Bernie Sees A Bird

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  • Watching the Wild Ones Come Home to Roost

    For weeks now, our garden has had regular company,  a charming little flock of turkeys. The other evening, my son came running in to report a fence-top chase already underway, wings flapping, feet scrambling for balance. By the time I got outside, the drama had settled: just two turkeys left perched on the fence, looking…

  • Bushtits: What’s up with their name?

    With a name like Bushtit, I had to find out the story behind it. Here’s the best explanation I found, from animalia.bio: American naturalist John Kirk Townsend first described the species in 1837, after spotting it in the forests along the Columbia River. He named it Parus minimus — “parus” being Latin for titmouse, and…

  • Nature’s Alarm Clock: the Pileated Woodpecker

    I was looking forward to sleeping in last Sunday morning but a pileated woodpecker had other plans. Its unmistakable call yanked me out of bed, and before I’d fully processed what I was doing, I’d thrown on clothes and wandered outside to find it. Still half asleep, I dropped into a chair on the back…

  • The Feeder Cam Delivers: A Grosbeak Story

    I’ve been an active backyard/neighborhood birder since 2024. Over the past couple of summers, I’ve often heard the Black-headed Grosbeak’s song but could never catch a close-up view of this striking bird. This summer was different. I received a bird feeder camera for my birthday. It’s so cool to be able to check my phone…

  • June is almost gone?

    How time flies—fitting for this past month. Maybe it’s the sunshine, warmer weather, and longer days that make time seem to move slowly and quickly at once. Long, slow days of reading on the porch, jolted by the sharp contrast of tomorrow being July 1. June’s backyard birding highlights have been the hummingbirds, a Western…

  • Hummingbirds

    I recently put a hummingbird feeder in our garden, and I’m really glad I did. It’s been such a joy to watch them up close. At first, the sound of them flying in surprised me; I thought a huge wasp was coming. But after a while, I got used to their loud buzzing, and I…