I always enjoy sitting on the front porch of my son’s home in North Carolina. His house is at the end of a cul-de-sac, next to a wooded lot, that in winter and without the leaves on the trees, you can see a sliver of Lake Wiley.
Even in the winter, when it’s about 45* here, I still like to grab some blankets and bundle up and sit out on the front porch with a cup of coffee.
Occasionally we can see deer, and always lots of birds.
Yesterday I saw four deer and this morning I saw a red-headed woodpecker, my first robin of the season, a beautiful Eastern bluebird and, something new to me that I identified as, a Ruby-crown Kinglet.
I enjoy seeing the birds and listening to their singing, and also watching the squirrels scampering to and fro. Squirrels are fun to watch in the woods (not at one’s bird-feeders!)
While visiting with our friends near Clearwater, FL they thought we would like to visit the Seaside Seabird Sanctuary, and they were right.
We enjoyed seeing the beautiful coastal birds, which included owls, egrets, herons, and several other birds we see back in Minnesota.
We walked alongside this beautiful great egret.
Up close and personal with a great egret.
Bald eagles get around.
Although most of the birds in the sanctuary have been injured somehow, it was great to see them recovering and walking or flying around…some up close and personal.
A juvenile brown pelican.
A black-crowned night heron.
Many of the birds were in enclosures by themselves, or in large pens with multiple birds. Some were walking the grounds and others were flying freely.
One example of an enclosure for multiple birds.
White pelicans.
Of course, the risk is one may get bombed with a plop of bird poop. One such plop landed on our friend’s cell phone.
Two sandhill cranes.
The sandhill cranes were in an enclosed pen, but I was able to zoom in for a picture. I’ve only seen them in flight, or in a field before, so it was special to see them so close.
Some of the birds may be perfectly healthy, but they know where to find an easy, free meal. Part of the sanctuary is open to the seashore, along the intercoastal waterway.
An juvenile ibis.
A double-crested cormorant.
I’m grateful for the people who run this small, but intimate bird sanctuary that is free and open to the public (donations accepted). It’s a way to help the birds, and to introduce the birds to anyone who stops by.
Dipping our toes into the gulf waters.
A serene photo of a sailboat on the beautiful water.
Thursday morning the snow started to taper off mid-morning, and stopped before noon. The official snowfall total for Northfield was 15.1 inches over this three-day storm. That’s a lot of snow, but not a record. Now, this morning, it’s cold out there…below zero temperatures!
KARE 11 weather table.
This is our back deck…the table was clear of snow prior to the storm.
Thankfully we have a snow blower. With Gary behind the snow blower and me using shovels to clear out the front porch and short walkway, we make a good team, but he does the brunt of the work shoveling out.
Gary and the snowblower.
We are also responsible to clear the public sidewalk along the east side of our house…Gary uses the snowblower for that.
The sidewalk has been cleared…
And then the snowplow comes through…
It wasn’t too cold when we went out to clear snow. It went quickly. Then we wait until the snowplow comes along to plow the street and pushes a huge mound of snow back into our driveway. Gary goes out once again to plow it out…and the sidewalk entrance too. And so it goes.
The bird feeder on our window.
The birdfeeders suctioned to our windows were full of snow. I saw a chickadee pecking through the snow to find seeds. I “spooned” out the snow and added fresh seed in the feeders.
Ah, much easier.
The bird feeder and bird bath is another gauge of how much snow accumulated in our yard.
The first day of the snowstorm we were on country roads driving home. It had been snowing for awhile and the wind was blowing across the fields making it low visibility and white-out conditions over the fields. At that time, it was just beginning to snow…I can only imagine what it is like out on open roads with much snow and wind.
Looking out the window to our backyard.
It looks so innocent and serene looking out our windows.
The front of our house…lots and lots of snow. It will be a while before we see green grass!
We’re back on our son’s front porch in North Carolina. The temperatures are mild, and it’s wonderful drinking our morning coffee out here. Yesterday, a long, gentle rain fell, but we could still sit on the porch and watch the rain fall, and it was lovely.
The woods next door offers a beautiful view of fall colors. We get to experience an extended fall season.
This morning’s show included an occasional leaf gently floating down and many active birds…the ones I could identify were finches, eastern blue birds and a woodpecker. The cardinal is the state bird of North Carolina, and I’ve seen many already, just not this morning.
So sweet and so small…the red feather next to sunflower seeds for perspective. I’m assuming it’s from a cardinal. I spotted the feather in one of our window bird feeders.
Tiny red feather
Stood out among the birdseed...
A love gift for me?
A happy sight.
I’m going with the idea it was left behind as a love token for me. 😉
For the past few mornings, I start my day by saying “good morning Papa Bird” to the mourning dove nesting in the eaves, outside our bedroom window. I think he likes being greeted, now that he knows I’m not going to harm him. If he’s facing me he smiles (!)…if he’s facing the opposite direction, he lifts and turns his head to look at me.
I started by calling him “Mama Bird”, but after a little research online, apparently the male dove sits on the nest during the daytime.
He is in the direct sun from the west, and with these hot temperatures I wonder how he tolerates the sunshine and the heat. I want to put up an umbrella to give him some shade, but that’s not possible.
In the meantime, I will continue to open the window a crack to talk to him a few times throughout the day, and then say good night in the evening. And I’ll keep watch to see what happens when the baby doves appear.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I am posting excerpts from a memoir my friend wrote about her family pet, a lovebird named Babypie.
Babypie
By Joy Kimi Kanazawa
...Babypie was quite a character. He loved classical music and used to bob up and down in time to Beethoven, as though conducting the orchestra, looking like a green baton or a green Leonard Bernstein.
Seldom in his cage, Babypie had the run of the apartment and used to sit on the shoulder of anyone he felt like being close to.
Every weekend we (our family) would go to our cabin in the Pocono Mountains, a two-hour drive from the city. Naturally, Babypie always went along for the ride.
One night my father went outside onto the deck, forgetting that he had Babypie on his shoulder. It was a rainy night and suddenly there was a flash of lightning and a loud crash of thunder. Startled, Babypie flew off into the night.
... we returned to New York without Babypie, all of us heartbroken...
Two days later I decided to go back to the Poconos (as impossible as it may have seemed) to try and find Babypie. I walked the roads near our cabin and a quarter of a mile away I looked up and saw what looked like ...Babypie.
I got out of my car, climbed onto the roof, and blasted Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony on my boombox. Babypie flew down to his beloved Beethoven. What a miracle from God! Babypie was back!
As we walked along the river trail the other morning, we heard an unusual number of birds singing. The sound ramped up as we got closer to the hundreds of birds we could not see (except for a few in the treetops) but it sounded like a huge choir of birds, and not the normal bird songs one hears in the spring. Loud chirping was more like it. We took notice.
As we walked through this moment, we passed some walkers and they commented on the sound from the birds. I recognized one of the walkers as the orchestra conductor at St. Olaf College…I said to him as we passed, “I think the birds need a conductor.” His group also commented on the number of birds there must be to make loud “music” like that.
Gary and I continued on and all at once there was silence!
Not one bird sound. They all stopped at the exact same moment…for about five seconds.
Silence.
Then, just as quickly as they stopped, the birds resumed their singing again, loudly again. We looked at each other and Gary quipped, “They must have had to turn the page.” I laughed.
The conductor said he’d love to see all the birds take off at once. That would be a sight to see.
I do love birds…to watch them at the feeders and see them in nature, to admire their unique beauty and hear their sweet songs.
On a walk around the ponds in our neighborhood yesterday, I was treated to seeing several different types of waterfowl: ducks, Canadian geese, an egret and a great blue heron.
A great blue heron.
I stopped to watch the heron stealthily approach the egret. Canadian geese and ducks were swimming in the pond. It was a delight to stand and watch the birds, and take pictures of them.
The heron approaches the egret, with an image of a bird flying over the pond.
It reminded me of a time, years ago, while traveling with our sons, we had to wait a while for a train. There was a pond nearby. I told them nature can be very entertaining, and we went to sit near the pond to watch the birds and ducks.
The heron chases the egret away.
It was entertaining then, and it is today.
The heron, the egret and Canadian geese all together for the photo shoot. ha!
These birds did indeed entertain me, and bless me, this day.
On our recent visit to AZ, not only did we see the desert in bloom, but we saw several kinds of birds and animals.
There were cardinals in the trees, and lots of hummingbirds too. There were mourning doves and lots of quail drinking from a large, ceramic basin of water our friends strategically placed outside their family room window. I enjoyed seeing the quail and their pretty little head plumes. I tried several times to get a photo of the quail but it just didn’t happen. We spotted a roadrunner racing on the ground several times.
The Great Horned owl tucked between the arms of a saguaro cactus. She’s protecting two owlets. There is one in the photo.
But the prize bird sighting was a Great-horned owl, and her two owlets. Their nest was in-between the arms of a tall, saguaro cactus. Ouch. Those cactus needles are prickly! We stopped to see the nest on our way to our friend’s house directly from the airport. We saw mama, and her two young ones the first time. Two days later we stopped by to check on the owlets and they had grown. My friend got an up-close photo of one of them with her special camera.
One of two owlets in the nest.
Photo of an owlet through a zoom lens. photo by tw
There were jack rabbits all over town; in the yards, on the golf courses, in the open spaces, at the watering bowl. I didn’t have my camera ready at the right moments so I didn’t get any photos of the cute bunnies with long ears.
We saw long-horn cattle roaming in the open, alongside the road to the trailhead for our desert hike.
Longhorn cattle roamed the desert.
But the prize animal sighting was bighorn sheep. On the drive through the mountains to Canyon Lake (where we had scheduled a boat ride in a beautiful reservoir) we spotted bighorn sheep.
Canyon Lake…I called these rock formations “desert fjords”. photo by tw
Four of the 8 big horn sheep we watched. photo by tw
Big horn sheep climbing the rocky terrain. photo by tw
We stopped to take photos and watch the beautiful creatures maneuver the rocky terrain. We counted 8. My friend had a camera with a stronger zoom so I let her take the photos.
At the top. photo by tw
And lastly…the night before we left, in the rocky side yard we spotted a Gila Monster (pronounced heel-la monster), a poisonous lizard and apparently a rare sighting.
A Gila Monster, a poisonous lizard.
The lizard moves slow so we could get a good look at it and take photos. According to Wikipedia, it is the only venomous lizard native to the United States.
Gila Monster up close. photo by tw
Each flower, each bird, each animal is a gift. I marvel at nature’s beauty and God’s amazing creativity. And I am grateful.
