Mark Twain I suspect, spent some time watching and listening to Blue Jays. I’ve shared his writing on the jay before where he called them a “vocabularized geyser”. Only a man who has hung around a few jays would know this…that they have such a wide array of calls, chirps, alarms, and rumblings, that one … Read more
The Brown-Headed Cowbird doesn’t look like much…until the light hits it just right. Then the male radiates a color and sheen that is stunning. Females, like many bird species are more drab, which is normally nature’s way of protecting them during nesting. Funny thing about Cowbirds though…they don’t really make a nest…in fact, they don’t … Read more
As far as my backyard world goes, we don’t see a ton of warblers come through here, but some most certainly do. They don’t stop for long, but one kind of feels lucky they spend a day or two hanging around, before heading farther north. I took this photograph, mostly just for documenting that I … Read more
Looking back I now consider it a privilege to have worked on a family farm. It wasn’t my family, it was that of a friend, but they treated me very kindly. Farmers are often like that. I realized that the work in such a place is never really done…there is always something to do. In … Read more
I’ll grant you that there are many birds that can serve as a sign of spring. Robins might be the most notable for many people, but Orioles, Red-winged Blackbirds, Grey Catbirds…are certainly contenders in my mind. But I think for me, these days, the diminutive Hummingbird would take the prize as the primary sign that … Read more
Not everyone loves woodpeckers it seems. Log home owners are not often smitten. But say what you will about them, they put old broken down timber to good use. Actually now that I think about it, they have a lot in common with folks who live in log homes. I admire them both for having … Read more