A Bird in Hand

Last spring we had a visitor at our front door. It was a male cardinal. It is such a beautiful bird and a personal favorite of mine. Well, if you have been watching the weather channel this year, you might have noticed that the northeast has been snow free. Tons of rain has fallen instead. This leads to all kinds of phenomena. We have buds on our trees, daffodils in the yard and when walking on the grass you can actually hear the water flowing below. We also have our friend back. I believe that he thinks that spring has sprung and I can’t think of a way to convince him that it is still winter. There is a wolf door knocker on the front door which he either likes intensely or highly dislikes. Now you wouldn’t think this would be a problem but I’m here to tell you that this beautiful bird can make a great deal of noise. He starts as soon as I get up and is there until dusk. I find that if I go outside for any reason he will fly to wherever I might be and if I don’t go outside I see him in the bush next to the window that I sit next to. If I’m in the kitchen, he will come to the window and peek in.

I have seen this kind of behavior only once before and that was not with a cardinal. It was in March. About eighteen years ago. We were having the house remodeled and the carpenter, my husband and I were at the front of the house looking up at the windows. A couple of days before, my father had put up a bluebird house in the back yard. Well, I called him immediately and told him to build more houses because our front windows were covered in bluebirds. It was the most amazing thing. Well, we love our birds but there again the bluebirds decided to use our car mirrors to admire themselves or more rationally to say hello to what they perceived as another bluebird. Needless to say we had to cover our mirrors because they were causing quite a mess.

One of the nicest bird feeders I have come across is a feeder that has a two way window on it. My cat loves it because she can look at the birds and they can’t see her. The finches, both yellow and purple dine frequently and so do the doves. It is a great entertainment center for both young and old.

We still encourage the cardinals and bluebirds to come to our property and any other bird that flies by on its way to whatever destination it has its internal compass set to. We have had some beautiful birds stop by and take nourishment from our bird station. You have to be faithful to your birds because they get used to your feeding them. They will come back year after year if they know there will be food, as was proven by our little friend returning to our front door.

From our backyard to yours, think spring!