Sunday, May 29, 2005

Birds of A Feather

There are lots of cool birds in this state. We have one little bird feeder outside our window and it's amazing the different kinds of birds that we've hosted for a bite to eat. R is really into the birds and wants to know what each one is. I am definitely not a midwestern bird expert, so I bought a book (okay, I bought two books, but who's counting.) The book that we like the most is sorted by colors, so if the bird is mostly grey, you look in the grey section of the book. Pretty cool.

There are some birds that are here all year round and some that only stop by on their migratory path. Next year, I'm going to write the date by the bird in the book so that we'll know when to expect them the next year.

One of the most amazing birds for a California girl to see is the cardinal -- boy are they red! We have a cardinal couple who must live in the woods behind our house. They are both pretty, but the male is absolutely brilliant! He was especially striking against the white snow in the winter. What made me think of writing about birds is this crazy male cardinal. Since it's spring, he's feeling especially territorial (I guess) because he keeps "fighting" the "other male cardinal" he sees in the window. Dope! He keeps raming himself into our windows! He's been doing this for about a month now. He'll even go to different windows and do the same thing....thunk....thunk....thunk....thunk. Eventually he stops for awhile. It's funny...and sad!

Besides this crazy cardinal, here are the other birds that we've seen:
Baltimore Oriole
Yellow FInches
Chicadees (a couple of different kinds)
Robin redbreast
Blue Jay
Lots of different kinds of sparrows
Plus more that I can't think of right now.

Also, I just figured out how to ad the blog address of a blog that I LOVE to read. "The Big Yellow House" on the right side of my blog. Check her out, she's a great writer and very entertaining.

1 comment:

CaliforniaGrammy said...

Great pictures! The bird book with color coding sounds like a great idea too. You're right about that red cardinal to a Californian . . . our blue jay is about as pretty as our birds get . . . but he IS beautiful too! And what's up with that thumping on the windows . . . does you book mention that silly movement at all?