First, thanks for your prayers. I am MUCH better, nearly 100%. We really believe God healed me quickly on Thursday afternoon, as the worst symptoms disappeared and I was able to eat a few crackers, then start back with small, regular meals on Friday. Today I’ve had to pause and remember how wretchedly sick I was just a couple of days ago as my body has disguised it so well. God is faithful and we are grateful for your prayers, and are trusting in the hope the he has spared the rest of the family these yucky germs!
Now, on to some mundane but fun things. Bird watching.
I signed us up for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “citizen science” Project Feeder Watch program back in November. Basically you set up a bird feeder or two and track the birds you see on two consecutive days per each two-week count period. It goes through April, and we’re probably not the most scientific about it, but there is a super cool bird poster we received for reference and Linnea can identify most of the birds on it now. Since we have moved our dining table to the back of the family room by the two huge picture windows, we get to watch birds at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it’s become really fun!
We started out with just the hanging cage with a suet block in it, which we’ve had for a year and a half now (I’m pretty sure Mary put it up that time she and Rebekah visited and then painted the whole upstairs). Recently we added a tube feeder and hummingbird feeder, which Tim attached to the railing outside the back window, near the grill. It used to be that we only saw the robins that ate our holly berries, and some crows (oh, the crows! they are so nasty and they are EVERYWHERE out here). Plus some other birds here and there but we didn’t pay too much attention to them, except the Stellar’s Jay. That is probably my oldest favorite Western bird even though he’s a nasty thing that scares away the others and basically eats like a vulture.
Back when we first put up the suet block we got a ton of black-capped chickadees that would swarm the thing in droves. Linnea at 11 months would stand and point at them going “bababababa!”, her word for bird.
Now we think we’re getting bushtits on there (small birds tinier than chickadees, and mostly gray-brown all over), plus a couple of chestnut-backed chickadees, but it’s definitely not the most popular snack spot. Our tube feeder hosts 5-6 regular juncos, as well as a male and female house finch, a song sparrow, and the occasional house sparrow. There was a towhee or two about a month ago but they haven’t been back. And next to it is the hummingbird feeder, which we put up the day after the tube feeder because a hummingbird came by, sniffed at the tube feeder, and flew away (making me feel guilty).
So bird watching is basically our all-day and main meal time activity, whether we’re actually counting or not. You can see juncos most of the time, and the sparrows and finches come on and off. There is a clear pecking order for the tube feeder. Juncos rule the roost unless the finches kick them out. Mr. and Mrs. Finch always take the top two roosts and will flap their wings at a junco trying to edge in. Juncos, in turn, scare off the sparrows. The chickadees don’t even try, and head straight to the suet block (which Tim has been calling the “sewage block,” so that’s now what Linnea calls it, too). There is a ton of dropped seed on the deck and the patio below, and we often see birds diving down out of view so I think there may be more than I realize, but it seems this small pack of juncos – the boys’ club, Tim calls them, as they are all males – lives in our laurel bush and comes out to enjoy the all-day buffet.
The hummingbirds are funny. At first there was one. Then we noticed a second, and I thought it was cute how they would buzz off together and come back over and over again. Well, last weekend it was really sunny and Tim pulled up a chair to the window. He realized that the one hummingbird was driving the other off. It had a regular pattern of roosting in our neighbor’s tree at the far side of the deck, then swooping in quick as a flash when the other came by for a sip of nectar. I looked it up, and yep, those hummingbirds are fiercely territorial. The funny thing is, the alpha bird seems to be a female. She is a fierce one and we just watched her drive away the other bird over and over again. It was really funny. I’ve seen up to four hummingbirds fighting over our feeder; they are moving so fast it’s hard to tell who’s who and the sex of the bird but we’re learning. Tim got some really great pictures which I’ll upload sometime (famous last words).
Anyway, it’s been really fun, and often throughout the day you can hear one of us call, “hummingbird!” and everyone will turn toward the window. Peter loves to watch the birdies while he’s sitting in his high chair, and if I ever do submit all my counts to Cornell, that’ll be a nice “official” record of our birdwatching. It’s turned into our favorite winter family activity. :)
(PS we bought a minivan.)