Shake Your Tail Feathers

             Last year for our 10^th anniversary Terran and I took a trip to Santa Fe, NM to celebrate. One of the first things we did was join a morning hike with some birders at a local bird sanctuary. We felt a bit silly raising our hands announcing to the group that we had never before birded, while most of the group had gone numerous times and were old hands at it. We set out with our borrowed binoculars and a more experienced birder as our guide. We made it several feet before spotting our first winged friend and the hunt was on from there.  We walked the trails looking for some movement in the sky or the sway of a branch to lead us to our prey while listening to our guide call out, “Who cooks for youuuu” mimicking the dove call that echoed around us. We were both hooked, but haven’t done much birding since then other then lamenting every time we can’t see a bird clearly, because we didn’t bring binoculars on our hike.

This past month that all changed!!! We took our first camping trip since our move to Reno a couple weekends ago and headed out to California about an hour and a half up the road. Sunday morning we woke to a bird that sang nonstop while we breakfasted. After coffee and eating we set out to find the little fellow. The Winter Wren was the first bird of a successful day spent peering through binoculars and snapping pictures of small dark objects that were hopping around in trees; hoping that one picture would come out clearly capturing the beauty of our avian friends.

Winter Wren Singing

Winter Wren Dancing

Naomi

Little Friends

It is the last day of July and I am finally getting to my July post. Yes, this is how far I have fallen in the blogging world; a single post each month is my goal. Now I would love to exceed that goal, but I make no promises to myself or anyone else.

This last Spring for one of my classes I had to give an informative speech on a subject that I researched. My choice was hummingbirds and I am so glad that I chose to study and learn about that little bird, because they have added to our summer.

After researching them I decided to put out a couple feeders and to see what happened. We now have a male and female that fight on a regular basis for the sugar water that hangs outside our doors.

Black-Chinned Hummingbird male enjoying a little sweet drink. He is so shy that I haven't been able to get any other close pictures of him.

The little female deciding whether this is good food or not. Hummers are always on the look out for food, because they burn an average of 10,000 calories a day. Some burn more and some less depending on their size and weight. Because they are always on the look out for food, it makes them quite curious and fun to watch zipping around.

Enjoying God's Creation,

Naomi