California Bird Houses

 
 I love bird houses.  I don’t know how practical some of these are or whether birds actually live in them, but they certainly are cute.  After seeing these, I’m inspired to build my own.  I’m not very handy with a saw and a hammer, so maybe I’ll grow a bird house gourd. 
The green bird house hangs on [...]

Kea Parrot Steals Passport

My favorite parrots are in the news again!  A Kea parrot has stolen a passport from a tourist visiting New Zealand. ( See the story below.)  The Keas hang out at a tunnel that everyone must pass through to get to Milford Sound.  Everyone stops there, because it’s a one-lane tunnel.  The keas are probably part [...]

The Birds

IMAGINE THIS SCENE:  A man and a woman are watching ”Country Calendar” on the television in their house on a lonely sheep station near Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand.  The woman gets up from the couch to get some tea.  She hears a fainting tapping on the front door.
“John,”  she calls out, a little alarmed.  “There’s someone here.” 
She peers through the door’s [...]

Quetzal Quest

A friend’s recent soggy — and fruitless – quest to see a Resplendent Quetzal in Panama reminded me of my own rained-out effort two years ago in Honduras.  
My husband and I went with our long-time friends Michael and Anita, who know their birds. Even their son when he was three could fire off the names of all [...]

Kookaburra Chorus

Kookaburra Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree
Merry merry king of the bush is he
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
Gay your life must be
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree
Eating all the gumdrops he can see
Stop Kookaburra, stop Kookaburra
Leave some gums for me
Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree
Counting all the [...]

Snow

 
 

Batty About Birds, Bees and Butterflies

 
My enthusiasm for bees sky-rocketed last year when I discovered that I wasn’t getting any squash, because I had no bees to pollinate them.  I had to do the job myself with an artist’s paintbrush.  My harvest? Ten squash.  I’m a terrible match-maker! It’s easier to attract bees to do the work.  They know what they’re doing. [...]

Sunflower Season

Kansas is the sunflower state, but we had to go to Oklahoma to find these vast sunflower crop fields (pictured above and at the bottom) near Quapaw in mid-September. 
Heading south on Highway 69 in Kansas, we passed mile after mile of green soybean rows and the brown stalks of ready-to-harvest feed corn.   Cattle and horse grazed in lush [...]

A Flock of Hummingbirds

My friend Jane knows I like hummingbirds so she emailed these photographs to me of a woman hand feeding ruby-throated hummingbirds.  I immediately suspected photoshop!  And not just because I didn’t believe hummingbirds would feed from a woman’s hand  —  hummingbirds are territorial and don’t “hang out together.”  I guess they do when they’re migrating.
I immediately searched for [...]

Ho, Hum, Another Hummingbird

I’m not bored with the hummingbird at our feeder, but he does come often enough that I’m starting to take him for granted.  My husband calls out, “Hummingbird.”  Sometimes, I don’t look up.  I should.  The hummingbird will be leaving soon, and I’ll miss him.
Sometime in mid- to late September, most ruby-throated hummingbirds will begin a long journey, including a nonstop flight over [...]