The Scordatos Have Gone to the Birds...

Or it feels like it these days. Aside from the Robin news, we have a few kildeer about, the barn swallows are back in force, the bluebirds are still about, and the red winged blackbirds continue to be our nicest regular at the bird station. Here one of our resident males is hanging out in one of our oldest orchard trees.

We've had a couple yellow finches at the feeders, but they aren't in full force yet. And the mockingbirds are back. It's so much fun to here their range of song. Basically, when you go outside and it sounds like you have a bunch of birds in your backyard singing all at once, look for a single gray brown bird about the size of a dove but slimmer. Mockingbirds have white bars across the middle of their wings, and tend to look like pinwheels when they are spiraling about fighting another bird for territory (like the skirmish I saw around our pine trees a few weeks ago) or coupling their song with a dance (literally!) Last summer I watched a mockingbird perched on our electric pole and he would run through all of his songs once in the same order, then he would launch himself off the pole top and execute a tight loop, then land and do it all over again. He even let out a frog ribbit! Dad does not really believe this but it is true! I've read in books that they can mimic frogs, crickets and other insects. I read once that a mockingbird can have up to thirty tunes in his songbook. How amazing, they don't have their own song, but can pilfer any one elses. I would love to come across a mockingbird nest. I don't know where they like to nest and I've never seen them at the bird feeder. I've read that they like berries. Here is a picture of our resident mocker on one of our pine trees, belting out a favorite for the ladies.

Sometimes it is really a fun discovery to find a nest. I see them all the time in the pine trees while mowing and the other afternoon I found a sweet little nest in the grapes as I was watering them and wetting the ground down for the chickens to have a cool place to hang out. I think the nest is abandoned though. My guess is the birds built the nest thinking it a great site, then realized there was a lot of action going on, once Andrew got his grapes in the mail and started planting. I will be posting about Andrew's grapes one of these days soon.

In other bird news, (see, we really have gone to the birds) Andrew surprised me a couple weeks ago by building super bird feeder station to replace the assortment of hooks and feeders I had behind the house. It is a huge improvement and the height of the feeders is really nice too.

And finally, here's a shot of Molly, checking out a bird of a much different sort...