Wednesday Wildlife

 It is always a delight to see a bird up close and personal on the back porch.  Lately we have had a number of "ground feeders" because of the mess the squirrels made with the bird feeder.  Even though the "ground" is the back deck!

Can you help me decide what this bird is?  I was thinking a young male cardinal but I am unsure.  Whatever he is, I love his visits.

Birds in the Backyard

We had a LOT of visitors today!  I had just gone upstairs to see if Dear One was interested in supper of some nature...not that I had anything interesting to offer him ready at hand, but thought if he was not really hungry I would not go to the effort.  He was just finishing watching "Gravity" with Sandra Bullock and I don't know who else since I only saw the part where she 'comes to' and decides to get herself out of whatever predicament she was in.

All of a sudden there were zillions of little birds in the sky.  Surprisingly, they decided to light down in our backyard.  It would be great if they picked off all the strange spike-y shoots that come up from the grass...but now I will have to wait until daylight to see if that happened.  South Carolina does not have the same grass as in Vermont!  Anyway, it was delightful to host them, even for a few minutes.

This is a picture from our deck though I was inside the slider hoping not to scare them off:

This is a LOT of birds!  I do not know what kind they are.  I am wondering if we are on their migration route south.  I shall find someone around here who knows.  Maybe at the library...

Here are some of them resting on the roof next door.  It just occurred to me that our binoculars are right beside our sliding door so next time, if there is a next time, I can look at the birds close up to see if I can figure out who they are.  I will need to go through our books to see if the bird book came south with us.

Rainy Sunday

Today we came home from Church in a cold rain.  Because we moved out the old stove yesterday and the new one has not been installed yet we used the microwave to heat up some old soup.  Bob ate cream of butternut squash soup and I had sweet potato, corn, and kale soup.  They were both good.  He went home teaching and I took a nap until the phone rang.

Before HTing and napping we watched the birds on the porch for a while.  It was a fabulous bird day despite, or maybe because of, the weather.  We had blue jays, chickadees, sparrows, some little gray crested bird that we don't know yet, a couple of nuthatches, Mr. Cardinal and later Mrs Cardinal, and ***NEWSFLASH***a pileated woodpecker!  It was huge!  We had already had a small Downy woodpecker...at least that is what I think it was...smaller than the bigger Hairy woodpecker.  It pecked on a post on the porch then snuck in to grab a bite to eat from the birdfeeder!  Pretty funny.  A little later he was pecking on the window frame in the dining room.  Grandpa surprised him by knocking back...

The 'new' chair on the porch has been a great place to spend afternoons when the birds, and squirrels, are feeding.  So many birds come to visit.  It will be interesting to see who comes this winter.