Feed the birds

                         


Feeding the birds in the city

 

Everywhere I go lately I see families feeding the birds. I guess I do spend a lot of time at parks, most recently, yesterday, at Sydney's Centennial Park where we fed a huge flock of floating geese that then came ashore and fed on the grass as they honked along. It was a feast for the senses: the sun on our backs and wind in our hair, the noise of the splashing, sometimes bickering birds and the interesting textures of the feathers and beaks and orange webbed feet.

 

Feeding the birds is a simple, cheap and time honored experience that can be enjoyed by all ages. Simple as it can be done wherever you can find birds. Cheap because you use old stale bread that you would probably have otherwise thrown away and time honored as I remember feeding the birds with my grandfather and he use to do it with his.

 

For older prechoolers I really liked the 'Birds of Sydney' leaflet at the Centennial Park Kiosk as they can talk about and point out which birds they have seen on their trip home.

Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you'll be glad if you do.
Their young ones are hungry,
Their nests are so bare;
All it takes is tuppence from you."
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.
"Feed the birds," that's what she cries,
While overhead, her birds fill the skies.

 FROM MARY POPPINS