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?

Comments

[dine]

I'm no arborist, but my first thought was maybe it's some sort of cedar; they can be shaggy and kinda ill-defined. I've no idea how to trim them - if it's just looks you may be stuck with it the way it is, unless you opt to remove it altogether.

how large is the spillage area under the feeder? because if the scattering is spread broadly, something like a small kiddy pool? you could cut a hole/groove so it could be centered under the feeder (if it's on a pole) or just put it underneath if it's suspended from a branch (I cannot remember what you may have said about placement)

[conuly]

I wouldn't be surprised if it *is* some sort of cedar.

And I'm actually not sure we could remove it without damaging the retaining wall. The hugely important retaining wall given that the foot of our property sits four feet above the sidewalk. So... even if I wanted to do that to the birds I'm not sure I could do that.