Happy Earth Day with happy birdies

Today I celebrated Earth Day by poking around the yard and admiring the birds. The bright blue jays and cardinals are easy to love. The small birds need a closer look, but just the other day I spotted a beautiful little White-Crowned Sparrow, and I could swear I’m still seeing juncos out there. Chickadees are […]

Cloudy with very little chance of eclipse

This is why I don’t expect to see the total lunar eclipse coming up Monday night. Cloudy skies. The cold weather doesn’t have anything to do with why I won’t go out in the middle of the night to look for it. No. Nor does having to stay up past 1 am. Nope. I blame […]

Signs of winter to come

This is the sign that greets the horde of sparrows in the mornings: a frozen water dish. They have to wait for me to pour a kettle of hot water to melt it. I hung out the first block of suet on Thanksgiving Day. But it’s not winter yet.

New improved water for the birds

The frisbee I filled with water was a good start. The birds seemed to like it. But as I mentioned to my local Household Inventor, it needed improvement. It might help if the dish was black, I said. And it might help to cover it a bit to reduce the surface area. And it might […]

Good times in the bird bath

I didn’t get a picture of it, but while the sun was out today, the same birds who looked all droopy and mopey in the rain were crowding into the water saucer and flinging spray around in a manner that can only be called exuberant. There were five or six at a time, flapping their […]

Winter water for the birds

How do you like my elaborate, highly asthetic bird bath? It’s a frisbee on a compost tumbler, with a couple sticks thrown in for the birds to get a grip on. Until yesterday, it was a clay saucer, but I broke it trying to wedge it out of the ice. That’s because my high-tech solution […]