Building Mom a Bird Sanctuary

It was Lori's idea: "Let's make your mom something that attracts birds that she can watch and take care of." 

My folks always were amateur birders and loved watching them. They had a couple of bird books that they used to look out for birds when living in Wichita. In fact, you could flip through the pages to see dates that Dad recorded when they saw a cardinal, blue jay, cedar waxwing and on and on. That said, Lori's idea was a great idea!

We gathered supplies including ground cover, a bird bath, bark, bird decor and a feeder. But we needed some sort of backdrop structure to both build around and cover the septic covers. We didn't have much wood left over from when we visited the family farm years ago. That was when I took every usable board I could pry away from the old chicken coop in Parowan. I thought I had just its wooden gate. When I looked behind our shed, I saw the gate and another section of wood. I stripped the gate of its design and rebuilt it to match the other piece and "presto," we had our structural backdrop. 

Our granddaughters Lyla and Lexi wanted to help so we got to work. First, we spraypainted a heart-shaped layout in the front yard of Mom's shophouse. We gathered rocks from the forest section of our property and laid them as the outline. Then, we cut and laid the ground cover. 

Needing another structure feature Lori wanted, we cut three longer branches from downed trees on the property, tied the tops together and spread out the legs creating a teepee-like design. We stood up and screwed our old chicken coop gates together, attached a birdhouse I'd previously made atop a post and then the girls laid and spread the bark. 

It was really taking shape and looking good. Lori and the girls rolled a large rock uphill and placed it in the bark. I added four pieces of petrified wood we got from Lori's mom's place in Hurricane, Utah, earlier in the year. We assembled a tall bird feeder Lori ordered on Amazon. Then, working with Lyla, we attached several metal decorative bird outlines to the gate sections. After filling the bird feeder with bird seed, Lori had another mini project in mind. She had gathered several pine cones and the girls coated them with peanut butter, rolled them in bird seed and then hung them on the teepee.

Then, the wait was on to see how many and which kind of birds would show up. Ironically enough, and really not surprising, deer were among the first critters to check out our creation. They loved licking the peanut butter from the cones. Squirrels and turkeys also got in on the action as well as nuthatches, robins, magpies and others.

What a fun project! It looks great. And Mom loves it!