I’m building a wall in my backyard to keep the illegals away. Not illegal  people. Illegal squirrels. I have a red-tailed squirrel in my back yard and he’s creating havoc, teaching my resident all-gray squirrels some bad habits. There is actually a species of Red-Tailed Squirrels native to Central and South America. Perhaps the cartels have smuggled this squirrel into my yard. Probably cost … [Read more...]

I saw a perfectly awful movie on Netflix last week – “The Big Year”, with Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black and I watched the whole thing, which felt like two weeks. Why? Because it was a movie about 3 guys competing to see who could spot and identify the most birds in one year – The Big Year. The winner spotted over 750 species of birds. I found that interesting and it got me to wondering … [Read more...]

I was sitting by the fire pit last week, enjoying a great cigar, when I saw a huge flock of birds, literally hundreds. Maybe starlings, I thought. On closer observation they were robins, a gazillion robins. They lit in several trees on the horizon, catching their collective breaths. They were likely heading north as the days get lighter. I have had a few robins just hang around our yard all … [Read more...]

My yard looks like a war zone with thousands of little mortar shell divots. The squirrels have taken advantage of my wet, soggy back yard and have dug holes in nearly every square foot, burying seeds and nuts and probably squirrel time capsules.The climbing tree rats have also dislodged the soil from each and every one of Nancy’s potted plants Squirrels are born to chew, and they are born to … [Read more...]

We have a Cooper’s Hawk that has more or less set up shop in a large bush in our back yard. I think he may roost there, or at least he spends a lot of time there just hanging out. I can tell when he’s out there because the birds totally disappear, but not the squirrels. The other day, I saw the hawk perched on a limb and a squirrel scurried by, brushing up against the raptor. I often wonder … [Read more...]

eat I don’t really want to know how much I spend on bird seed each year. It’s an expensive hobby, for sure, but I guess it could be worse. If my hobby was skiing, a week at Aspen and a stay in a mountain chalet would buy a whole lot of birdseed. But I enjoy feeding and watching birds in my yard and they don’t go hungry. Recently, I have noticed in my bowl feeders that there are usually … [Read more...]

  I’ve said this before, but the two smartest bird varieties of birds to visit my yard are the crows and the blue jays. My crows have become regular visitors, usually 3 but occasionally 5. They eat most anything they can find but are especially fond of pieces of stale bread I sometimes scatter. Typically, a crow will pick up a piece of bread, fly to the bird bath and dunk the bread as … [Read more...]

Try this sometime. Climb out in a tree limb, put a seed in your mouth and open it with only your mouth and teeth, spitting out the husk eating just the seed and you can’t use your hands. That’s pretty much what many birds do every day. It almost makes hitting a 95-mile per hour baseball look easy. Almost. It’s fun to watch my backyard birds at the sunflower feeder where they munch … [Read more...]