What a beautiful day to get up to and enjoy, as we sit on the deck for a breakfast of what are probably the last of the “local” strawberries and listen to the birds regaling us with their early morning songs. A Blue-Jay chatters and sings, as does a Cardinal and our little favourite the House Wren, or maybe even two of them. The one more dominant little guy is still hoping to attract a mate, or is competing with another male for the privilege, anyway at times there seem to be two of them singing! Maybe we’ll get to see some more nesting box activity before the summer is out.
On the subject of nesting, a friend of mine sent me some beautiful close up pictures of his nesting Eastern Phoebe and in this respect he is not alone, as another friend – yes I do have more than one – also has his Phoebe, that has nested at his house for many years now! They are lovely birds with their distinctive “fee bee”, call which gave them their name, I believe.
Over the past few days we have had a few visitors who don’t tend to “dally” for any amount of time when they do drop in, giving me the inspiration for my article’s title! A pair of Brown Thrashers have been enjoying our back garden water feature over the hot sunny days and my wife spotted the Flicker on our front garden birdbath. My camera was near the front window chair, so she was able to get some good pictures of it. Of course by the time she had yelled down to me and I had scrambled up from the basement office,it had gone just like that, in a Flicker of an eyelid! Of course that’s the way it goes when it comes to spotting and seeing the birds long enough to be able to identify them, but I expect you know that already
Another bird attracted to the water, but mainly because of the chance of catching “mozzies”, was an Eastern Kingbird, but it too only appeared for a brief period of time. Quite appropriately, we were in the swimming pool when it appeared and it made a couple of passes before departing. Stay safe and well.
Cheers,
John Baldwin
