Earth Journal:

Changes at The Glovers' Eat-Meet-and-Greet Deckside Bird Feeding Station

by Carol Glover

It's all Jonathon's fault. The Glovers' Eat-Meet-and-Greet Deckside Bird Feeding Station has lost its regular customers.

Our regulars had kept this place busy all winter:

• the beautiful scarlet plumaged male cardinals take charge;
• the puffed-up, sleek-coated juncos buzz in and out;
• the crown-headed titmice anxiously hesitate;
• the various sparrows throw seed about with hedonistic abandon;
• the red-splashed finches, looking like survivors of a Chef Boyardee food-fight, nibble;
• a robin or two patiently waits for a turn at the trough.

It's all changed now, and it's Jonathon's fault.

Our four-year-old grandson, here for a visit, wanted to feed the birds. He loves the wildlife here at the beach and tries to make friends with and feed all our animal visitors. But the feeders were already full. So Jonathon and Grandma hollowed out some grapefruit halves and filled them with Jonathon's favorite food: peanut butter. We then set the wonderful-smelling peanutty cups on the deck below the feeders.

Pretty soon we had some new customers. Those raucous, ill-mannered, overly aggressive blue jays have taken over Glovers' Eat-Meet-and-Greet Deckside Bird Feeding Station.

So much for cultural diversity, the song of different families and the rainbow of colors. Everything is blue now. Where these peanut-butter lovers descended from, we don't know. They weren't our customers before. We're waiting until our peanut butter jar empties. We're waiting for the blue jays to depart. We're waiting for our old customers to return.

It's all Jonathon's fault.

Editor's note: Illustrator Gary Pendleton, of North Beach, "strives to respond to my surroundings. I want my drawings to reflect what I see and feel about the Mid-Atlantic region, which is my home."

Often, his pictures begin as pencil drawings of backyard birds. But a bird has to be somewhere; Pendleton's next step is choosing a suitable setting. Here, Glover's story offered a grapefruit half. At this stage, the drawing comes alive as Pendleton works out its composition, tone and contrast.

His favorite medium, scratchboard, adds four more steps. First the drawing is traced, then transferred with carbon paper onto white scratchboard. Pendleton paints in darkest areas with ink and medium tones with a pen. Finally, with an x-acto knife, he cuts in the fine detail.

"A lot goes into it," says Pendleton, "but I want to produce things people are going to be interested in looking at."

Editor's note: In the winter months, Earth Journal will alternate with Captain C.D. Dollar's Chesapeake Outdoors.

| Issue 5 |

Volume VII Number 5
February 4-10, 1999
New Bay Times

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