Lending A Hand To Avian Friends We have been hit by a brutally cold winter since Christmas that has become much worse in the last couple of days. Yesterday and today the temperature hovering in the single digits, Fahrenheit, during the day and dropping down below 0°F at night. This number does not take windchill into account which would drop it into negative double digits. This … Continue reading A Brutally Cold Week
Enjoying The Hospitality Winter temperature has finally matched the season and there is not much of anything out there. Snow has not yet paid a visit. The birds have picked most of the seeds off the buds I left in intact for them: Echinacea, Black-eyed Susan, Goldenrod… So now they enjoy the additional food we put out for them. On cold days they can enjoy a heated birdbath too. We … Continue reading Birds of Winter
It’s a Time to Care For Friends We’ve been having a roller coaster weather this year and December temperature around here rages from 60º F to 18º F which is a pretty wide gap. We had icy rain yesterday and snow today, haven’t seen the sun in the last couple of days. Weather like this raise my concern for my avian friends in the neighborhood. … Continue reading From an Icy Rain To Snow
Residents And Visitors Spring is the busiest time in our own garden aviary. We have both resident aerialists that stay with us year round and the ones that travel back and forth from North to South America annually. Every spring we roll out the red carpet for them, helping them stay strong and nurturing a new generation. By the end of spring some of them … Continue reading Spring Recap On Birds
After Nature Had Her Way I always love that period right after a rain or heavy storm, provided I don’t have to vacuum water out from our basement. The sky is clear and the air is clean; I can smell the freshness in it. It’s a very distinctive scent of life renewed. Plants shake off the shower that washed away dust and dirt from their … Continue reading Hurricane (continued)
A Magnificent Bird I had a visit from a very shy bird, a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), last weekend. It is the largest woodpecker around since the Ivory-billed (Campephilus principalis) is presumed extinct. It is a crow-sized woodpecker, with a 17″ long body and a wingspan around 29″, according to National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Birds of North America by Edward S. Brinkley. … Continue reading Pileated Woodpecker
Petals and Wings 