Birds In Our Backyard

We’ve always heard birds from our backyard, singing in the woods behind the house, but until this year they never bothered to visit the yard itself.  I attributed this to the presence of cats, who are numerous in these parts, but even with many furry carnivores patrolling the vicinity, the birds have not been deterred this year.  Many varieties of ground feeding bird have been hanging about, including the elusive wood thrush—right here on Cedar Street!

It started with a pair of robins, who took over the sideyard almost as soon as the snow melted.  We don’t know what the grass harbors that makes it so attractive, but the robins have been out there every day, hopping around the yard eating things and sitting in the trees singing “cheerup cheerily.”  Chris told one of them yesterday that they could have all the bugs in the side garden, at which the bird looked at him quizzically as if to say “But of course…” 

Just recently a pair of cardinals arrived in the same area, but although they perched for a time on the oak sapling outside the kitchen window, they didn’t stay long.  My guess is the robins enforced their claim.  Still, we hear “purdy purdy purdy” quite often so we know they didn’t go far. 

The fence closest to our porch gets even more action, forming as it does a wildlife corridor from the Norway maple to the hemlock tree to our neighbor’s garden out front. The squirrels use it to go back and forth all the time, sometimes completing their journey with a leap from the hemlock tree over to the roof of our house from whence they are able, by more acrobatics, to reach the sugar maple out front — all without once touching the perilous ground.

For a while we had a pair of blue jays stopping by, probably because we had given peanuts to the squirrel.  In fact, for a while, the blue jays would all but demand peanuts, but we demurred.  Recently, they must have started a family; we know this because for three days in a row, they wouldn’t tolerate a cat in the yard.  The second ours would poke their heads out the back door, the jays would be on them, divebombing their heads and screaming bloody murder (which is perhaps what they were trying to avoid).  They made such a racket one day that I ran out to rescue them, thinking a cat had one of them cornered, only to find that the reverse was true and it was the cat who needed rescuing.  We still like blue jays but we have a new respect for their defensive/offensive skills.

Since these early arrivals, we’ve had a number of birds drop down to the fence to look us over.  There have been cat birds, chickadees, and the odd woodpecker (downy, to my eye).  But the most astonishing bird to visit our enclave this season was the wood thrush.  

Every year  in early summer we hear their eerie song echoing through the woods, but the wood thrush is known to be retiring and I’d never seen one anywhere but bird books.  Then, a couple weeks ago, one of their number decided to make an appearance, perching quietly at the top of our fence and looking all around with apparent curiosity.  He paused long enough for us to see the details of his shape and plumage, and after consulting the bird book, I’m pretty sure he was one of our invisible singers—red-brown to rufus plumage, speckled breast, mid-sized, with a very rounded breast.  What else could it be?

He continues to visit and after the second visit, I felt obliged to warn him about cats.  But just today he was there again, fluttering off the fence and into the yard to grab some tidbit.  We still hear them morning and night, singing to each other across the trees.  There’s really nothing like them among the garden birds.

I’m still not sure why we’re seeing so many birds this year.  We don’t have a bird feeder and make no special effort to attract them, although we do have a woodsy garden with lots of native plants (some would call them weeds) and overgrown shrubbery (good for nesting).  No doubt they like our neighbor’s fruit and vegetable selection out front.  Perhaps they feel pushed by another neighbor’s brush clearing behind us.  It’s hard to say, but the birds have been with us this year, reminding me again how lucky I am to live in a place where such wildlife exists.