Watching Birds

 Last month I threatened you all with a recitation of how my wife and I turned a grass strip alongside our house into a shade-plant garden path. I may yet write about that, but I've decided instead to show you some of the new friends we've enjoyed this spring.

When we first put out bird feeders, a couple of years ago, we had almost no visitors. But since we've begun collecting shrubs, bushes and tree saplings, we've been treated to a number of feathered friends keeping court.

Goldfinches started visiting almost before the snow stopped falling, and they eat both the thistle seed and the black-oil sunflower seeds.

Two pairs of purple finches (picture below) spend most of their time on the thistle seed, or playing hide-and-seek in nearby branches.

The Titmice and Red-bellied woodpecker come much less often, but we managed to get better pictures of them than of the Nuthatches and Downy woodpeckers who visit almost daily.

(Scroll down to see....)

After a couple years of fruitless attempts, it's fun to see and hear these little guys (and gals) flitting around.

People sometimes ask about the best kind of bird food, and my opinion is that you can't do better than plain black-oil sunflower seeds.

Seed mix is often half-filled with millet, which appeals mostly to doves - the other birds sneer disdainfully as they toss it over their shoulders. But all of our birds have snacked from the sunflower feeder at one time or another. It makes sense then, as long as you're paying for seed by the pound, to get seeds most likely to be eaten.

But, your results may vary, so don't be afraid to experiment, if you haven't already. (Someone told us that larger birds like woodpeckers and Blue Jays really like peanuts, so that's on our list of things to try.)

And while one of the perks of feeding birds is that you can enjoy them from inside your window, until next time,

- Don't stay indoors!