Nature is all around us

Above: A bird feeder -- if you build it, they will come.

I'm on vacation and visiting in Connecticut. My friend Kate has bird feeders on her deck and is rewarded with woodpeckers, cat birds, humming birds, cardinals, blue jays and many more varieties. You've probably heard of a Baltimore Oriole or a Robin, but what about an Indigo Bunting? Yellow-shafted Northern Flickers are spectacular. When they fly away, their underneath is all yellow. They are in the woodpecker family.

What kind of birds you draw depends on what kind of seeds, suet, sugar water, meal worms and so forth that you put out. The type of seeds will also affect which birds come.

Kate says she is a migratory stop. Bird families stop for one week in the fall and the spring on their way north or south. She also says that what started as a hobby can become an obsession.


Above: A Downy Woodpecker eats suet.


Above: A Nuthatch takes his or her turn at the bird feeder.


Above: Red-bellied Woodpeckers are spectacular. You can tell that this one is a male because the red goes all the way to its beak.

Photos by MOJO and taken with my Canon.