the accommodations that I have around here I should be able to enjoy bird watching all summer long. That is, if the birds can stop twittering and laughing at them long enough to build their nests.