Category Archives: Birds

Owl Story

Birds,

A recent post on Birdchick’s blog about people mistaking a fake owl for the real thing reminded me of the time it happened to me.

I was 8 months pregnant with Clare and sound asleep one night. Suddenly, my husband, who’d been out taking a walk in the neighborhood rushed into the bedroom and woke me up to tell me an owl was perched on a neighbor’s fence.

I got up, got semi-dressed and waddled up the street and down the neighbor’s driveway only to see it was a fake owl.

It took a while to convince Dean, but when he could almost touch it, he believed me.

I was not kind about it — although I should have been. After all — he thought he had something special to show me.

Not much later, we did see a Great Eared Owl in a tree in a yard behind our house. So, it could have been the real thing. But it wasn’t.

Finally a Junco pays a visit

Birds

I used to get a lot of dark-eyed juncos at my feeders, then one year they stopped coming, or at least it seemed that way — but if they were there, I didn’t see them.

I set up the birdcam again — for how long? Who knows. Until my laptop is moved to a different room perhaps — but yesterday I had it going and a junco stopped by for a bit of seed.

I’ve got a brick of birdseed (supposedly for woodpeckers, but I’ve only had one woodpecker eating from it so far) set up on the air conditioner unit that is attached to the wall in my attic office. I’ve got a camera attached to my laptop and pointing out the window at the seed.

Yesterday I had the following visit the feeder:

  • Northern Cardinal
  • Red-bellied Woodpecker
  • White-breasted nuthatch
  • Carolina Chickadee
  • Tufted Titmouse
  • Carolina Wren
  • Dark-eyed junco

Here’s the woodpecker I mentioned