snowbirds

I think that the snowbirds are here. Not the tourists but the real snowbirds, robins. I think that there was a flock of robins in the backyard today. They had real orange chest feathers which is as I remember as a child the robins to be. I remember when I was young and living in New York that they also have the prettiest blue eggs. Yes, blue eggs, like the blue colored eggs at Easter time. The robins were eating the berries from the camphor tree in the back yard. The berries look like blueberries. The berries must have been tasty to them because they were eating them like crazy. There was a whole bunch (approximately 20) of the birds in the camphor tree eating the berries right off the tree and a whole bunch (approximately 30 or 40) more eating the berries that had fallen on the ground.

I had noticed the cat earlier sitting in the back door of the garage looking up at the camphor tree. I thought that she was watching the leaves falling down from the tree. I discovered that it wasn’t the leaves that she was watching but the birds. As the birds constantly flew in and out of the tree they kept knocking the leaves off the branches causing a nearly constant trickle of leaves coming off the tree. But not to worry, Tammy the cat is so well fed that she is not the kind of cat that eats birds. Her food comes out of a “fancy feast” can. She doesn’t have to work for her food, but just meow for some fancy feast.

I didn’t notice at the time that I took a picture but evidently one of the birds was protesting rather angrily at my disturbing them from their feeding. It is difficult to see but it is the bird on the right. Most of the birds ignored me but not this one. Such a protest.

Also one of the birds was just taking off as I took the picture. If seaside had taken the picture, the bird would not be blurry. Her camera is very fast and she gets excellent freeze-action pictures.

A very large flock was in the back yard feeding. I don’t know if they were finding insects or grass seeds. They very slowly migrated across the backyard

Curiously, there was a red-headed woodpecker on the ground feeding. I guess that he was getting some insects. He would look at the ground for a few seconds and then suddenly peck the ground as if he had spotted something.

Now it is time to say goodbye to all of you and my fine feathered friends. When I was a child living in New York I always liked the return of robins in the spring. And I would always try to be the first one to spot a returning robin because it meant the beginning of spring. Have a nice day and look around at all of the life around us. Pretty soon it will be spring and “time to smell the flowers”. Be kind. Lew