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Birding for Life
I confess. I am a birder. So is my husband. We like birds…a lot.
The ornamental plum in our backyard looks like a Christmas tree with bird feeders of different sizes and shapes dangling off the lower limbs. I also have three feeders on the deck outside my office strategically placed so I can pause to watch them throughout the day. My binoculars are always on the nearby bookcase on the ready when I hear the call of our resident red-shouldered hawk overhead. Watching him glide effortlessly on the thermals, making his incongruous high pitch call, thrills me to the depths of my soul — although it drives my big Black Lab, Sherman, crazy.
One downside of all these feeders is that it has become quite costly and time-consuming to keep them full as hoards of hungry goldfinches, house finches, and juncos greedily inhale the “no mess” bird seed and our downy woodpecker pounds his beak into the hot-pepper laced suet in the suet holder that I placed nearby just for him. And, that leads me to the other downside — the persistent duel I have with of our resident squirrel who never fails to believe that he can reach the feeder outside my office window that dangles about six feed off the ground.
Our yard is loaded with flowers that hummingbirds love, kangaroo paws and Lily of the Nile, so we have a plethora of Anna’s hummingbirds most of the year zooming from flower to flower…
