Perhaps this month’s column is a bit of cheating, but a persistent cold and a nattering of deadlines kept me from my intended walking exploration on public land. And so an alternative: I’m guessing that I share an outdoor habit with many people from our area. And that habit does involve a small patch of what must be called common space, common at least for the birds who are citizens of everywhere and who flock to a feeder daily. A bird feeder serves then as a sort of commons, attracting life and lives we all share.

When many of us watch animals, we slip easily toward anthropomorphism. That marbles-in-mouth word makes us seem endlessly complex, as if we contain multitudes within us. But really it points to our tendency to simplify, to see the rest of the world as set up the way we are. At the backyard feeder it means I begin to assign personalities to my bird “friends;” I begin to see the way they behave as kin.

And, inevitably, I grow close to some, beginning to like them more than others. The chickadees, for example, are all industry and purpose. One will arrow in from the lilac, pick a single seed from the feeder’s column and carry it back to a branch to set about shelling it. No fuss, no waste; this bird knows what it’s about. How admirable. Whenever I refill the feeder (often in this iced winter), I also get a little serenade of approval from a nearby chickadee. We’re buddies!

The finches, on the other hand, one in particular, I think, are wastrels. They lug their heavy little bodies into the feeder, perch there unmoved by other arrivals and sort the seeds for a favorite. Their sorting, however, provokes — each unwanted seed they pluck gets tossed dismissively over a shoulder; the ground is littered with their reject-seeds. But that litter is — more human kinship — the gleaners’ treasure. And this year, we have gaudy gleaners. The backyard cardinal tribe, for years a consistent pair, has boomed to six. Even the waxwing-colored females are dun wonder against the snow, and one — smart woman — has learned to pick seeds from the top of the feeder’s column, which is missing its cap. Every once in a while, the whole cardinal tribe perches in the same lilac; suddenly, it looks like a holiday bush. Still, theirs is a decorative hunger. Like human gleaners, the cardinals are always searching…and a trifle skittish.

The juncos, two toners with charcoal tops and white bellies are stoics. Unlike many of the other birds, they interact only with each other, or not at all. Even the upside down bird, the nuthatch, who favors the suet, where he can remain inverted as he eats, doesn’t disturb the junco.

Disturbance does arrive, however. On occasion it squalls in on two blue wings. The boss-jay arrive as many bullies do, with wingmen. All the other birds — save an unimpressed junco or two — fly up into the pines, and the jays stalk around the seed-strewn ground, eating a few seeds, but mostly intent on their strut. Five minutes of flaunting whatever’s on their bird brains seems enough, and they fly off to their next stage.

Less flighty and way more persistent are the vandals. Every feeder-stocker has his or her story of squirrels. Most stories fall into one of two categories — bitter, ongoing warfare; rapprochement. I am, at this stage of winter, still a warrior, and snowballs are my chosen weapon. My war is inefficient, dull-witted really, but satisfying to a former baseball pitcher, and, because I am not intent on blood, satisfyingly harmless. I pitch and menace, offering also a sort of guttural roar that’s probably a staple in squirrel stand-up routines in the neighborhood — “…yeah, listen — and then, the door flies open and he tries to roar; really, he sounds like a bear gargling Listerene…”

My neighbor, Claude, on the other hand, has opted for a truce of sorts. Even as he is ingenious in the baffles he devises, and so clearly in reach of being the winner in any squirrel-war, Claude is also kindly, with space in his heart for any animal, even a squirrel. So his solution is Claude’s Cafe, an open feeder at knee-level that any squirrel can visit. Why the squirrels bother with me at all when Claude’s is open 24/7 is a mystery of their little minds.

Say, “suet suet suet,” and the pig-sound may make you smile. Every once in a long while, our slab of hanging suet offers another reason for a broad smile. It can draw our woods’ starbird — the pileated woodpecker. Out-sized (so huge after days of chickadees and juncos), puzzled by our seed column absent of ants, a recent pileated seemed dismissive even of the suet, which he dwarfed also. In short he seemed disappointed by my offerings, and so, in me. He flew off without eating or offering his laughing call.

I must be a better bird neighbor; I will be.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident and chair of the town’s Conservation

Commission. He writes for a variety of publications and has a book, “Critical Hours — Search and Rescue in the White Mountains,” due out from University Press of New England on April 3. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com