Cardinal

Jeannine has the best seat at the kitchen table, at least for birdwatching. She faces south, while I face west, and to the east is her bird feeder, now stocked with seeds for the hungry wintering birds.

So it is that I often miss a lot of the colorful bird action, but occasionally Jeannine lets me know of something particularly interesting, as when this morning a cardinal appeared, briefly, to dine with his less flamboyant brethren.

I managed to snap a few shots through the window before he flew off. I think my goal this winter is to get a shot of one of these brilliantly-plumed birds on the wing, if I can. -- PL

Feed the birds part 2

In the winter, one of my morning duties -- if Jeannine hasn't already taken care of it  (and I am doing it quite often this winter, being the first one in a long time when I am getting up at the same time as her) -- is to restock the bird feeder. We both enjoy seeing the birds flying in to chow down on the sunflower seeds and the suet, though Jeannine has the better view (I sit with my back to the window through which the feeder is visible, though I often see the birds reflected in the screen of my laptop computer).

A few days ago, when I went out to pour the seeds into the feeder, there were quite a few hungry birds already clustered around it, hopping about in the branches of the tree next to it. They seemed pretty bold -- none of them actually flew away when I got there, though they moved off a few feet. And it gave me an idea -- I wanted to see if one of these wild birds would eat out of my hand.

So I grabbed a small handful of seeds, and held my hand out, palm up, with seeds spread in it, trying to keep as still as I could. I heard the busy flutter of little wings near my head as some of the birds flew around me, perhaps trying to figure out what to do with this odd new feeder.

After only a couple of minutes of this, one of them -- a chickadee -- actually settled on my fingertips, paused, then snatched a seed in its beak and flew off. As you might imagine, at that moment I had a big grin on my face.

I went in to ask Jeannine if she had seen it, but unfortunately she had not been looking out at that moment. I tried it again the following day, but had no luck.

Today, I decided that I would give it another shot, and this time -- just in case it happened again -- I set up a camera at the window, and set it to take a movie as I went outside to try to coax a bird into eating from my hand.

And -- after a few minutes -- a chickadee flew down and perched on my fingertips. It paused, pecked once at my hand as if to make sure this new bird feeder was stable, then grabbed a sunflower seed, paused again, and flew off. And, as before, I had a big grin on my face (which you can't see see in these photographs -- actually frame grabs from the movie -- because I was trying to keep myself immobile while the bird was landing and eating, and that included my face -- the grin came right after the bird flew off).

And this time, I had photographic evidence of the encounter to show Jeannine. -- PL

Feed the birds

Jeannine likes to watch the birds that flock to her bird feeder in the winter, said feeder being situated just outside the windows of the "breakfast nook" in our kitchen. I help her out with refilling the feeder every so often, and I also like to see the birds, especially the occasional bright red male cardinal… or the less dramatically-hued female cardinal. Both are infrequent visitors to the feeder, but today, with my new Pentax Optio WS80 camera on its "Interval" setting (taking one photo every ten seconds) and set up on my TrekPod by a window, I managed to get two not great, but not so bad photos of the elusive female.

I also captured myself slogging through today's snowstorm (which dumped about a foot or more of snow -- our first big, annoying snowstorm of the season) doing the refilling thing. Later on, I snow-blowed a path to the feeder so it wouldn't be so much of a pain in the butt to get to.

But for all I know, we'll get more snow tonight and I'll have to do it all over again. Ah, life in New England. -- PL