My father, about about 5 years before he died, began feeding birds. He did this for the pleasure of hearing them sing, I suppose. In a way I suppose it was one of his ways of controlling his environment. He also found it amusing that passing birds would make a mess on passing cars.

They never really did.

He liked to think one day they would. In some ways he wasn’t all that nice, but his distaste for people using their horn around the corner was so tangible that you could see a bird feeder floating above the road.

After he died, I continued the practice a bit, but rather than hang it over the road, I brought it to a more natural setting at that old house on San Fernando Hill. I tried it near the avocado tree, and it still wasn’t too good there. Birds like places where they feel safe.

Don’t we all?

And so the feeder ended up at the back of the house, in view of the kitchen sink. As a bachelor, this was convenient for coffee and food, and as someone who seems to have taken way too many pictures (you’re seeing some of the good ones), it was a blind that the birds were used to.

The history here is that for a while the City of San Fernando would spray malathion all over to deal with mosquito issues. Anecdotally, after they did that in the 1990s, there were less birds in the area as well as less bird pepper trees, named after their planters. Whether directly or indirectly, I believe the spraying caused a decrease in the birds.

When my father started feeding the birds, I filled in when he wasn’t home to do it for very different reasons. They had stopped spraying malathion, and there was still enough wild land on the hill to allow for re-population.

The palm tanagers( thraupis palmarum), in the top picture, were the first to the feeder. They had seemed to survive the best, and so they happily fed. In time, their cacophony brought out other birds to the feeder. The Great Kiskadee was omnipresent, but they are hardy and will eat anything – including Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Within a few days, the blue-grey tanagers (thraupis episcopus) showed up in much fewer numbers. They behaved much like the palm tanagers but in their own little clique. They sounded all alike to me, but they only really fed with their own clique.

The bare eyed thrush (big eyed grieve, tardis nudigenus) came along next. Shy yet bold at the same time, they seemed on the constant lookout for predators but had no issues putting the other birds in place on the feeder. The Great Kiskadees, always looking for opportunity, would back off when they saw a bare eyed thrush nearby. This brought out the tropical mockingbirds (mimus gilvus), too, though there are plenty of pictures of them. If there was a pecking order, I’d put the tropical mockingbirds at top.

In time, other birds showed up, like the white-lined tanagers (tachyphonus rufus), barred antshrikes, tropical kingbirds, and so on.

It became quite lively. In fact, if I did not restock the feeder by sunrise, palm tanagers would make their way to my room through the open window and act as alarm clocks. None of the other birds did that, but the palm tanagers for some reason had no trouble making a ruckus to get fed. This I considered a problem, not because I minded the palm tanagers, but because it made me aware that we had formed a relationship I didn’t intend.

I wanted to get the bird population back, I enjoyed them, but they shouldn’t depend on me. By this time, the barred antshrikes were nesting in the yard. White lined tanagers (tachyphonus rufus) had fresh hatchlings, and I had planted some fruit trees in the yard as well as let the mango tree thrive. There was food there, they could ‘plant’ more plants – I had hoped for bird pepper trees, but none popped up, likely because all the bird pepper trees in the area had died.

At the same time, one of the arms of the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago developed a road up the other side of San Fernando Hill, which on it’s face seemed a good idea. It’s a definite landmark, there is a lot of flora and fauna that is worth appreciating.

But instead they just had fetes, where loud music was played throughout the night, and when they decided to light fireworks, the debris landed on the galvanized roof above me and those around me.

The peace and quiet was to be no more on the Hill, as we called it, and it was no longer a nice place to live for the birds. For the other wildlife. And, I might add, for me.

I had been outmatched by drunken revelry and fireworks.

This is why when one of my father’s sisters challenged me for the house and demanded I move out, I didn’t bother fighting about it. Within a week, I handed her the keys and didn’t look back. The house did not have good memories over the years and my attempt to create some had failed.

I drove by the place last week, being in San Fernando for some other reason, and just shook my head as I drove by, looking at the disrepair of the place. My father’s sister had died not long after I had handed her the keys, nobody thought to inform me of her funeral and I probably would not have gone had I known. In the stack of bad memories, she was just another one.

Yet I remembered watching those birds thrive for that period. How very interesting they were with their social standings, their bickerings. Their families grew, and hopefully they migrated away from that horrible place as well. It could have been a good place.

Birds are little alarms.