It's Easy Being Green

If you have a backyard bird enthusiast roosting somewhere in your family tree you might be thinking about getting them a new feeder as a Christmas present.  Not all bird feeders are created equal though, especially those that look rich and come with a hefty price tag like the Copper Sip and Seed Bird Feeder.

The Copper Sip and Seed Bird Feeder looks great, especially right out of the box. After two years of review though, I can tell you the feeder has some major design flaws and doesn't weather well at all.

I received one of these feeders about two years ago and I watched it closely.  It took the birds awhile to discover it but once they did, they swarmed the two feeders and seemed to be getting their fill of seed.  I was worried that they wouldn’t have much room to maneuver or perch on the base of the feeders but it seems to work out for them.  The squirrels did unfortunately find the feeders and scaled the shepherds pole to show off their acrobatics and steal some seed.  They have not figured out how to raid the whole feeder and dump it on the ground yet so for now, they’re sort of foiled.

I have encountered what I think is one major design flaw with the feeders though.  The base where the seed pours out of the glass container does not have any drainage holes in it.  During rain or snow storms the base fills up with water and has nowhere to go.  That in turn soaks the seed which then clogs up the area where the seed pours out into the base.  I now have this little routine after the rain where I go out and tip over the feeders to dump out the water.  I then unscrew the base and break up the soggy seed and get it out of the feeder so it doesn’t mold or rot the rest of the feed.  A couple of times the rain has frozen over night and then I have to chip out the ice before the birds can get to their feast.  I’m hoping future versions of the feeder might include a drainage hold of some sort to let the water out. That would compete with the idea to use one to dispense water but their must be a solution.  Perhaps just a small covering on top of the feeder to direct rain away from the base.

Despite that problem, I think the Copper Sip & Seed Bird Feeder looks great out in front of our house.  The copper look adds a nice touch to the landscape.  I like being able to see the seed level and by the way it’s constructed from metal and glass, I’m hoping this bird feeder will last a lot longer than some of the cheap plastic ones I’ve used over the years.

UPDATE:

I’m now down to just one glass feeder tube because one of the tubes froze and shattered in the middle of  a bitterly cold night.  Also, I began using one of the tubes as a water dispenser as the manufacturer recommends but that also has some problems.  The process of filling the tube is a pain and you always lose half your water when you flip it back over after filling.  A filler hole in the top could easily fix this problem.  Also, after just two years outside the copper finish on the plastic is discoloring and rubbing off, making the feeder look dirty and beat up.  While it looks beautiful in the package and when you first put it up, the frustrations associated with filling and maintaining the look of this feeder gives me reason to recommend that you don’t buy it.

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I’m no longer a pretty face on the local news but I’m also not just a number anymore.  You know what?  It feels damn good!  I think both my Homestead Hottie and everyone else who intimately know me can vouch for how much happier I’ve been and how much my mood has improved since getting fired without cause from the hell hole that was ruining my life.  Sure it was a shock to the system at first, mainly due to how baseless and uncaring the separation was conducted.  Now that I’m gone, I feel like you do once the X-ray tech lifts that lead vest off of your shoulders.

Clearly there hasn’t been much activity around here since I’ve jumped back into the workforce two weeks ago.  I took a temp job for the holidays with FedEx and am now happily piloting my own truck around the Tri-State, filled to the brim with packages.  I deliver happiness on a daily basis which is a vast change from delivering death, mayhem and any another downright depressing happening to my evening audience.  Who doesn’t like to receive a package?  Just today,  a happy housewife bounded out the door of her Kentucky home to greet my truck.  She was anxiously awaiting a brand new laptop computer to replace her older, broken one.  Aside from the occasional curmudgeon wondering why I’ve pulled into his driveway, I’m greeted several times a day by smiles.  It’s a pleasant change compared to being chased from scenes by friends and family members out to get the media for intruding on their tragedy.

For anyone who thinks working in television news involves glitz and glamor, let me tell you your downright wrong.  Any day that involves wading waist deep in some other person’s steaming pile of metaphoric shit does not scream glitzy or glamorous.  People downright hate you as a reporter or an anchor and immediately pin the root of all their problems on you.  Scores of people within the business suffer their own depression, anxiety and a host of other personal problems often resorting to some pill popping just to get them through the day.  Anymore, it seems too many news organizations are like a school of Amazonian piranhas.  They’re sniffing out blood even if there isn’t a drop to be found but once one is created, the frenzied news nibbling begins until there is nothing left.

That mentality along with the cheapening of local news is pushing the practice of news gathering into a whole new realm.  News organizations want less people, more cheaply to do more than anyone could ever expect.  The drive to get more and more so called content churned out on a daily basis is killing the local news beast from within because there is only so much food for fodder to go around on a daily basis.  Plus, once viewers are over saturated with choices, I think they begin to shut down.  Johnny-5 no longer needs “more input” and yes, I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to make a Short Circuit reference in a blog post.

Some in the news business believe viewers want to be over-saturated with stories but I beg to differ. Johnny-5 does not "need more input"!

This career change, if only temporary, has reminded me that I’m not just a number but an actual person.  That’s because the management I’m working under now treats their employees like they are actual people.  There is the occasional treat, like being greeted by a bag full of Egg McMuffins on a dark, cold and dreary early morning and even simple corporate swag like a ski cap.  Managers greet you with a smile in the morning, a pat on the back and even lend their support to how they can help you get your job done.  They even tell you when you’ve done a good job.  It’s an encouraging environment and a far cry from what I’ve recently come from.  As basic as it sounds, I feel like it’s a concept that has been so trampled by corporate America in our recent economic depression.

Managers who have personal skills akin to the pimple-laden teenager whiling away his time in the basement playing Dungeons and Dragons all day need no longer to apply.  Quit spending your days locked away in your office, staring blankly at who knows what on your computer screen (these days it seems they may be watching my blog on their computer screens since I can see members of my old management team are trolling my site on an almost daily basis).  Don’t make it a point to only go to your employees when you want to whip them for doing something bad.  You don’t know the first thing about what it’s like to be a human being so perhaps it’s too much to ask of you to treat everyone else like one.  Just remember dictators don’t earn respect, they just scare people to death and no employee should have to put themselves through that hell on a daily basis.

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