For the Birds


I haven’t written much of anything lately, mostly because of my baby/toddler (16 mo. old) keeping me busy and away from my laptop, or him away from my laptop (that’s rather the real thing) and also the desktop being a problem now that the baby/toddler is so much more toddler oriented and picking up anything he can get his hands on. We lost a mouse because of him. Bought a new one, and he got hold of it and broke it. In this process of mouse elimination the mouse pad got eliminated somehow, and now we have two other old wireless mice from other use-age, that are in different states of derelictness and sans mousepad, it’s a nightmare to work on the desktop, plus having little hands reach up constantly to pull on what you are doing … I’m in bed right now, with my laptop, and baby is asleep. Usually, as soon as I pull out my laptop in bed, baby wakes up. I’m fortunate today.

I wanted to write about birds this week, and now that I’m actually writing, I’ll make this post about it, briefly.

A few days ago I looked out on the front porch area through the sidelight to see the temperature on the thermometer and saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. I turned and looked and there was a pretty Carolina Wren with a piece of tissue-looking paper in it’s beak. It hopped around and then suddenly another Carolina Wren hopped onto the porch and immediately a male Northern Cardinal flew into the brush right in front of the porch, so I had these three birds super visible right there, where I usually don’t get such a treat of even one bird in view. It had a special quality about it, that event did.

A couple of days ago I was in the kitchen, me and the children were eating and I was actually standing up at the table and saw something out on the Bluebird box, and looked and there was a diminutive woodpecker hanging out.

I got a good look at him to memorize his features, then ran to get my Sibley guide and found that it was a Downy Woodpecker. I had never seen one in my life, and it was really cool to spot one so close in range. Of course I didn’t get any really good photos, my camera wasn’t around, and the other one that was around is a newer little Fuji digital that just doesn’t have the ommph in the bird photo taking department that my old canon digital rebel does. I’ve yet to download the pictures, so we’ll see what I get.

The Downy Woodpecker pecked around the Bluebird box, then got into the box and stayed inside for several minutes, then started peeking out, then finally came out, walked around the box again for a short time, then flew up into the maple tree that’s nearby and was near the top pecking on a branch then suddenly flew away towards the distant line of trees on the other side of the subdivision.

The next day I saw my supposed Eastern Bluebird couple checking out the box. Mr. Bluebird got in for a couple of minutes, while Mrs. Bluebird waited on a branch of the tree. The usual spring/summer sight, as they get ready to build a nest, except right now it’s November. I guess they are keeping tabs on their nest box and knew they’d had a visitor.

It’s noteworthy also that we see Blue Jays around frequently enough, in the front and even in the back more and more. (So many folks say they don’t like Blue Jays, but I think them beautiful and useful birds, feisty sure, but worth having around, and really, really handsome.)

I hadn’t had a decent birding day at home for so long, and I must say, it was a very decent birding week this past week. 🙂

I need to get a big bird feeder, like we used to have in the backyard, until it fell down in a thunderstorm and fell apart in a not worth fixing state. I love seeing the birds come to the feeder in the Winter, and also like supplying them with the food they seek/need. It’s been a few years since I have done so. Birding became a great passion of mine when we moved to this house in 1997. I hadn’t lived anywhere with much bird watching ability in my adult years.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *