BIRD WATCHING, ANYONE?

I found a more interesting way to pass the time aside from watching the telly or reading silly postings in the DC. It is called backyard bird watching.

After Old Man winter had departed with his blizzards and slippery sidewalks, a kinder Mother Nature takes over and covers Toronto with her beautiful green mantle. She also raises the outdoor thermostat to a very pleasant high, thus allowing the perennials to wake up from their underground beds. Soon the phlox and the hostas start pushing their way up from the ground as if checking who have already waken up from the long winter sleep. Berry Cheery hosta would check whether Stilleto is still within touching distance.

And the birds come back with a vengeance.

They would mysteriously appear in our backyard, and soon there would be a symphony of bird calls 7/24 ..No kidding. The most common birds that fly to my deck begging for food are the thrushes, little brown cuties who built their nests in my chimney. For years, every spring I would go out to the deck and throw out some rice scraps (kelab-ban ) into the lawn. In less than a minute, a number of birds would swoop down and start pecking the rice scraps. And I would also settle down on my easy chair on the deck with my binoculars fascinated while watching them perform some tricks..These would go back and forth with some rice morsels on their beaks bringing them to the roof or to some nests in the surrounding tree. .I guess the morsels are for their young still too insecure to leave their nests....

A few would eat there in the grass until Sam the squirrel, the pesky rodent would come over and shoo the birds away. Then with his paws, he would scoop the rice and munch them like peanuts. I hate seeing him deprive the little ones of their rice. One time, I bought a sling shot from the Canadian Tire store just so I could make a target of his butt. But Emma my grandaughter saw it, took it home and to this day she have not returned it yet...

Sometimes ( but rarely ) a Cardinal would join them but it never lingers very long. It would just fly away shortly as if it could not stand the racket produced by these "riff-raff" birds. The Cardinal have magnificent red plummage as red as Cardinal Richeliu's cape and head gear.

Or a Blue Jay would drop by. He does not join the party. He would just watch from a branch or from the clothesline. After he gets bored he flies away. Blue Jays, by the way is the name of Toronto's baseball team.

Birds they are, but when it comes to food, they show very humantraits. For example: one of them tries to drive away any bird who comes to get a share of the rice. "Go away, its mine," one bird seemed to say. Some would eat away the chunk of rice until it was light enough to be carried. Then the greedy birdie would take it by the beak and flies away, while the rest of the pack would angrily complain and tries to fly after the greedy culprit.

Even after the sun bids good bye to the world and the stars begin to twinkle from the firmanent, the birds never stop singing. The robins ( their mating calls are very recognizable ) could be heard them from my bedroom window. Their singing would lull you to sleep...

This Pastoral Symphony of the birds is at its loudest at dawn. The notes are discordant, and there is no discernable melody line. But to me, it is still the sweetest music in the world. The night sky seemed to be full of singing birds flitting about. No recorded music can match  this all-surrounding sound of celestial thanksgiving---#

 

The pesky squirrel loves to bully the other birds from their food...

 

The brown birds always amuse me when there is nothing much to do..But I have to be ready with my rice scraps...

A zoom lens plus the cropping capability of your graphics software would give you these kinds of photographs..I call them rice birds because they eat rice instead of the usual bird seed---#

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