I haven't forgotten about you, my dear regular readers. SIREN'S LINK TO SEA has not forgotten all of you who home-school, or who have a project for school that you're doing some research on. I haven't forgotten about those of you who like to do art projects. Or those of you who like mermaids - and pirates.\
But like you, I've had to curb my activities in order to stay more secluded, and that includes not going to the beach.
The beach nearest me has been shut down and I just didn't care to take my chances and go there and encounter people who were not wearing masks, even though the media had so many photos of various celebrities taking that chance.
Hey, I need to get out of the house as much as anyone and I hate wearing a mask, I really do. I need the sun on my face. But until we know more, it certainly cannot hurt to wear a mask.
Finally, about a week ago, I went to the beach very early - sort of. I went to a sea cliff where there's a park. I had some cheese cracker snacks with me and some of them fell from my bag as I wrangled with my dog. My dog is also showing signs of being irritable and in need of more adventures. She was hyper excited because squirrels came running. We sat on a picnic bench and watched as a pack of crows, a pack of pigeons, and a pack of seagulls fought over these unhealthy snacks. In a big tree where were dozens of little birds that started to twitter.
I realized that they were all hungry.
BEACH CLOSURES MEANT A LOT LESS GARBAGE - food remains - to pick over.
Now we know that the human food garbage IS NOT HEALTHY FOR WILD CREATURES, but we also know that their populations have become somewhat used to and dependent on this human food garbage as a resource.
A few days later I went back to the beach with some NATURAL and HEALTHIER food options for these creatures, some unsalted seeds and nuts, and also some cut native plants that have seeds that they eat in nature. I did not cut these from plants growing in nature, but from native plants growing in a neighbor's garden, which needed to be cut back. I did a little research on this. You should to, learning what is native in your locality.
I threw a branch of a native California plant with seed pods over a fence and watched as a squirrel advanced through the underbrush and started to eat the pods with great enthusiasm. I walked away and there were squeals. I thought maybe the squirrels had been alerted that some new food had arrived.
A neighbor who had a lot of sunflowers in her garden gave me some of the seed-filled heads and I took those and placed them here and there. I walked around for about a half hour, making a loop. I don't know which creature dragged those sunflower heads, heavy as they were, somewhere else to feed, but they were all gone in about fifteen minutes.
Please consider, when you go to the beach, taking some edibles with you to feed the wild creatures who live there, as natural as you can find or afford.
SIren