The Birdbath Inspiration

I live in an urban tiny place, windowed up and down and all duded up with white and black this and that to make up for its lack of space. My patio on the ground floor opens onto a bit of lawn and little disciplined bushes that are allowed to flower shyly in their seasons. It's very private, being surrounded by my little rows of juniper hedges. Birds love hedges and trees, large or small, whether in the city or not. They have adjusted their habitats nicely to telephone wires, cables, signal poles, window ledges and roof tops. To them, it's merely  life. They take it as it comes.  They peal their morning songs and flit about happily in spite of the noise and grit of the city. What they don't often have is water. Being ever an optimist, a single up-polar type, I put on my little patio,  my bird bath with its little pile of rocks collected from jaunts around the world. I rinse the thing daily fill it with clean water. My pioneer family crow friend comes daily and has for years, to dip his various foods in the bath, and play a bit with the pebbles.  On my sunny morning reading sessions there, I look up from my e book and stay stock still, while first, the crow, then a robin and later a finch drop in to have a beak or two of water, a bit of a flit bath and then, fly off on their important businesses.  They completely ignore the fact that I am sitting  only four feet away. (I don't think in centimeters, but that's another topic for another day.) I am delighted by the visits, because my prime reason for getting out the old iron bird bath, in the first place, was really for the bees and butterflies that apparently like to take their water on saucers set out. I hadn't thought that birds would bother with my insignificant old bird bath. Also having ample little trees and plants on my deck that barely has space for me among its greenery, I felt honored to be accepted into part of the natural bird sphere even in the city. It is hard enough to hear the bird song with construction maddening back-up beepings and truck grindings, lawnmower gardeners with their gargantuan leaf blowers and edgers, the cars whizzing by and the train whistle where I live, but the birds don't care. Their songs and the cries of the gulls and eagles who chance to land in the huge cedars still remaining on the property, continue to grace the air and make us not forget that we aren't the only owners of the earth, but fellows of it with all living things. In our hubris, we forget the littles of life. We get ourselves all twisted into global matters that we admit we can't do much about: water shortages, too much water, storms, volcanoes, disappearing wild life, lack of pollenizing insects. We CAN start doing something about "it". If we care to start somewhere, tiny though it may be, it could be a small saucer of water with a pebble in it on your widow ledge outside, a pond in the back yard, a rain barrel or yes, even a bird bath on your deck in the middle of the city.