For the Birds

I was adopted by marriage into a family of bird lovers. My in-laws do the whole bird sanctuary, sitting-in-swamps, binocular bird watching and they love it!
A few years back, my sister-in-law gave me a bird book for beginners that grouped them by color and ever since, I have been hooked.
At our old home, we had a lot of pretty little House Finches.Now we have a lot of them.
We'd occasionally have a cute Dark-Eyed Junco.

This early spring we had them by the score.

Since moving to this tree-enclosed home we have really had a great time watching the birds. We have two seed feeders and we just put up the hummingbird feeder because I saw some today.

We have a pair of American Kestral falcons that like to hunt around here. One is sitting in our neighbor's tree nearly every morning, visible from our bed. It's pretty cool to hear them screech and to watch them dive to their prey. I'm not entirely sure what they hunt around here. Probably the small birds and hopefully, any small rodents out in the park.

We have more of these Mourning Doves than we'd like. They're kind of dumb actually. I think your tires actually have to nick their tail feathers before they'll move out from under your car as you come into our circle.
Lately, we've had a pair of Chickadees move into our little bird house. Their call really does go "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee." They are really small and have cute little movements. We're glad they're going to be living with us.

A woodpecker similar to this one has hammered on our skylight, our metal chimney vents on the roof and a telephone pole outside. I've never seen him hammer on a tree.

We love robins, but I've definitely learned they are not necessarily the first bird of spring.

We've been thoroughly entertained by these Western Scrub Jays. We have (at least) a pair of them in the neighborhood. They like to bully the Mourning Doves and pretend they're small (they're 11" beak to tail) by standing on the small feeder perches and eating the sunflower seeds.Sparrows are a common site for the first time this year.TODAY WAS MY SPECIAL SIGHTING.

This is the Lazuli Bunting. I've never seen on before and I got to see it and its mate twice today. They are small and very pretty.

Every morning for breakfast and each night during our dinner, the birds come to eat the seed we've put out for them. It's quite a show.

My mother-in-law says we'll have to trade houses so that she gets to see all these birds.

It's a really fun summer hobby and I love that they come to us.

None of these great pictures are mine, but hopefully one day I can just hang out on our deck and wait patiently for the opportunity.