A Sunflower Grows in Lutz

Recently I have posted quite a number of blog posts about my birdhouses.  Having birdhouses and bird feeders brings quite a large number of birds around the house.  Yesterday I discovered one of the weird side effects of having birds hanging around.

The bird feeder has the usual kinds of wild bird seed in it.  But the ones the birds and squirrels love the most is the sunflower seed.  In a "Damn nature!  You scary!" kind of way something pretty funny happened.  It seems one of the birds dropped a sunflower seed in the rain gutter.  Well, if a tree can grow in Brooklyn, then a sunflower can grow in my rain gutter.

And even though I am posting this on April 1st, I assure you this is not an April Fool's Day joke.

Here's a wide shot of the sunflower.

I actually noticed it when I was looking at the roof.  The reason I was looking at the roof is because all the pollen has piled up there.  I knew I was eventually going to have to go up there with the blower, and clear everything off the roof and clean the gutters.

I do need to clean the gutters, but I'm really having a hard time determining how clean I want it.  I don't want to get rid of the sunflower, but I really need that gutter clear.  We do get a lot of rain here in Florida, and it pays to keep the gutters clear.  I've got time to decide what to do.  After all, it's raining out there now.

Make a Little Birdhouse In my ... Backyard?

A long time ago in a backyard far away....  I put up a bird feeder.  It was really successful.  As in, the birds were eating one pound of birdseed a day.  In other words, one 20 lbs. bag of birdseed wouldn't last a month.  Sometimes it would barely make it to two weeks.

This lead to problems.  Namely, the squirrels started to take over.  They would toss all the bird food on the ground except the sunflower seeds, which they would eat.  But they wouldn't let the birds have any of the birdseed.  So I did what any angry American would do.  I started shooting the squirrels out of the bird feeder.

This lead to more problems, as in, what is the legality of firing a 12 gauge shotgun within the city limits of Lutz?  After I'd shot the tenth squirrel it really dawned on me that they were coming as fast as I could shoot them.  Also, thanks to all the practice I had out duck hunting, I'm a pretty good shot.

Now for those who would say that I killed those furry rats for nothing, know this.  I took them over to the bottom of the tree where the hawks had their nest.  That way, the didn't go to waste.  And the hawks had some nice squirrel to feed their baby hawks.  And for those who think I'm having a bit of fun by saying a mated pair of hawks lived in a tree just off our backyard, well, take a glance at this.

In this next picture you can actually see my birdfeeder, and the hawk flying right by it.  They did their best at keeping the squirrels honest.  The birdfeeder is in the lower left of the photo, and the hawk is the giant blur in the middle.

In this photo you can see the hawk giving me the, "What are you looking at chowderhead? look."  I know it looks like I am far away in this picture, but remember when I took my camera was not near as nice as the ones they have now.  Yeah, my camera took floppy disks.  I'm not making that up.  So the quality of this photo is not great, but the hawk is actually pretty close to me.

Back to the birdhouses.  During this same time I bought and painted a few birdhouses.  When one would rot and fall apart, I would buy, paint, and hang up another.  I had the birdhouses hanging from a limb in one of the oak trees.  I've had a number of birdhouses, and as far as I know, I've had four families of birds live in them over the years. 

I just learned not long ago that the proper name for these small birds is a "Tufted Titmouse. (I'm not making that up.)  One time I had a pair of red cardinals raise a family in one of the houses.  That was really neat.  What I thought was weird was that, they only stayed for about three weeks, and then everyone was gone.  The babies had grown up, and moved on.  

So due to the cost of the seed, and multiple problems with squirrels I gave up putting bird food in the bird feeder.  I also gave up hanging my last birdhouse since it kept falling down.  I wasn't sure if it was the rubber string dry-rotting or the squirrels chewing on it.

So the other day I was looking at my old birdhouse.  It was still in good shape.  I decided to do something about it.  I decided to hang it ... somewhere.  That's when I looked over to where my birdfeeder still was.  "Well, that could be an easy solution," I thought.  I'd just take off the birdfeeder and put up the birdhouse in it's place.  Way back when, I intentionally put the feeder on a metal galvanized pole to keep the squirrels at bay.  It was somewhat successful doing that.  So I figured it would be a good spot to hang the new/old birdhouse.

Here's the birdhouse.

As you can see I painted it a dull green/gray so it would blend in with the oak tree.  Here's a picture taken from a bit further away.

I realize that birdhouses are supposed to be up a little before springtime, so that either makes me half a year late or about half a year early.  Either way, I hope that some birds find it as a nice little place to live.  I hope it will be birds and not wasps.  They have a way of getting into everything down here.

If anything moves in you can be sure I that will take pictures and write a blog post about it.  And if any squirrels come near it...  Well, I can't talk about that.  Also, that was a car backfiring.  Or fireworks.  Or something.

If you didn't understand the pop culture reference in the title, give this a listen.  Also, you may contract an earworm.  Be warned.