Suddenly Spring

After all that cold and ice, and now suddenly, it's spring.  Driving the kids to school on Monday, and pointing out to Mimi, our visitor from Germany, the different flowering trees.  The tulip trees bloom first, and then the Bradford pears and the redbuds.  But it was February 28, I told her, and it could still get cold again, and freeze everything back.  I was out of town for a few days, and now the trees are starting to leaf. 

With the loss of the two large dogwood trees that used to be in the backyard, all that's left for hanging the birdfeeders are two large Chinese privets, so that's where we have them.  There's the new squirrel proof feeder with the motor, that does seem to have intimidated the squirrels sufficiently that they just stay away from it, and the finch feeder filled with thistle seed, and the hummingbird feeder that never got brought in for the winter and now needs to be cleaned up and refilled.  Now that I know that privet is an invasive species (thank you, Trees Atlanta), I know we should get rid of it.  I guess we could put the bird feeders on poles, but we haven't.

On President's Day weekend, Caroline and I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count.  I was a little disappointed that during the half hour that we counted, there was less diversity in our backyard than usual.  That weekend both the robins and the redwing blackbirds were having conventions in Atlanta, and the locals were staying in, I think, kind of like what we did during the Olympics.  That said, we were able to identify most of the birds we saw except for several little brown birds that I assumed were some kind of sparrow but I had no idea which kind.

So later - after we did our count - I got out the binoculars and the bird book and really looked at them.  As it turned out, they weren't all alike.  One of them had a dark spot on the breast and I think was a song sparrow, and the other had a yellow spot by its eye and was I think a white-throated sparrow.

When I got back home yesterday, all the feeders (including the suet feeder on the dining room window) were empty, except for the finch feeder, which was half empty.  Too tired last night to do anything about it, but after I put on coffee this morning it was the first thing I did.  Suet in the suet cage, sunflower seeds in the window feeder and the big feeder on the privet, thistle seed in the finch feeder.  While I was out, I checked on the trees.  There is now the first sign of green on the apple tree I planted last year, and there also are signs of life from the dogwood tree we planted on Mother's Day. But only two of the four blueberry bushes seem to have survived.

Back inside, with a cup of coffee, on a grey damp March morning.  The cardinals are back, and the downy woodpecker that comes to the suet feeder has already been by.  It makes a racket, when the metal cage knocks into the dining room window.  And if you look, there are the little brown birds hopping on the ground.