Suburban Wildlife Garden: Yellow-rumped Warbler

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Birds in My Garden

After several months of trying, I was finally able to get a photo of the male black-backed form of The Lesser Goldfinch, (Carduelis psaltria), that keeps visiting my garden...

These are not the best pics in the world, but I was thrilled to capture him at all since he's so skittish...

And I think this may be his girlfriend...

They were stuck together like glue up in the oak tree and flew away as one once they were finished drinking...

I had another visit from my friend the Yellow-rumped Warbler as well. He checked out my sedum urn first...

Then had a drink in the container water garden...

This winter I've fed a few Superworms to my wrens each day...

I bought a container of two-dozen worms from the local pet store and kept them alive by feeding them bits of carrot and oats. My cat, Mariah, thought they were very interesting...

But she didn't eat them, of course. She seems to be thinking, "Very funny Mom. Now where's the tuna?"

"I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm." Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thursday, November 27, 2008

I am continuing my record as an official Blog Slacker this year by only posting an entry one time per month. My excuses? Well, recently I've started selling books online again, which is fun, but rather time-consuming. Also, this has been a difficult year for my family. Though, I must say I have a lot to be thankful for: mainly my son's successful recovery from his spinal surgery. Here he is watching a 3-D movie at a friend's house...

He has gained all his weight back and is enjoying his new straight spine. Other than avoiding sudden impacts or heavy lifting, he can do most anything within reason. He has been doing well in school too. Below is one of his recent English class projects. It's a product he made up called Hippy Cat: Organic Catnip-Flavored Cat Food©. Since there were flowers on the bottom of the poster I thought I wouldn't be cheating too badly if I shared it here. It's groovy baby! ;-)

My garden has been fairly active with wildlife since the weather has cooled off. The birds and squirrels are especially fond of the water & food that I supply. Below you can see a small bird drinking from the water garden. At first I thought it was a finch but, according to Mikael Behrens from Birding on Broadmeade it is actually a Yellow-rumped Warbler. Thanks Mikael!