During a song break at band on Sunday, flute L turns to me and says, I just read something sad! Oh? I wondered if it was about one of her kids. She went, it's Bird is the Word! They're closing at the end of the year! Oh wow. That is sad news. They've been around about as long as we've lived here. L has a cockatiel and said she drives in about once ( Read more... )

I had off from band tonight, and I go back to two weekly rehearsals next week, so I took advantage of my free night and went to the arboretum. I hardly get over there to use the membership, and it was a lovely day, so why not. I also remembered why I'd wanted to go there on my vacation: I'd wanted to see what birds I could find. Once I uninstalled ( Read more... )

This time of year, I typically have lunch outside on the weekends. I hang out, eat, read the paper, and watch the birds. They were especially busy this afternoon; I heard rustling near our sycamore tree, and I looked over and so many little birds were on the branches, at least 20 of them. I could hear chickadees chirping about, but I think most of ( Read more... )

Late last week, I woke up and looked out the window to discover the bowl of the birdbath was on the ground. Dad had mowed the lawn the day before, so it's possible that somehow jostled things, or else we had a large critter looking to bathe who toppled it. Regardless, it was supposed to be on its pedestal and dad had not moved it ( Read more... )

Last night while returning home from my walk, I heard a strange noise coming from the vicinity of a car parked on a driveway. What, is there a dog inside? It was this odd sort of barking sound, but a peek in the car did not produce sight of a dog. That's weird. The sound continued, so I looked underneath. Instead of a dog, I spotted a mama duck, ( Read more... )

For years, I used a website called Whatbird.com to look up birds I was curious about, mainly to figure out what the bird was. That site appears to have gone offline. I started hearing about the Merlin app, and in talking to a room renter last week, she had it on her phone and started telling me about it. It can record sounds and it figures out what ( Read more... )

Just after I wrote my last post, I went downstairs for breakfast. I looked out the kitchen window to see one of the robin babies was perched on the edge of a planter. A glance out the sliding door showed a second baby hanging on a decorative star on the lattice, then landing on our stack of deck chairs. A third was still hanging out in the nest. ( Read more... )

It's a rough time of year for me at work, so having a three-day weekend was great. Saturday was a beautiful day. There's a part of me that wants to be productive, but then part of my brain shuts down and goes, you know what? I want to spend three hours just sitting outside reading the paper. So I did. Me and the critters and my father mowing the ( Read more... )

Dad put out the hummingbird feeder recently. He cleaned it up and added fresh nectar, and it went up in the pergola doorway close to the kitchen window. We had no idea how soon we might see one, but at least it would be there if they needed it ( Read more... )

For the past week, in the mornings, I've occasionally heard a cardinal chirping his little head off. Just constant sound. Where the sound is coming from isn't always obvious; I can only tell that it's nearby. When I've taken the time to look for him, inevitably I've found him hopping around on the ground in front of our bushes. He's happy as a clam ( Read more... )