re: #59 freetoken

I’m surprised the squirrel is munching away like that. They usually don’t like safflower seed.

I spent years finessing a feeder setup in my yard that deterred squirrels and house sparrows. It worked, and it was great for a while.

Then my deeply paranoid neighbor noticed that house sparrows travel in flocks that would all fly away when disturbed. With this knowledge, he determined that a huge flock of house sparrows would be a great warning device if someone came into his yard, so he started putting out bread to attract as many house sparrows as possible. He succeeded and it completely wrecked the balance I had going on in my yard.

I told him that house sparrows were an invasive species that is dangerous for native birds, and showed him a birding guide written by someone from the MN DNR that actually wrote that if you have too many house sparrows, you should find a way to humanely kill them for the sake of the native birds.

The second time I tried to talk to him about it, he told me to quit harassing him and went in the house saying he was going to call the cops on me.

We haven’t said a word to each other in many years. I’m still pissed off.