Naturally
Birds are endlessly entertaining. Watching them helps us where we need help. The Association for the Preservation & Appreciation of Chickadees has bribed me with endless cuteness in the hopes I'd think kindly of chickadees. There are seven species of chickadees in North America. Each one is my favorite bird.
I saw a glimpse of an accipiter. It was a shadow and then gone. They move as fast as time. It was a Cooper's hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk. I called it a Shooper's hawk and a Coop-shinned hawk. I was fine with that. The chickadees alerted everyone.
A hairy woodpecker flew onto a window feeder containing suet. The tired suction cups gave way and the entire feeder fell to the ground while the woodpecker was on it. The bird flew up into the air and landed on another feeder nearby where it looked down at the crashed feeder as if it were wondering who had pulled the ground out from under it.
I spoke virtually to the New Haven (Conn.) Bird Club. They told me their Christmas Bird Count had produced 127 species. I did one in Minnesota that had 32. I was Connecticut dreaming on such a winter’s day.
A pileated woodpecker spent time in my yard. It appeared massive at the suet feeder. I've been a member of the American Birding Association (ABA) for a goodly number of years. The ABA is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, dedicated to recreational birding primarily in the continental United States, Hawaii and Canada. Each year, the ABA picks its Bird of the Year. This year it's the Pileated Woodpecker. How do you pronounce that? It's wu̇d-pe-kər.
Carol Thomas of Minneapolis sent me this, "Up From the Egg: the Confessions of a Nuthatch Avoider" by Ogden Nash. "Bird watchers top my honors list. I aimed to be one, but I missed. Since I’m both myopic and astigmatic, My aim turned out to be erratic, and I, bespectacled and binocular, exposed myself to comment jocular. We don't need too much birdlore, do we, to tell a flamingo from a towhee; yet I cannot, and never will,Bunless the silly birds stand still. And there's no enlightenment so obscure as ornithological literature. Is yon strange creature a common chickadee, Or a migrant alouette from Picardy? You rush to consult your Nature guide and inspect the gallery inside, but a bird in the open never looks like its picture in the birdie books —
Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, and plunges you back into ignorant gloomage, that is why I sit here growing old by inches, watching the clock instead of finches, but I sometimes visualize in my gin the Audubon that I audubin."
Q&A
“What makes the blue snow in my yard?” The urine of rabbits or deer that have eaten buckthorn.
"When is the mating season for squirrels?" Fox squirrels mate twice a year, typically December to February and June through July, and have two or three babies. Gray squirrels mate twice a year, typically December to February and June through August, and have two to four babies. Red squirrels mate in late winter and have two to five babies. Red squirrels typically produce one litter per year, but in some years reproduction is skipped and in other years some females breed twice. The babies of all three species are born hairless and are completely independent at 12 weeks. All three species nest in hollow trees or in treetop dens called dreys, which are ball-shaped nests made of leaves, twigs and bark.
"Why are they called evening grosbeaks?" Grosbeak comes from the French gros for “thick” and bec for “beak,” and these finches have thick beaks strong enough to crack cherry pits. John James Audubon never saw this bird and the grosbeak wasn't described to science until 1825. Although it shares the name with the rose-breasted grosbeak, the two aren't closely related. The rose-breasted grosbeak is in the cardinal family, while the evening grosbeak is a finch. It was named the evening grosbeak because it was thought to sing mostly at dusk. That's incorrect as it's vocal most of the day. They are vacuum cleaners at feeders. Feathered hogs at a trough. A friend in North Carolina told me of a man there who'd fed over a ton of sunflower seeds primarily to a flock of the beautiful grosbeaks in his yard. Evening grosbeak populations have dropped steeply according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. There are many possible causes.
Thanks for stopping by
"Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind." — Albert Schweitzer
"The best theology is probably no theology; just love one another." — Charles Schulz
Do good.
@Al Batt 2021
Each yard needs a watch chickadee. Photo by Al Batt
I just reread the wonderful “Charlotte’s Web.” This Argiope aurantia is not Charlotte.
I am nuts about Red-breasted Nuthatches.