The holy grail of bird feeders and the Litter story continues

I had some friends over the other night and one of them, Persephone, brought over some beer with a wonderful label, Monty Python's Holy Grail, tempered over burning witches - I attach a picture. I've been a sucker for labels for a long time and will go in the liquor store and select a bottle of wine or beer, purely on the label. As it happens, this beer is truly very good, and I highly recommend it. The beer is brewed in Yorkshire by Black Sheep Brewery and I'm thinking that would be a grand place to visit if I were in that neck of the woods.

Encouraged by the success of the ten buck bird feeder, Gregoire and I went in search of a bird bath and a hummingbird feeder. Well I am not sure Gregoire was so much into both of those items, but we ended up at the SAD (Spend Astronomical Dosh) store again and I ran amok. I bought an additional feeder which seemed to be aimed primarily at woodpeckers (see exhibit A right).


I then bought a planter base which I adapted as a birdbath by putting it atop of an existing blue plant pot that I found down the lane last year (see exhibit B left).



Litter, I digress. I actually do write about litter. I went on the route today. It wasn't too bad. Lots of McDonald's, Kentucky Fried crap, but no worse than usual. And nothing out of the ordinary was found, which tends to be a bit of a disappointment after finding pot plants, brand new shoes and bathroom scales (go figure). Check out the posts after Christmas for more details.

Anyway today I spoke to Daniel the neighbour with the silly yappy RatDog called Grizzly. He thanked me for picking up litter, and said that a couple of years back he turned the hose on a couple of guys dealing drugs outside his house. Which I think was mighty brave of him. Anyway since then the situation has improved. All during this conversation Grizzly the mighty yapdog got very agitated by the two bags I was carrying (chock full of litter) but otherwise was trying to be friendly. One of the major benefits of this mini litter crusade has been meeting the neighbours, they are all great people and equally concerned about keeping the area clean. I have high hopes for a litter retrieval posse starting up in the spring.

And what is happening in your neighbourhood? Is the litter bad? Or as clean as all get out? Am I wasting my time trying to stem the tide? Am I making the problem worse by picking up after other people ? Inquiring minds would like to know. Please drop me your comments! Oh, and if you know when I should put out the hummingbird feeder, even better....