A few more days have slipped by without photos. But I'm happy to report THE FLOORING IS IN, and my family room looks somewhat back to normal...except it does not have a basketball-court floor any more. Yay.
The back yard is the gateway to birding addiction, IMO. As a child, one becomes fascinated with the little feathered beings that seem to so companionably inhabit the small "wild" spaces that humans have created adjacent to their own homes. From there, the fascination rapidly morphs into addiction.
Even in staid suburbia, the variety and characters of birds that can be observed from the kitchen window (or the coffee deck) is constantly entertaining. This morning, a pair of little yellow warblers of some kind were hopping around almost at my feet, gleaning insects from the leaves of the hardy weeds that remain standing in the garden. A yard or so beyond them was a pile of downy feathers that spoke of the other backyard feeder birds...the ones that most people do not welcome with open arms. But the logic of nature is that where the prey gather, so will the predators. And Eurasian collared doves are a favorite meal among the local population of Coopers hawks. Hence the sad pile of "pigeon" feathers under the apple tree.
My garden in Scappoose was visited regularly by Coopers hawks and their mini-me cousins, the sharp-shinned hawks. While the Coops preyed on the bigger birds like doves and grosbeaks, the sharpies pursued the smaller birds--finches, siskins (of which we always had jillions) and juncoes.
Today's photo is of a sharpie in my back yard in Scappoose, taking advantage of a not-too-well-camouflaged perch to assess the lunch possibilities of the space... This is one of my all-time favorite pictures, the kind where you see something outside and have to run and get your camera (and by some magical dumb luck, the scene still exists by the time you and your equipment are ready to shoot...!)
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