The Nature of Things

This is one of the best times of the year for backyard birders in Southeast Texas. The permanent resident birds are settling in for the winter. The wild food is beginning to get scarce and they are turning to our birdfeeders more and more often. At the same time, winter birds are continuing to pour into the area. The flight song of the American Goldfinch is constant background noise when I'm in my yard these days, as is the chittering call note of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet and the "chipping" of the Yellow-rumped Warbler. Any day now they will be joined by one of my favorite winter birds, the Cedar Waxwings. With this changing cast of visitors, I never know what to expect when I step outside every day, but this morning's tableau was a definite surprise. As I stepped from my back patio to the backyard, a fox squirrel jumped from the nearby sycamore tree to one of the apple tree's limbs, which made me look up just in time to see a big hawk - one of the Buteos -...

It was one of those absolutely perfect late winter days here today. Golden sunshine splashed over everything with temperatures in the 50s, but what really cinched the perfection of the day for me was the bluebirds. Several years ago, I had bluebirds nesting in my yard, but then there got to be a cat problem in the neighborhood and since I was at work all day and unable to keep an eye on the bluebird boxes, I took them down. I didn't want to provide snacks for predators. Since then, the predator problem has abated and I've put my bluebird boxes back up, but several years have gone by and no bluebirds have nested there. Sometimes chickadees or wrens have nested in the boxes but no bluebirds. This winter, though, there have been lots of bluebirds around, singing their little red, white and blue hearts out and that has given me hope that THIS MIGHT BE THE YEAR! A few days ago when I saw a male bluebird actually inspecting one of the houses, I was ecstatic. Today we put up the...