Right in your own back yard
June 25 2010 (Friday)
The picture of me you see here was taken on Easter Sunday in the back yard where my daughter Dianna, her husband, Mark, and their family live in The Woodlands. That was the day I got introduced to the Chickadees. There were many of them in their trees, and they loved the little house the Hinze family had provided for them. The entrance to the nesting chamber was very small, no bigger than a quarter and probably not that large. The babies had hatched and the mama Chickadee was trying to feed her young, even though the many people in the back yard were obstructing what would have been a clear pathway. But the mama bird persisted, and as soon as the way was clear, she swooped into the miniature house with a mouthful of goodies for her babies. I suppose those were the first Chickadees I had ever seen. I always thought “Chickadee” was just a word used by W.C. Fields in those old movies.
Back yard birds can be quite entertaining. My sister, Melva, lives on the east side of town and has tall trees in her backyard. The hawks love to nest there every year, much to the distress of the other birds who live there, too. After the baby hawks hatched, and they grew so that they were moving about, preparing to fly, they were attacked incessantly by Mockingbirds and Blue Jays, making lots of noise. I guess it was their way of saying, “You’re not from around here, are you?”
The entertainment afforded by the Cardinals is delightful, as it goes on day after day. One year they nested right outside our window, and had a feeder at the window, so that we could get fairly close. We got to see them from the time they began their nest and all the way through the laying of the eggs, the incubation, the hatching, the feeding by both parents, finally taking the young birds to the food source, and ultimately sending the new generation on their way to a back yard of their own somewhere. I think they were singing them on their way with, “Hit the road, Jack!” Ain’t life grand? What a wonderful world.