by John Baldwin
What a lovely surprise to have such warm weather after a couple of dreary wet and cold days of foreboding. It certainly speeded up the changes in the Fall colours of the leaves still remaining on the trees. Last week seemed a little bereft of garden birds, but this has changed and some of our birds that migrated north have come back. One breed, in particular, to appear in quite reasonable numbers is the Slate colored Junco, with their distinctive white undersides, and white flashes in their tail feathers, noticeable when they flit very quickly from patch to patch on the ground and amongst the small branches of our rose bush.
A group of Robins have appeared too, and have been active in our back garden, especially in our waterfall feature area, where they seem to be competing for territorial rights of some sort, but I am not sure quite what they might be at this time of the year. I didn’t get a good look at them, so don’t know if they had been having a quick bath, as they are sometimes wont to do. Adding to the delights of our bird population feeders was a pair of House Finches which, no doubt, are probably on their way to warmer climes – we shall have to wait and see.
Another of our birds has been a White Throated Sparrow, which is a very pretty bird, with its distinctive white under chin (throat), its striped head, and its even more distinctive small yellow patches just above its eyes. A truly lovely bird to see and enjoy, as I hope that you will too, should you happen to spot one and, if not one of them, all the other birds that are there for you to see.
Enjoy and stay safe and well.
Cheers,
John Baldwin
