The Birds!

This is, apparently, the year of the birds. We must have dozens of goldfinches, and the house finches, purple finches, and two kinds of grossbeaks (evening and black-headed) are also very plentiful. There is one male goldfinch who has no yellow to him- he's white with black markings instead. I call him Whitey. Not too original, but he ignores us no matter what I call him.

One day a couple of weeks back, Mike commented that he had only seen the Western Tanager once in all the time we've lived here. The very next day, he saw a male twice!

Yes, there he is! Right outside the dining room door. A tad fuzzy on focus, but decidedly a western tanager. Handsome dude, eh? Mike took the photos.

Just for a fuller effect.

While I'm writing, there was a starling hanging out in the garden. We have over half a dozen tree swallow birdhouses under the eaves of the barn, just above the garden beds. The swallows seemed pretty provoked by the starling's presence, and dive-bombed him until he gave up and flew off.

The swallows also nest in the purported bluebird houses, and usually manage to pre-empt any western bluebirds. However, this year a nesting pair of blues have held out against the swallow bullies and are out, feeding and adding their unmistakable color to our world. They are the legendary Bluebirds of Happiness, and they live right here.

As every year, we have two varieties of humming birds. They arrive pretty early, so I'm glad when we have viburnum and early rosemary in bloom to get them through until the big bloomers make the scene.

We've seen great blue herons, Canada geese, mallards and merganser ducks down on the creek lately. All seem to be nesting.

I've seen a red-tailed hawk drop on prey just in the front pasture twice in the past week and a week ago I was out throwing the blue rubber ball for Charlie when a bald eagle flew over the far end of the back yard.

My best and worst story, though, is that the next day when I was out throwing the ball with the ball launcher, the ball arced out and hit a tree swallow, dead-on, mid-air! About 15-20 feet up. The bird was badly stunned and only managed to flap feebly - enough to keep from crashing to the ground - a kind of slow spiral down. Then it lay there, twitching, on its back. I picked it up and wondered where I could put it safely to keep it sheltered and out of the way of the cat. I put it up on the fiberglass roof of our compost pile where it sat, bewildered, until it suddenly flew off. No weird maneuvers, seemed OK.

My hope is that the incident will create buzz among the swallows about a really big, fast, and belligerent bluebird and that the blues will gain some street status.