Birds are cheap entertainment.

I'm not an avid bird-watcher. I don't use binoculars to identify specific types, and I don't belong to a club that goes out regularly, or a group that yearly participates in counting all the different ones that appear in my town. I'm not a scientist who studies birds -- an ornithologist -- or even a member of a raptor-preservation society (those devoted to saving hawks and eagles, et al).

I'm just someone who has always found birds to be kind of fascinating. For one thing, they are about as different from us as any species can be. After all, they can fly! And don't we all have dreams of doing that from time to time? And they have beaks instead of mouths, wings instead of hands (yes, snakes are weirder, but they're also creepier), and -- get this -- they weigh, at least the little ones, almost nothing. Of course that's why they can fly, but if you've ever held a dead bird in your hand, you know what I mean. They're all tiny bone and feather and not much else. The big ones, the ones we eat, chickens and turkeys, are much heavier, but they can't fly very well: their attempts to get off the ground are sort of like the Wright Brothers' first attempts at Kitty Hawk. Geese and ducks occupy a middle ground: good-sized, good to eat, but also long-distance flyers. I'll leave it to the ornithologists to explain that one.

A second thing that makes birds worth watching is that they're all around us. All you have to do is put out some kind of feeder on your porch or deck or patio, fill it with seeds, and soon you'll have more birds than you've ever seen in your life -- right there outside your sliding glass door! Usually birds are up in the trees. We hear them, we see them flitting about -- but set out some food for them, and they're all over it. Bird-word gets around fast: buffet at such and such address, backyard deck feeder.

A third thing that makes the fairly moderate expense of buying a feeder -- from your local Home Depot or pet store or wherever -- is the variety of birds that you'll see. A caution, though: you have to buy a feeder that will discourage (1) crows and (2) squirrels. The former -- and this is an interesting piece of bird-watching -- will take over the area and (I'm not kidding) post guards to keep other birds away while their colleagues are eating. The latter, the squirrels, will chase away all the birds and eat the seeds themselves. But once you have your proper feeder hung up and stocked with seeds -- get the kind best for your part of the country -- you'll be amazed to see how many different birds come to feed. Everything from common sparrows to wrens to jays to -- who knows? And it's interesting to watch their interaction: the "pecking order," as it's called, meaning who gets to eat first, who chases who away, etc. Spend a little free time just watching and you're in another world entirely.

I once saw a woodpecker come to our feeder. In our area, they're called flickers. A handsome bird, pretty big, with a sturdy beak. But my interest in this particular bird was short-lived, as he soon took up duty on the side of our house, poking big holes in the siding! I heard the rat-a-tat for quite a while before a neighbor pointed out that we had severe damage to one side of the house. Apparently they're trying to attract mates, but why they think a house is the same as a hollow tree -- a good place for a nest -- I'm not sure. The problem is that, once a woodpecker targets your house, he can peck holes big enough for squirrels to get into your attic and chew on wires and . . . you can guess the rest. You can hire someone to get rid of the squirrels, but good luck getting rid of the woodpecker!

They're protected species most everywhere, meaning that you can't shoot one with a BB gun (which I wouldn't want to do anyway). I've hung old CDs on a branch next to the holes, which, so far, seems to have discouraged him. Why? I have no idea. He doesn't seem to like the silver discs twirling in the wind. Or maybe he's just moved on to another house or hollow tree. I would say consult your local authorities or pest removal agencies; they have solutions, none of which are cheap. (This is the downside of bird-watching, at least for the home-owner.)

But while the best way to watch birds is to get a feeder and put it where you can see what's going on -- ideal being a patio or a deck -- you can also see them doing what they do by just watching them from your front porch or stoop, in your front yard. For instance, I saw today a big fat orange-chested robin walking -- okay, hopping -- around my front yard, stopping from time to time, sort of cocking its head toward the ground, absolutely still. Suddenly it pecked down into the grass and dirt and -- voila! -- came up with a worm! I watched it devour the poor thing bit by bit. Whether it was listening, as I assume it was, for movement underground, close to the surface, or whether it saw the worm poking its pink head up, after a rain, trying to breathe, the bird knew just where to peck to get its meal, for itself or to take back to the nest. I watched this happen over and over.

Fishermen looking for bait would do well to know how that bird detected that worm.

One of the most intriguing examples of this behavior I saw while visiting relatives in Texas a few years ago. A mockingbird -- the one that, for whatever reason, imitates other bird calls -- was in my mother's front yard in Texas. I saw it walk a few inches and then throw out its wings, like an angel about to take flight (or calling the sinful to redemption) -- and then it would, like the robin, peck down into the turf and come up with a worm. Again, I'll leave it up to the ornithologists to tell me what the worm saw or sensed in that raising of the bird's wings that impelled it to the surface, where it was suddenly supper, but I saw it happen over and over.

The world of animals is so much different, in so many ways, from our own, and I think one of the best, and easiest, ways to observe it is to start with birds. As I said before, they're all around us. Also, they're easy to lure into our range of view. Plus, they don't sting, they don't destroy anything, they're not creepy (like snakes), and they don't really even bother us. And they come in such distinctive colors and sizes and habits!

How can we NOT want to watch them?

I've always been kind of appalled at people who keep birds in cages, whether they're magnificent parrots or cute parakeets or even simple finches. What those well-meaning care-takers are doing is depriving their pets of the most profound thing they can do that we can't: fly!

Isn't it sort of like keeping humans -- innocent humans -- in prison for life? Think about it.

Spend a few bucks and get a bird feeder. Put it up where the crows and squirrels can't get to it. Sit back, pop a beer, or have a glass of sun-tea with lemon, and get ready for the equivalent of going to an aquarium, where the colorful fish swim around for our enjoyment, oblivious to our presence. But birds, as a rule, are much more interesting. Remember: they can fly!

Try it. You'll be glad you did. (And hope a woodpecker doesn't target your house for a nest!)