Urban Birds

Even in the city there can be a plethora of birds.   Our part of town is not pristine nature.  We hear a constant hum of traffic and the echoes of the booms and whirrs of building that is going on in our valley.  We also usually spend mornings identifying the different motors: cars and trucks rumbling and zipping up our street.   Nevertheless, our yard is still a stopping place for so many different birds.

Yesterday the boys and I had long morning of indoor play, but with lots of watching out our windows.
And it is a daily experience that we note what is happening at our feeders and with the various wildlife around our yard.  Usually we talk about the crows, chickadees, juncos and the sparrows because they are our most frequent visitors.  For the month of December we talked about the Towhee that was in our yard-- its habit of staying low, collecting seeds that dropped from the feeder and scurrying back to its hideout in the laurel.  It was so fun to watch with that tail that sticks up & the bright orange.  But, then we were away and there wasn't food for a while.  Our towhee moved on.    But yesterday was mighty exciting out our window:  We saw a downy woodpecker at one of the cherry trees & the feeder and a flicker came to the suet.  We also saw a Bewicks Wren, a hummingbird and some finches.  We heard the Stellar jay kept company in the back yard with the robins.

So far we only have two feeders: one with Hot Pepper infused Suet and the other raw sunflower seeds. But, we have been working on making our yard a good habitat.  We have covering brush, an old Hawthorne trees. a big old holly and then the native plants we have been adding: including a fir tree, Indian plum, snowberry, huckleberry, salad.  We also have many  perennials including summertime flowering plants.  And while we have patchy grass we have lots of rich mulch that makes perfect habitat for slugs and worms as the boys were noting yesterday when we played out in the yard.  We noted that we do need to come up with a water source for these visitor.   We also discussed other plants we could add to make our yard even better.

It was a perfect day to have checked out from the library a fun and silly book about woodpeckers: Peck, Peck, Peck
By Cousins, Lucy