Birdfeeder Hat for Easter

Everyone, I am so excited about this post, I can hardly stand it. That's code for this might be a long one... We're having an Easter Bonnet Contest at the store. (Come in wearing your finest Easter Hat now through Easter to enter and win $100 gift certificate.) And while I am seriously grooving on the contest, it's just a prologue, the backstory if you will, to this post. Since we're having the contest, we've all been thinking hard on hats and Chris was perusing the above most excellent book Woodland Style one day during her lunch break......She showed me a photo from the book of a woman wearing a hat and surrounded by birds. I thought it was a clever and fun photo, but when I dug a little deeper, turns out she's surrounded by birds because her hat is doubling as a birdfeeder! Be still my beating heart.

This is the brainchild of a self described eco artist from Northern California named Erica Fielder. It's part of a watershed awareness project near the coast. That's her wearing a hat in the photo above. One of their ideas is to encourage inter species interactions....In this case that's the human and the birds. OMG this is so beautiful. Participants describe the tiniest bird landing on their hats feeling as though a huge animal is swooping down. And of course what's so beautiful to me is that the bird is feeling us too! We are each sensing the other. It got me to thinking about times in my life when I have had interspecies communication. And there's not too many of them. First off I am discounting mice, squirrels, ants, flickers, and ladybugs at various times all moving into my house. I definitely sensed them but not so sure they were exactly picking up my please go away vibes. Let's see, of course the encounter with the bear in the woods on the west side of Vancouver Island counts, and one time I listened to a friend have a duet with an owl. She was playing a flute or maybe a recorder. They had a beautiful call and response going on. And I used to hand feed my aquarium snail pieces of cooked spinach and lettuce which gave me a whole new appreciation for what the fisherman might be sensing. There maybe one or two more incidents I am forgetting. But not too many............. Wearing a birdfeeder hat is something that's definitely on my list of things to do before I die. Click here to find out more about the larger purposes of their project and click here should you like to purchase directions on making your own hat. It has something to do with paper mache, and bamboo skewers, and sticks and seeds......

Photo of birdfeeder hat courtesy Erica Fielder