14 May 2008

Outside Our Backdoor

When we moved to the middle from Portland, somehow our bird feeder didn't make it on to the truck. While we got a fair amount of birds at our house in Portland, we were excited to have the feeder here, as the middle is pretty well known for its bird varieties. From some minor research, it appears that the Rockies are a dividing line for bird species. There are a bunch of birds here that are unknown to Kimberly, as she had spent her whole life on the west side of the mountains.

A few weeks ago, Kimberly decided she wanted to get a bird feeder for out here, and I was all for it. We put it up in the back of our house, which I was a little skeptical of. There's a lot of dogs back there (from our neighbors) and all the A/C units, which are loud. But Kimberly insisted it be placed in the back, which afforded the best views for her and Miles.

At first, we didn't get many birds, just some small guys who look like little finches or chickadees. But then more species started arriving, with lots of cool new colors.

First a couple red-breast robins. Then, what we assumed are some gold finches (small-yellow birds). Then something that looked like a kingfisher or woodpecker, and would hang upside down while eating from the feeder.

Then this morning, I went down stairs, and saw this guy eating:
Now that's not a very good picture, but you can clearly see we have a cardinal eating in our backyard. This is particularly exciting, since Kimberly had never seen a cardinal before living in Iowa. She has seen some around campus, but hopefully he'll come back to the feeder so she can get a good look at this one.

3 comments:

Kimberly said...

I missed him! He's so pretty.

Anonymous said...

Cardinals certainly outdo robins in the color contest.

What kind of food are you using?

kll

Peter said...

we got a bird seed mix at the store. the bag says it attracts basically every type of bird possible, with the exception of hawks or eagles. but the little birds may attract those guys, so maybe we'll get some eagle photos too.

also, I'm hoping to get some blue jays, because the blue jays on this side of the rockies put the blue jays on the west coast to shame.