Birdfeeding

Filled the feeders yesterday with black oil sunflower and mixed seeds. Tossed older seed on the ground. Old apples from the tree outside our door are still on the ground, too.

Seen today so far: at least 2 bluejays, at least 2 titmice, 3 or more juncos, more than 7 chickadees,. Yesterday we had a mourning dove.

Everyone seems to prefer the feeders in the cherry tree -- a greater pecentage of black oil seed? Better eating perches? The juncos also poked about the stone wall.

Saw a kingfisher -- possibly 2 -- at the pond yesterday. Seems late for them; don't they migrate? I suppose I really don't know.

I suppose I should post this on eBird, too.

small beginnings

The property--an acre or so--is roughly triangular, skinny on the upstream end, wider where it goes along an old fenceline. There's still some barbed wire. The dirt road is the second side, the nameless stream the third. It's overgrown ex-grazing and forested stream bank--which means mostly maples and yellow birch--with a couple of somewhat decrepit apple trees, a fabulous white pine that lost its top last fall, and hemlocks along the creek.

And I'm here because my heart is, all involuntarily-like. It's certainly not a useful piece of property, in most senses of the word. But I can sit stone or wander small, and I've got good neighbors, two-, four-, and no-legged ones. It's to talk about them that I'm making this blog. A record, a witness, a celebration.

Well, and maybe the development of ritual for me, too.

Welcome.