Bird Flu

I have gone a little bird crazy in the last few months. I got a lovely pair of binoculars from Peter and Tara for my birthday and I have been dragging them around with me everywhere (the binocs, not Peter and Tara-they don't fit in my purse, and I don't think they could aid me much in viewing birds, mixing drinks perhaps, but not birding). Jamie has a pair of children's binoculars from Goodwill that he insists on using when I am looking through mine. I also got some feeders for Christmas and now that they are up, the bird population outside our windows has exploded.

I always have my bird book at the ready, and I have started writing down when I see a bird in the book. We seem to live in a good area here near the lake. We have many Bald Eagles that hang around and Osprey flying over with fish in their talons. We also see falcons some times and cooper's hawks.

The one that just killed me was the owl. I took out the trash at night and heard the noise of and owl on the first branch of our maple take off. I whipped my head around to see the last of his wings flapping out into the darkness-killer. If I had just looked up he would have been right there. The worst part is that I'm sure he was waiting for the elderly rat that lives in a hole across the street to come out. (I know the rat is elderly because he saunters across the street in broad daylight as if I'm pissing him off as much as he is me.)

Our best bird to date is a Merlin Falcon that I first saw on the top of a pole plucking apart a song bird. My neighbor Dana, who is much better at identifying birds than I am, first decided it was a Merlin. It is a very small Falcon and since my first sighting, I have seen him regularity at the top of the fir tree at Dana's.

It is a lot of fun to learn about birds, something I have never thought much about until I had Jamie. Having a kid is like being reintroduced to your world and all that it has to teach.