For the Birds

This next month is a great time for bird watching. If you're lucky you live on or near a fly way or you are north enough that they are just returning home. We are near the Ohio River, so we should get some of both! Just the other day I spotted a Great Blue Heron, to me almost as majestic as the eagle. When we were in Utah, I did get a glimpse of an eagle, and I've seen both the Great Blue and the eagle often when we lived in Leavenworth, Kansas.

So quick, before the foliage fills in, and they are harder to spot, take some hikes and fill in some of your life list. I kinda, sorta have a list started, but I'm not really going after a big year. I just enjoy watching birds, in a non-Jane Hathaway kind of way. (For those that know me, that's a TV Land reference to a the Beverly Hillbilly's character who played the bird-watching secretary of Mr. Drysdale who also had a crush on Jethro, but I digress.) I just am lucky that when I walk the two beasts I also pay attention along the way and am rewarded by seeing chickadees, dark eyed juncos, western bluebirds, yellow bellied sapsuckers (no kidding!), red headed woodpeckers, tanagers, not to mention cardinals, blue jays, and the hawk that lives nearby.

Among my favorite sightings in the past was the tree full of cedar waxwings that sojourned outside our Leavenworth home for about 30 minutes on their way north. Imagine looking up from your second story window to see 30-40 waxwings alight and then quietly and in unison take flight again! And then there was the allusive American Kestral who slouched grudgingly in a dead tree near our home on the Missouri River. And a bird on one walk in Kansas that stopped me in my tracks so I could make sure that this bright orange breasted bird was indeed a Baltimore Oriole. It was!

A real treat in our neighborhood is the first sighting of hummingbirds to the area. Last year it was while we were having an outdoor evening dinner with friends, and the neighbors had thoughtfully put out several feeders (I'm far too lazy to keep hummingbird feeders) . . . while we were dining el fresco, we were swarmed by 20-30 beautiful little iridescent hummers.

I used to think swallows a lovely bird. But one year in Texas they built a nest in our wreath at the front door. We thought that was sweet and let them have their nest with eggs and all and didn't disturb them for a month or two. Then the eggs hatched and geesh, what a mess. They were noisy, and had no manners at all! They didn't take their toileting business out in the woods, nope, it was all over my front door. As soon as they had taken their final flight I tore the wreath off, burned it (well, I should have burned it!) and scrubbed cement like bird doo-doo for days. I still cannot look at a swallow without thinking "dirty bird."

And of course, people might find your behavior odd at times. I was watching from our front porch and thought I saw a red-winged blackbird flying in and out of a spot on the neighbors roof. But I just couldn't tell for sure, so I'm walking and looking up, walking and looking up and almost bump into my neighbor! I told him I just wanted to see the red and yellow markings on that bird to make sure it was a red-winged blackbird. He gave me an odd look, you know the kind of uh, huh! and I'm thinking, NO, Really . . . see there it goes, it is a red-winged blackbird!