We moved to our new house about five months ago. And since then, I’ve put up a hummingbird feeder. One dominant male hummingbird owns that feeder and won’t let any other hummingbirds feed off of it.

And then, I temporarily set up a plate—taped to the bannister—and daily replenished the black oil sunflower seeds that juncos, chickadees, and various types of finches love. Even crows.

There must be a grapevine among birds, I’m sure. Because, when I first set up the feed stations it took a couple of days for the first birds to show up.

Within a couple of days more came. And more. And more.

Then came the battle with the squirrels. I was more than happy to feed them, too. Yet, I had no idea that they would prove to be absolute gluttons, leaving no bird seed for the little feathered creatures. One rather mangy-looking squirrel jumped onto our bannister and ate and ate and ate. He did this day after day. Eventually, after a minute of this gorging, I’d run out and scare him away.

But he kept coming back, getting fatter and fatter.

Enough is enough, I told myself.

I purchased a squirrel-proof feeder that uses the squirrel’s weight against him. Today, I watched him reached out and place his little paws on the bird perches of the feeder. (I wish I had gotten a picture of him, but he was too quick.) When his paws came to rest on the perch, his weight pressed the feeder downward while the inside canister, holding the seeds remained stationary, effectively preventing him from reaching the seeds.

When I was still using a plastic plate, Mr. Squirrel could help himself:

Now that I’ve switched to the squirrel-proof feeder, Mr. Squirrel can’t get the food, and word of my feeder is spreading to the entire neighborhood of sunflower-eating birds. And my, how they are enjoying the meal. They’ll easily finish off an entire canister of seeds in one day.

I don’t know how they do it, but birds are really good at communicating with other birds.

I wish my book marketing worked as well. I have three books out there on Amazon. Really good stories, in both ebook format and paperback. If you haven’t seen my books, you can go to the top of my website and click on “my books” to see the covers and back-cover blurb. There’s also a link for each book that will take you to Amazon.com.

The books are selling, but it seems that my readers are not spreading the word. If you’ve purchased and read Haven’s Hope or Haven’s Flight or High Country Dilemma, I sincerely hope—and ask you—to please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. The stories are God-honoring and each has an inspirational and redemptive message. Wouldn’t we all like books like this to get into the hands of readers?

It’s really easy to leave a review. Get onto Amazon.com. Type in the title of my book and my name. This will bring you to the book page. Scroll down until you see the words “leave a review.” Write a one or two sentence review. It could be as simple as: “I liked this book, and you will, too.” Then rate the book on the one-to-five-star rating scale, with five being the best.

That’s it. Just like birds, word will spread about my books. Yippee, hooray!

Thank you so much!