I've never really been a bird person, but my yard has been taken over by them and I can't help but be mesmorized by them! So I've been doing a little research--eating breakfast with my i.d. book in hand and looking up bird calls on
Bird Jam and
Bird Web. It's amazing to begin to put the animals to the sounds that were always there and unknown! I haven't had any luck photographing any birds, so the pics here are not mine.
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| Brian Small and Robert Royse photo |
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| Joseph V. Higbee photo |
Of course, there's the robin. Who doesn't welcome the pronounced orange chest of a robin hopping around looking for worms? The varied thrushes and robins love to hang out at the edge of our driveway hunting for worms in the leaf litter of our giant cottonwood tree. Sometimes they chase each other off.
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| quasimodo4502 photo |
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I love Steller's jays. I love that sqawk any time of the day! They are great at telling me that there's a hawk in the yard so I can lock up the chickens. Last year I went out to see what their commotion was about one afternoon and saw a raven fly off with a baby jay, mother jay in hot pursuit. It was wild!
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| Greg Lavaty photo |
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There's a beautiful yellow bird I've seen sporadically since we've lived here. I think it's a wilson's warbler. It darts around in the blueberry bushes.
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| Tom Grey photo |
I first started noticing the juncos last year when they took a liking to the barn. Whenever I opened the door they would dart out the vents near the eaves. The white V of their tails in flight made them an easy first bird to identify. This spring they've been feeding daily on the lawn. (which is actually sparse grass and lots of plantain). This evening one of them stood guard, perched on a low branch, watching the other feed. As my dog walked across the lawn the feeding one flew up to perch on a fence, then landed inside and continued eating. The guard junco immediately changed the direction of it's perch to keep watching the feeding junco. It made for interesting observation and conversation as Huck and I ate dinner by the window.
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| Lee Barnes photo |
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| Gregg Thompson photo |
I
know there are chickadees around because I hear them. I'm not sure
which kind of chickadee they are, but maybe if I'd see one
sometime......
This morning I noticed some new birds--I think they're savannah sparrows.They're nondescriptly mottled brown, but they have this great yellow stripe down their head. They and the juncos fed
together and didn't mind each other one bit.
The humming birds are always humming, squeeking, and darting. They love the blueberry flowers and the feeders.We also hear the Canada geese, who are down on the wetlands. I often mistake their cackles for Huck calling me.
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| Glen Tepke photo, Dennis Paulson photo |
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| Gregg Thompson photo |
And my FAVORITE, the red-breasted sapsucker. I love the variety of sounds it makes, especially the crazy loon-ish call. Last year I saw one
almost daily in the garden. This year, as Huck was mountain biking on a new trail we had made, we heard strange flicking and mumbling sounds.
We looked up expecting to see a squirrel, but it was the sapsucker! We watched it for a long time that night as we whispered about how lucky we were to see the bird and to have it in our yard. Each time we see it we pause to observe as Huck falls into a quiet excitement--I wish I could carry one around with me for all those wild times! This evening we saw two running around trees doing that spring chase. We decided that tomorrow we should go searching for nest cavities.
It's really amazing to listen and watch the birds in our yard. I don't foresee myself becoming a bird connoisseur, but I certainly am excited to learn about this new facet of my yard's ecosystem. I guess the more I think about it, Huck really seems to have strong connections to birds. He's been terrified of owls his whole life though nothing else seems to scare him....He will come running across the yard, "Mom! I saw a cool bird over there!"......He rides his bike through the juncos to watch them fly....... In the fall we watched a video on the wildlife of Bhutan. In it were cranes that returned each year to a monastery. They would circle it three times then land and dance wildly and gracefully. A couple of weeks ago we were biking over the huge new bridge at Fish Creek trail and he threw down his bike, turned in circles and started dancing. I didn't make the connection at all, but then during his completely joyful dance he managed to beam out: "Mom! I'm like the cranes in Bhutan!" He was certainly happy to have arrived to the end of the bridge!
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| Ripping it up on the wetlands -almost 4 years old. |
We just spent the past few days family gillnetting, which is always a blast. I'm not much of a sport fisherman (except for ice fishing), but I just love picking wads of fish out of a quarter-mile long net! The gnarly 'gater teeth ripped a hole in my rain pants at the knee, the brailer bag hook ripped a hole at the back thigh, and my jacket zipper, corroded from our trip a few weeks ago, gave way. Luckily, I was having so much fun I didn't care that I was constantly wet!
My son is amazing. We've raised him in a completely reality-based environment, and his understanding of the world is astounding. We've taught him through example and through outright discussion. He reasons with remarkable power and is able to construct logical solutions to problems. We include him in our daily adult lives and always explain things without "dumbing them down." When he asks why buoys float, I tell him it's because they are less dense than water. When he asks why it's not dark at night, we get the globe and a lamp out. He's seen one cartoon in his whole life, (and that was the doing of an unknowing uncle), and I think that has had the biggest impact on his world view. His brain is full of the world, not of other people's imaginative drawings and conversations. I realize that I am a complete radical on this, but I truly believe that television is a giant obstacle for children. It may not actually harm them, but it certainly isn't doing any good. At the very least it takes up valuable time that could be used for an actual experience, like taking a walk, observing worms, or erupting a sand volcano. It's always been apparent on the school playground Huck's perception of a game is quite different than the other children's. One day he came home and said he played Batman. I asked how to play and he said, "One person pretends to be a bat and chases the other kids." He was imagining an actual bat, while others were imagining a man in a costume. Things like this happen with him all the time. My favorite one is when his friend said she was going to be a fairy for Halloween he responded that he was going to be a skiff. Clearly he was picturing her in a ferry costume. Anyway, enough of my neurotic parenting ideals..... We've been mostly fishing, eating lots of fresh and homemade food, picking berries and playing outside. It's been a fun couple of weeks!
After three full days of fishing on the boat, we came home and crashed hard. In the morning, Huck wanted to......go fishing in the canoe! After the majority of a month on a boat, Atlin wasn't too keen, but Huck's enthusiasm won. We trolled around a bit with no luck, then hiked up a creek and landed a cut throat trout. Atlin set the hook and Huck reeled her in! It was a great (and sunny!) day.
