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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-02-21, Page 5If there’s any compensation for the cold, stormy weather we’ve suffered through this winter it’s that it has brought a bounty of beauty for those of us who feed birds. While some people might think we bird feeders are developing welfare-bum birds, the reality is that many species have to be desperate before they resort to visiting a bird feeder. We know we have cardinals in our area, for instance, because we see flashes of red in distant shrubbery, but it wasn’t until the cold weather started to bite that the first pair showed up at the feeder. The next day there were two pairs and then three, all the way up to six bright red males and six brown- camouflaged females. Growing up, I can’t remember anyone in our practical farm neighbourhood who fed wild birds. My first introduction came nearly 50 years ago when I was editor of the Clinton News-Record and one of my jobs was to retype the scratchy handwriting of Lucy Woods Diehl so it was readable when the compositors at the printing plant had to set it in type. Lucy was severely crippled by arthritis – which accounted for the barely-legible handwriting – and one of her joys was to sit by the window of her little house on the cliff-top in the oldest part of Bayfield, and watch – and tell her readers about – the birds that came to her garden. My own efforts to feed the birds came sometime after we moved out to the country in the mid-1970s. Even then it was a relatively rudimentary effort because in an old farmhouse there is seldom a convenient window where you can watch the birds. Feeding the birds became more serious after we built an addition on the back of the house with large windows that brought the outside in. We could sit and watch the birds as they came and went and we began to get greedy to attract more. Most people probably start feeding birds the way we did. We went and got a big bag of a mixture of sunflower seeds, millet, corn and whatever. That’s when you discover that each bird species has its favourite food. If you want a wide variety of birds, you need a varied buffet to attract them. Chickadees and blue jays, for instance, like sunflower seeds but finches like very small seeds. As well, some birds will come to a hanging feeder while others, like mourning doves, want to eat off the ground. The next thing you know your feeding set-up expands. Obviously there have been a fair number of people who have followed the same path as we have because these days there are shops that do nothing but sell bird feed, with special blends to attract different bird varieties. They also carry bags of peanuts or safflower to black oil sunflower seeds to create specialty feeders. Watching birds feed you can see human traits expressed by the various species. Tiny chickadees are also the bravest, often returning to the feeder while you’re still filling it. With a little patience (which I don’t possess) you can train them to eat right out of your hand. Blue jays are the Donald Trump of the feeder, bossing the other birds around almost saying “I’m bigger than you and have the sharpest beak so I’ll take what I want first, and you suckers can wait.” Mourning doves are usually the largest birds at the feeder but they’re also the most timid, making them easy targets for blue jays. Feeding the birds can also be a lesson in life-long learning. I’m not sure I ever thought about it but I suppose I assumed goldfinches went south for the winter. It was only when we had them around the house all year round that I began to see their colour transition from bright yellow to dull gray in the fall and back to vivid plumage in spring. I’ve been learning, but I’m miles from being an expert in wild birds, even if feeding birds is costing us a fortune. Remember that woman in Goderich last fall who had a rare bird in her garden and people came from hundreds of miles to see it? I stayed home. In fact I’d never have been confident enough to identify it as rare, although this has its compensations. Recently a woman in the Ottawa area made the mistake of saying on social media she had a rare bird in her backyard. She was invaded. Bird watchers not only trampled her yard but watched the family through their windows. So much for the image of birdwatchers as timid! Watching the birds hasn’t totally compensated for a miserable winter but it has helped. Looking out the window and seeing the red of the cardinals near the blue of the blue jays, the flighty perkiness of the chickadees or the variety of woodpeckers at the suet feeder, makes the white walls of blowing snow behind them fade from consciousness. Still I can hardly wait for spring and the return of robins and cedar waxwings and wood thrushes to fill the yard with their own different beauty and music. Other Views Not all community projects are equal Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk This weather’s been for the birds Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Wingham seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance of volunteerism in the recent years and it’s a welcome advent for the community. Unfortunately, not all volunteer projects and groups are created equal. While some look to enhance the municipality without costing huge tax dollars, others won’t make such promises. Take, for example, the Feb. 4 meeting of North Huron Township Council. Now, before I get any further here, I’m not looking to pit two community initiatives against one another. All I’m doing, as a North Huron ratepayer, is making sure everyone realizes the difference between the two pitches. Those two pitches are the relocation of the North Huron Museum and the revitalization of the Howson Dam. Both groups approached North Huron Council that night asking to be made committees of council, though there was a not- so-subtle difference between the two. While the North Huron Museum Committee came forward and members said they would fundraise for moving the museum to ensure the cultural location stays in the municipality, the Howson Dam and Pond Committee didn’t mention fundraising, instead members said they would “assist” in the repair of the dam, which could cost between $2 million and $9.3 million, depending on how extensive a repair or replacement job council opts for. Council could also choose to remove the dam, which could cost as little as $436,000. Now the problem with the committee's stance is threefold: number one, this isn’t a binary decision. With the museum, council has already made a decision: the existing facility needs to be closed. That leaves council with two options: move the museum or deaccession it. No one is arguing that closing the museum is a good move, culturally. Sure, financially, it may be better in the long run, but once you get rid of a museum, you’ll never get it back again. The committee wants council to decide to keep the museum, a move that I don’t know anyone can say is a bad idea since it’s being presented as a tax-dollar-free option. The decision behind the dam, however, isn’t as clear. First off, there are numerous options for council to pursue. The dam can be replaced, reinforced or removed and, within each of those options, there are multiple tiers of work that can be done. The second problem with the stance is that word “assist”. Assist means to provide aid. The word itself comes with a connotation that one person or entity is responsible while another is helping. See, that’s a problem, because, unlike the museum, which represents increasing the budget by a few per cent over a few years, the dam may quite possibly cost upwards of $9.3 million to rehabilitate. That’s twice the municipality’s entire budget for this year, and this group is only offering to “assist”. If this committee said it would fundraise to repair the dam, I wouldn't be writing this column. I’d be writing a column commending both groups on their efforts. This kind of thought process is problematic. Unnecessary infrastructure (and yes, it’s unnecessary, all the water skiing and boating and swimming in the world isn’t going to change that) can’t be the focus of significant municipal investment. The problem runs far deeper than just North Huron, as every level of government contributes money to people, places and things that don’t need it. The solution is pretty simple too: let ratepayers make their own decisions about which unnecessary projects they want to help. Whether it’s sending foreign aid to Venezuela or repairing the Howson Dam, let me decide if my hard-earned money should go to it. I’m not against the Howson Dam, or helping Venezuelans, but that should be my call to make: not a politician’s. The final problem with the dam is a little less rooted in fact and more in my own beliefs: the dam won’t be the boon the committee seems to think it could be. While the committee likes to look back at the history of Wingham with rose-coloured glasses and remember what the dam and pond once were, the reality is that tourism has changed significantly over the years. I don’t think that Riverside Park or the pond will see the heydays of decades past. That said, I’m still not condemning the project. I’m saying that, because of the uncertainty of the benefit to North Huron as a whole, tax dollars should definitely not be spent on this. When I say that, I don’t just mean money being put out for the repairs. I’m talking to the fact that the committee wants a North Huron staff member to attend meetings and discuss the issue with committee members. That would cost tax dollars that come out of the entire municipality’s budget. So, unless the committee wants to guarantee it will raise the funds on its own, I don’t think that staff time, and the associated dollars, should be invested in the project. Again, not because I’m against it, but because of the uncertainty of the project, which is primarily tied to the significant investment it represents. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21 2019. PAGE 5. Look one way: down One common character attribute many of us share, whether we choose to admit it, is the defence mechanism of looking down on others when it suits us. In last week’s New York Times story about famed musician Ryan Adams and his alleged pattern of abuse, Adams would often look down on his musician wife, Mandy Moore, in this way. Now, in no way am I making light of the allegations made in the story. They are serious and should be dealt with accordingly. It was something that Adams would say to Moore than got me thinking about this. Adams, a musician who always struck me as someone who never tired of patting himself on the back, would say Moore wasn’t a real musician because she didn’t play an instrument. The way Adams treated Moore was emotionally abusive, but it was that look- down at her that made me think of this column. For example, right here in this office, Denny and I will often look to ourselves and other newspaper journalists as being the “proper” reporters of the world, whereas our counterparts on your TVs, radios and internet are simply picking up our reporting, rewording it and sending it out in a different way. Look to athletes and you’ll hear talk debate among football players and hockey players as to which of them is the toughest. They’ll both be united in their feeling of superiority over baseball and basketball players. And don’t even get any of them started on soccer. Even then, there would be a look-down hierarchy among athletes on their own teams. In baseball, infielders look down on outfielders and vice versa. In football, the whole team looks down on the kicker and in hockey, players assume the goalie is... weird. Fans do it too. After years of futility, for example, let’s say a team finds unexpected success. As the fans celebrate in the stands, there is an arrogance on behalf of the “true” fan who has “been there since the beginning”, as opposed to someone at his first-ever game. Growing up in a family of police, I was always privy to the very one-sided (in my house, anyway) debate between police and firefighters. Police thought firefighters plucked cats out of trees during the few hours a day they weren’t being paid to sleep, while firefighters were sure police only took brief breaks from coffee and donuts to pin parking tickets on cars that didn’t deserve them and/or tend to an emergency only until it got too scary, at which time they’d call for firefighters. In the world of music, there is a disproportionate amount of weight placed on the frontman/woman of a band. When someone hears a song on the radio, it’s that person’s voice they first hear. It takes a rather trained musical ear to yearn for a great bass line or complex drumming. That reality leads to a band’s singer knowing that the band wouldn’t survive in their absence, but a bassist or drummer could easily be replaced. It works with towns too. Remember North Huron Councillor Chris Palmer’s empassioned plea against legalized marijuana in Wingham? He said that if Wingham residents wanted to buy weed, well, they could go to Teeswater. So, while you could say that Wingham has its problems, consistently boasting the highest tax rate in the county with a noncorresponding offering of amenities, at least it has Teeswater to make residents feel better about themselves. I could list any number of examples, but as you can see, they could go on forever. Hunter S. Thompson said there’s only one way to look at a politician: down. Save it for the politicians and leave one another alone.