I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two weeks looking out the windows in the kitchen and the “green” room. We’ve had a love affair with the wildlife around us, and frequently spend time watching what they are doing.
We’ve been amazed at the numbers of birds and squirrels we’ve seen lately. Normally we have about four or five grey squirrels under the bird feeders at a time. Of course, they don’t wear little name tags, so there could obviously be a lot more than four squirrels in the area. I was astonished to see thirteen of them under the feeders at one time, all playing well with each other. I started counting them, and called Dear Husband to the window because it was so unusual.
Later that same day, I called him back to the windows to see what had to be the re-staging of the Hitchcock movie “The Birds.” I have NEVER seen so many birds land under the feeders at one time. This was a very large flock of red-winged blackbirds. Those birds are not uncommon visitors, but we’ve never seen them in such numbers before. They covered the ground in a ten-foot circle, so tightly packed that you could barely see the ground, and almost as many were under the second feeder. They were with us for about fifteen minutes before exhausting the seed and moving on.
Mother and I used to have a game we played in the spring, as we watched life return to our area. There was a race to be the first one to say “I saw a robin!” Usually Mother or Dear Husband won that race, but I was looking out the same windows last week and saw a robin on February 27th! “Wait…..there are two. No….Look….THREE. By damn, there are FIVE ROBINS in my back yard!!!” I won the race, Mom. Did you send them to me???
Meanwhile, the shrubs around the feeder looked like Christmas. This winter we’ve had ten to twelve male cardinal visiting at one time plus a lot of lady cardinals. I’m sure they were watching the robins and red-winged blackbirds and felt they needed to get their numbers up. We did a fast count and figured we had seventeen or eighteen male cardinals that morning.
It’s been a wonderful winter, and it looks like spring is on it’s way to visit us. It’s been a joy to get to watch all our visitors.