Birds

I've come to realize that I have a thing for birds. Love them. If I could have a superpower, it'd be flight. If I could be an animal, I'd be a bird (dog is second runner up). I'm always looking to the skies to see the hawks and vultures circling. I make jewelry and I didn't realize it at the time of purchase, but all of the pieces were of either birds, wings or feathers. I'm also on an identification spree. I have seen a few blue birds, a few blue jays (I used to see these all the time. Not so much now though), cardinals, humming birds, barn swallows and roadrunners. I had never seen a blue bird until this year. It's such a brilliant blue! The roadrunner is also one that I had never seen until this year. I didn't realize just how big those were. I've always seen cardinals and am always taken by surprise just how red they are.

I put out the humming bird feeders today and put seed in the regular feeder. I know we have a male and female cardinal that visits regularly and makes a cacophony! The barn swallows built a nest under the eave at our front door last year. They had a nest of 4 or 5 chicks and a snake got to them one night. We tried to get rid of the snake for them before it got all the chicks. The family moved out the next day. The nest is still there and we've seen one swallow perched on the eave a couple of nights.

We have the standard visitors of mourning doves (such a horrible noise they make!) and sparrows and one type of bird that I cannot identify. We sometimes get grackles too. We find it funny when the males "scoot" (mating dance). Last year was the first time I had hummingbird feeders. We were walking Polly last summer and I saw one or two feeding at another person's feeder. One came up pretty close to us to check us out - they're know for being curious little birdies. I immediately decided to get my own feeders. Ryan was skeptical at first thinking they wouldn't find the feeders. Last year I had three humming birds at one time at the feeders. However, one was territorial and shooed the other two away when they all were wanting to feed.

In my younger days, I've seen a lot of baby owls - screech owls in the wild and rescued barn owls. I have also seen woodpeckers at my parents' house. Another I've seen are scissor-tails.

Other "standards": sea gulls, pigeons, mocking birds, sandpipers, herons, spoonbills, ducks, geese, cormorants, crows, brown pelicans, white pelicans ...

Okay, this is all over the place. BIRDS.

(Oh, and sometimes when Ivy is whining, she sometimes sounds like a bird ^-^ and she has earned a nickname.)