For the Birds

My dear friend Betty has a love of animals and birds.  Betty has adopted stray cats and rescued struggling dogs.  Although she's not out and about as she used to be, attracting new four-legged members to her animal family, she is still attracting birds to her lovely front and back yards.  Just recently, she told me about getting two spent Christmas trees delivered by men from the village in which she lives.  She uses the castaway trees to provide shelter to the many songbirds that visit her birdfeeders.  One is placed in the front yard and one in the back near the feeders until spring arrives.  Thoughtful friends and neighbors keep the feeders filled so that the birds always have dinner.  Betty said in a recent phone conversation that she was watching the birds darting in and out of the old Christmas trees to her feeders and back again as we talked.  Such an act is kind and loving to her myriad winged friends, but it also provides Betty with great joy as she spends her afternoons in her comfortable chair positioned in the living room window.  Betty's tender heart for God's creatures is, thankfully, for the birds.