Speaking of birds

[conuly]

and I do know I've been speaking of birds a lot! - we have in front of the house some sort of evergreen tree. Nobody really likes it, we have no idea how to prune it so it's all shaggy in the worst way, and honestly I think we've all thought about getting rid of it... but the sparrows love that tree and have loved it as long as we've been here. You can hear them chattering up a storm all morning and into the afternoon, loud enough to wake the dead. And we also all like the birdsong, even if we're not such huge fans of the tree.

I just wish we knew how to get it into some sort of decent shape. It's not shaggy in a "ah, yes, it's a wild tree" way, it's just shaggy in a "wow, this is ugly" way.

Relatedly, if I wanted to put something under the feeder to make tidying the leftover spillage easier, what would I put there?