Houseguests

Alison’s late-afternoon phone call from New York nearly went off the tracks when her first Tufted Titmouse of the winter landed on the feeder–followed shortly thereafter by the season’s first American Goldfinch. Some birders spurn feeder birding, backyard birding; but I always feel a closer tie to the birds that benefit directly from our presence.

I’d had my own bonding experience just a couple of hours earlier, when I came home to find the sweetest gray face in the world staring down at me from the box Kevin built for us last Thanksgiving.

Western Screech-Owls have been nearly nightly songsters for the last several weeks here in the yard, and I’d suspected that we had a new houseguest, judging by the unusual interest of the Gila Woodpeckers in the box; but today was the first day that I actually saw one, sunning and idly wondering what that great biped was up to between the house and the garage.

Welcome home!