Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: birds


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Breakfast – the most important meal of the day

After a few days of nothing but clouds and rain it was a relief to see the sun rising this morning. Apparently the birds in my backyard were happy too, as the feeder was as busy as Grand Central Station during the morning commute.

Not a great picture, but it makes the point that there was much coming and going this morning!

Everybody was flying in to grab a seed, though most of them were chased out by the next wave of incoming.

He would have stayed longer but at least he got some ‘to-go.’

The little birds, the chickadee, titmouse and nuthatch were mostly rousted out by bigger birds.

Scored one seed, will be back for more when it’s quieter.

Meanwhile, on the deck, someone else is getting a drink.

Always something good to drink here.

And another was just watching all the goings-on.

It’s way too busy for me on that feeder!

I was standing in the breakfast room, trying to get shots around all the distractions, lots of feeders, the dog in her pen, the railings were all things the camera wanted to focus on rather than the birds themselves.

But, regardless of my shortcomings, the birds kept on giving me fun images, even if most of them were never going to be stored on my memory card.

Incoming!

The comings and going were constant.

Next!

Just when one bird got comfortable and was enjoying breakfast another, usually larger and often noisier, swooped in and took over.

The biggest of all was this guy.

A large male grackle arrives late to the meal but manages to get a seat at the table.

He made quite a show, puffing up when he saw anyone else attempt to move in on him…

Don’t even try it!

…and giving the evil eye if the puffing up didn’t work.

The ‘look’ usually worked.

Still, a foolish little goldfinch wasn’t paying attention.

La, la, la…happy little goldfinch coming in for brunch.

He made a couple of circles, surveying the situation.

Maybe if I circle behind him I can squeeze in.

He wasn’t about to give up.

Maybe from this angle…

But in the end the poor guy had to concede that he was no match for the huge and boisterous crackle. After all, there are other feeders out there.

Never mind. I wasn’t that hungry anyway.

So in the end, for that moment anyway, the bully grackle won.

And I’ll eat my fill before I leave too.

But the little birds are very patient and once the big guys left, they happily settled down to the leftovers.

Looks like it’s all clear. Let’s eat!


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Games

Listen to me, mama!

I’m working on a little watercolor cat postcard for someone and doing delicate work around the eyes when Katie barks. At me. She’s lucky my hand didn’t slip, but I knew enough to put the art away for awhile.

She’s feeling ignored.

She doesn’t want to go out back to her pen, a place she enjoys these days before things get to hot out there in the coming weeks. She wants to go out, but not to go out, if you know what I mean. I attempt, a second time, to take her out to her pen and she detours to the folding chairs on the other end of the deck.

There she settles in her favorite location to watch the road. She looks over her shoulder at me, still attached to her leash, and says I can either stand there like a dummy, or sit in the chair and enjoy the evening. With her.

So I sit.

She watches the road. I watch the birds in the trees above as they make their decisions about dinner. They are coming in for their evening meal and Katie and I, though we are sitting very still, are objects to consider.

A single gold finch begins to sing…three notes, the last on an upward question; “You still here? You still here? He’s not sure what to do about us, so he keeps asking.

The group of three chickadees aren’t worried about us at all. They work themselves down to the lowest hanging branches, just above us, cock their heads, consider us unimportant, and shoot off to the feeder, each grabbing one choice seed and skidding back up into the branches where they tap open their seeds, the sound multiplied by three.

I think I hear a nuthatch, they sort of whine when they want something, but I can’t see it. Then a downy woodpecker swoops down to the feeder, and I realize I might have mistaken it for the nuthatch.

A titmouse flutters above my head, not sure if it should go get something to eat, or pull some hair for a nest. I must have moved; suddenly it flies straight up and over to the feeder.

More goldfinches join the lonely one, each singing, none brave enough to eat with us sitting there. Soon there is an entire choir, but apparently they find no strength in numbers.

I nod off a little, no worries, Katie is keeping watch while simultaneously breaking twigs into smaller twigs. She’s a multi-talented little girl.

Suddenly there is scrambling and chirping and two chipmunks race up the railing and across the deck and down the other side. Since she is so focused on her twigs Katie misses all the action. I nod off again.

Hearing something scrambling in the leaves below I glance down, expecting to see Chip or Dale. But no. It a towhee! I’ve lived here more than twenty-five years and I’ve only seen this bird twice before! It scratches around in the the dry leaves for a moment or two, and then flies away.

Katie doesn’t understand why I am so excited, or why she gets a treat when we go inside. I owe her that towhee sighting, and all the other bird (and chipmunk) games we got to watch. Because if she hadn’t said “enough mama,” I’d have missed it all.

Katie is full of good ideas, if only I’d stop and listen. She’s napping now, probably dreaming up something else fun for us to do.

As I’m sure she’s told you, she has to do everything around here.

zzzzzzzz…


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The band of five bullies

Looking for a smile, I’ve been observing my birds as they go about their daily struggle to find food. Though it’s really not such a big struggle in my yard, the feeder is pretty well stocked most of the time.

Hurry up lady!

The struggle seems to be the hierarchy of who gets to eat first when fresh seed has been put out.

I’ll take my fair share now. And yours too.

The little birds, the goldfinches, now sporting their bright summer dinner attire, and the titmouse, the chickadees and the sparrows all sit up in the trees and sing their alerts when I’m out filling the feeder. The bravest among them will swoop down and grab something before I’ve even gone inside.

These two lovebirds weren’t interested in the feeder. They needed to get a room.

They have to hurry because shortly after I’m in the house the band of five arrives with intimidating calls and flashes of bright blue wings.

Alert! We have arrived, all move aside, we are hungry!

Yes, I have some bullies the control my bird feeder. There are usually five of them, and they take over daily. Today I attempted, from inside the house, to capture them in full drama mode.

I didn’t capture everything, and I was shooting through a dirty window in low light and should have done a couple things with the settings but there wasn’t time.

We do not wait in line!

And to be honest, in the thrill of the moment I forgot anyway.

I’ll try this again, maybe if I spend more time outside on the deck they’ll get used to me and I can eliminate the dirty window part of the whole adventure! Today it was too cold and windy. We got a snow squall just after I took these.

Incoming!

But, given the virus, I figure I’ll have a lot more days at home to try again.

Jays are not the only bullies.


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What was there to smile about this week?

It’s understandable if you felt like there wasn’t much to smile about this past week. Off and on these past few days I’ve been feeling pretty down too. After all, thousands of people are dying, and the rest of us, the lucky ones, are confined to our homes. Those less lucky still have to go out to work, risking their own lives and the lives of their families to do so.

No, there’s not a lot to smile about right now.

Still…I made it out to my favorite park before I realized it was too crowded to visit. And Katie-girl and I have explored our backyard and have come to a realization.

Spring waits for no virus.

So here’s a compilation of things that made me smile this week, both at the park and here in my very own yard.

I hope you were able to smile too. Stay safe everyone, and stay home.


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Feeling guilty

I went out to my favorite park today. It was the first sunny day we’ve had in a long time, and the blue skies drew we outside. I felt like I’d be safe at the park, especially on the nature trails where I don’t usually see a lot of people during the week.

I miscalculated.

But before I get into that let me tell you about the most extraordinary thing that happened while I was in the woods. I had followed a popular trail half way around a lake. Every corner seemed to have more people and I wanted to find a quieter place in the trees, so I veered off onto an old, unmarked cross-country ski trail. I figured wherever it ended I’d recognize where I was and find my way back to the car. And no one else was walking that trail.

When I was quite far back into the woods, I noticed three red bellied woodpeckers screeching and chasing each other among the top of very tall trees. I stopped to watch. They stopped and watched me. In all my years visiting this park I’ve never had a red bellied come to my hand. Sometimes they’re interested, and they always take advantage of any seed I drop, but they’ve never landed on my hand.

Bet you can guess what happened today!

Yes, I was looking the other way, watching a chickadee decide whether to come in for a treat when I felt something with considerable weight land on my hand. I looked out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t believe what I saw. I had to really look, and I had plenty of time because he was sitting there eying me and considering which seed he wanted. He sat there and ate every single peanut out of my palm, leaving all the oilers, before he flew off.

I have no pictures because I had my long lens on the camera, too long to catch a shot of him sitting on my hand.

I refilled my hand and waited. I saw him, or one of his friends, come in for more treats from a long and high way off. He swooped down at what seemed to be breakneck speed, aiming directly for my hand, and landed with quite a bit of force. And once again we watched each other, eye to eye, as he swallowed down every peanut there.

He flew up on this tree after his snack.

Well! I decided if they were going to be this assertive I was changing my camera lens and grabbing a shot. But of course by the time I got the short lens on the camera they were long gone.

Still. It’s something I’ll never forget and I hope you can imagine.

Back to my miscalculation.

I figured the number of people at the park would be similar to most other weekdays that I’ve been there. But the parking lots were full. There were families with kids screaming and running everywhere. There were lots of individuals quietly walking too, but overwhelmingly there were groups of people tromping around the trails. It was noisy. It was crowded.

It felt like a Saturday, and then I realized that it might as well be a weekend day. Kids were no longer in school. People were off work. There will no longer be a difference between weekdays and weekends. I felt a small pang at the loss of my quiet weekday mornings at my favorite park.

And then I realized that none of us should have been there. That maybe we do need to close the parks. I know that people have been cooped up for a couple weeks, that kids are going crazy and need to expend some energy. But maybe that should be done in their own back yard.

And that’s where I’ll be staying into the foreseeable future.

Yesterday in the United States almost 1000 people died of the virus. The day before it was just over 900. When these kinds of numbers were being reported in Italy I couldn’t fathom the enormity. Now that enormity is here. Here in the states 5,713 people are dead, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So I realized, as I left my favorite park, that maybe I won’t be back any time soon. I will miss it. But it’s important that we all stay home. All of us. Stay home. That’s the only way we will get through this.

And on a lighter note, I had a successful grocery store venture this morning, though I spent twice what I would usually spend because I’m hoping not to go back for at least two weeks.

And look what I found!

Mama! I don’t know why you’re so excited about that…it’s not edible or anything.

But today’s post is not about the toilet paper…it’s about the realization that a stay-at-home order means just that. Stay at home. Don’t go to the park to walk. Walk around your neighborhood or your yard if your neighborhood is too busy. If your yard is too small then walk around your house. But stay away from everyone else.

It’s going to be hard. But we’re strong. We can do this.

We have to.

Time to clean up our act.


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Something to smile about

These days, in order to make people feel better and less isolated, everyone is sharing things that make them smile. It’s sort of a trend.

But Trent has been collecting smiles for months, maybe years, and this week, crazy as it’s been, is no exception.

A bit of yellow points toward spring.

So as the week has run it’s excruciating course I’ve been on the lookout for something to smile about. And this morning, as I was staring out the window at my bleak, brown yard I smiled.

Because my goldfinches are turning yellow.

He knows he’s looking quite dapper.

It’s proof that no matter what the humans in this world do, what destruction we bring down on our own heads, mother nature just keeps moving along.

Spring will come regardless of whether we’re ready or not.

Some of us were wearing our bed-head look this week. Understandably.

Might as well just sit back, watch and smile.


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We could use a smile

Things have gotten kind of crazy here in the States. No matter which side of the virus crisis argument you stand, it’s gotten crazy. I feel like I need to write something about all of this, but I also think we all need to stop and take a deep breath and maybe even smile.

This guy is a red-bellied woodpecker, showing off his red belly.

So, for now, I’m going to go for the smile.

Yesterday I took my neighbor out to my favorite park to feed the birds. She and her husband have just moved into the neighborhood and I’ve told them about the experience of having wild birds land in your hand.

The usual suspects stopped by for a snack.

This week we both had time to spend out there, and the timing was good. The sandhill cranes are back and the red-winged blackbirds arrived just a couple days ago.

This couple greeted us soon after we got out of the car.

Both are hungry.

I told her that the blackbirds wouldn’t come sit on our hands, they are always interested in the food happenings but will usually wait around until we move off and then go in for the leftovers. Just as I was saying this a huge blackbird landed on my hand.

“Thanks, Lady, this peanut is irresistible!”

I guess they were really hungry, because several of them swarmed around for a treat. I’ve never had them come in like that before, and it was pretty cool.

Of course the cranes were intent on getting lunch too. As we were feeding the little birds these two sauntered up the path behind us.

The cranes that welcomed us to their park stopped by to see if we had anything good.

We had seen them over by the parking lot, but apparently they were interested enough in us to follow us as we made our way into the woods.

We wandered through the woods, over hills and across streams. Just about everywhere we stopped little birds came flying. It was so much fun!

On our way back to the car I noticed these three coming to see us at a fast jog.

“It’s a race! Whoever gets to those ladies first gets the best treats!”

They were absolutely beautiful, look at the colors in their heads…

They almost look fake.

…and in the feathers on their back. The sun wasn’t even out and they still glowed.

Stunning!

Speaking of bird heads…I was speaking of those right? Look at these two closeups of the crane heads….one of them had more feathers making the red part look like a heart.

A heart shaped forehead.

And the other in this particular pair didn’t have similar facial feathers at all.

A more streamlined face.

I wonder if one is a female and one is a male…or is one just different?

Now, a turkey head…well…these are just weird. I think Dr. Seuss designed the turkey.

“What you looking at lady?”

Anyway, we had the best time, and we were serenaded out of the park by another pair of cranes in conjunction with our new best friends, the three turkeys!

Do you see them? They’re both screeching. The turkeys behind us were gobbling. It was pretty intense.

My neighbor shared our stories with her husband and he wanted to experience it all for himself. So this morning we headed back out. Today we had blue skies and big puffy white clouds and a lot of wind.

We were met by the parking lot greeter cranes.

Nom nom nom…

And then we ventured back into the woods. At first it took a lot to entice those little birds to come out of the trees for a treat.

“I’m not sure I’m coming down there, people!”

But eventually we found a spot with lots of the little guys and we spent a long time letting them flit around us looking for good stuff.

“Thanks, mister!”

And of course a pair of cranes came wandering up to see if we were worth investigating.

“Good stuff hiding under these leaves!”

So we had two days of smiles this week which, thankfully, eclipsed all the news on television. I guess things will probably get worse before they get better, but as long as we have retreats like this to escape into, we’ll get by just fine.

The sun always comes back.

I hope you are all finding something to smile about too. If you do, share them in your blog and link back to Trent’s smile post. He’ll post a recap on Monday of everyone’s smile.

These days sharing smiles is something of a public service.


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Still smiling

I have a lot going on, some of which you’ll undoubtedly read about next week. But I didn’t want this week to get away without smiling.

Now I know you’ve seen my ‘through the window’ bird shots just last post.

Look at all the detail in her feathers. There are little white hearts in there, perfect for February and Valentine’s Day.

And I know she’s just a starling, though as a European starling I guess she is rather exotic.

But since I’d never seen one before, and since she stops by every day now to get some lunch, and since I think she’s just so darn cute I thought you wouldn’t mind seeing her again.

A girl’s got to be nimble to get the good stuff here at the bottom.

Because she makes me smile every time I see her chowing down on that suet.

Who say’s I’m chowing, lady? I’m daintily having brunch.

Oh…and these guys make me smile too.

I like the bird flying away in the background.

And this one…

Maybe she won’t notice me way over here.

And even this one.

Just pretend I’m a bird, OK lady?

What made you smile this week? Post about it and link to Trent’s smile post and he’ll recap on Monday!

Waiting in line for lunch.


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Bad bird photos

It’s not that the birds are bad. No, the birds are, as always, just being birds. It’s the images I got of them that are bad. But I have an excuse.

From the backside of this large-ish brown speckeled bird, can you tell what he or she is?

I was grabbing quick shots of birds that I wanted to identify — birds that are not usually at my feeders or standing still in my yard here in lower Michigan.

Sharing the feeder with a bluejay so you can get an idea how big the brown bird is.

I was shooting from across a room because I couldn’t get close to the window in fear of scaring them away. And of course the windows are filthy.

Blury, but you can see the shape of the head. From the beak I thought maybe woodpecker, but young red bellied woodpeckers (about this size) have white stripes across the back. If you look close there is an adult red bellied woodpecker on the other side of that suet.

On top of all that the light was bad both days.

Today this guy showed up. What kind of hawk do you think it is?

But still, there’s enough here to identify these two…right? So….I need help…any ideas what they are?

Dirty windows, bad light and extreme cropping doesn’t hide how beautiful he or she is.