My last apartment in Cockeysville had a real nice balcony, with an amazing view looking out over Hunt Valley.  I loved sitting out on it.  But since it was a second floor apartment, and the balcony right beside the entrance to the building, it didn’t have as much privacy as I’d have liked.  So one year I planted marigold and moon flower vines along the rails, which produced a lot of screening, but not quite enough, particularly in the fall and winter.  So I bought a big tacky plastic office plant, I think at Staples (yeah…they had that) and put it on the side of the balcony by the entrance.  It came in its own fake pot, with a little Spanish moss around the base of the plant to hide the fact that its trunk was nailed and hot glued to a piece of plywood.

The following spring, I noticed that the Spanish moss was disappearing.  At first I thought it was the march winds blowing some of it away.  But one morning I spied a little tufted titmouse struggling to free a piece of it and then I knew what was going on.  It was nest building time.  For the rest of that spring I watched while a variety of small birds methodically removed every last bit of Spanish moss from the pot of my plastic office plant.  The stuff doesn’t grow up here in Maryland, and the local birds seemed to think it was a rare find.  They got every last shred of it, like a bunch of wood workers picking over a stack of mahogany.  I watched tiny little birds ferociously struggling with the last few threads of it that were held fast by the hot glue at the base.  Finally I took a pair of scissors and cut the last bits of it free and within an hour it was gone.

I was dating Keith then, and the next time I went to visit him on Hilton Head I brought back a trash bag full of Spanish moss.  The next spring I kept my office plant stocked with it and the birds took every last bit of it I had.  Now I knew another way to attract birds to my front windows. 

It’s that time of year again, and nowadays I not only have front windows, I have a front yard, and I can be a bit more creative about attracting birds. One of the pure joys of owning a house is how much more connected to the nature around me I feel.  In most apartments I’ve lived in, bird feeding was just not allowed.  They do make a mess and you do have to stay on top of it or things will start looking trashy pretty quickly.  But it’s no chore to those of us who just like watching birds. 

Nowadays I buy a bag of Spanish moss from a local craft shop.  I put it out in a couple of old vases in my front yard by the tree.  The city birds aren’t quite as impressed by it, but it gets pretty well picked over by the time summer comes along.  And last year I added another product to my shelves.  My Japanese maple drops tons of little dead twigs every fall, which I’ve just bagged and put out with the leafs.  But last year I kept a few and when spring came around, broke them into slightly smaller twigs, about three to four inches, and put them into another vase beside the Spanish moss.  It got a little attention last year, but not as much as I’d hoped.  But it takes time to build a business.

I’ve had more activity from my feeders this winter then usual so maybe this nesting season my building supplies offering will get picked over a bit more.  I’m thinking about buying a nice hanging bird bath for the Spanish moss, and maybe the twigs.