Among the wedding presents generously given us by friends was a bird feeder, courtesy of 
xolo. We weren't able to hang it right away, as we needed something fitting to hang it from, and a shepherd's crook seemed the right thing for it. We finally found one --- bunny_hugger finally found one; I wasn't sure where to go to find one for sale, but she just looked on Amazon --- and got it delivered in a package wonderfully tall and slender. Our pet rabbit looked over the giant cardboard carrying case, left in the living room a couple days until we'd have chance to deal with it, and barely tried to eat it.
Finally with some free time bunny_hugger took the crook out, and scouted about places in the backyard that would suit the birds' need to eat and our need to stare at them. She picked a spot near the squirrel feeder but away from the trees as much as possible without being in the mowable grass. Open the feeder up, pour some seed in, and we discovered we had seeds which were a little small for the feeder's mesh. Something to note for next time, although the spray of seeds on the ground is good for the mourning doves.
By the next day we were getting some business, with a lot of sparrows and a couple of nuthatches, to bunny_hugger's boundless delight. We also were getting chickadees in, and I've spotted at least one robin standing on the fence and staring at all this, evaluating whether it's worth his time to do something about it.
The mysterious part: while there's plenty of squirrels in the area they don't seem to have gone for the bird feeder or the seeds underneath it. But then they also haven't been much for the squirrel feeder either. We've tried giving them directions, but there's something about it they're just not putting together. Must work on that.
Trivia: In 1877-78, some 6,077 persons in India were convicted of smuggling through the Customs Line; 3,252 of them failed to pay the fine and so were sent to prison for, on average, six weeks. Source: The Great Hedge of India: The Search For The Living Barrier That Divided A People, Roy Moxham.
Currently Reading: Mark Twain On The Damned Human Race, Editor Janet Smith. Apparently A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court wasn't translated into French until 1954, which seems about 65 years past the latest I would've put it at.
