Lombardy Poplar

I awoke a little early this morning, and could hear the early morning birds outside the house.  The male cardinal was singing and singing and singing.  He has trained me, and does this when the bird feeder is empty and he is hungry.  The birdfeeder still had some food in it this morning..  But the tree he likes to sit in was gone!

As I pulled out of the garage this morning, I saw several birds, doves and grackles, fly up to the house and sort of stop short.  I think these are birds who used to sit in the Lombardy Poplar that had to come down.

I had considered how much shade I would be loosing.  I had not considered how much of an impact on the birds having the tree downed would cause.

There is nothing I can do about it.  The tree really, really, really needed to be cut down.  It was dead on the south side.  It grew up around the concrete patio on the south side of my house. Part of the tree that overspilled onto the concrete had pulled away, and the tree was leaning. There was a gap of about an inch between the concrete and the tree where it had pulled away.  I asked to have a few feet of stump left, for a "table." The center of the tree seen in the cross section of the table was dead and rotten.  I still plan to coat it with some sort of sealer and use it as a table.

I feel badly for the birds, but there are a lot of other roosts in the area. I needed to get the tree down before it blew down and damaged my house, or that of my neighbor.