My "work" day started at 9:54 with a white-eyed vireo and a couple of brown thrashers. Now it's 2:11 pm July 30, 2012, and a juvenile male American redstart is headed in for a real bath. A perfect spotlight of sun lights his way.
This is very nice.
I am getting very wet and floating around like a little orange leaf.
Vireo. Why? This is a very large bath and you don't need to crowd in.
You're right. Sorry about that. I'm red-eyed with embarrassment. Your spray was so alluring...
2:26. Our resident female eastern bluebird, feeding three five-day-old young in a box in the front yard, stops in for a well-deserved drink. Her plumage is so worn she's barely blue any more. But come October she'll be vibrant and glossy again, these brown summer weeds replaced with fall cerulean frost.
3:10. Piper the indigo bunting stops in for yet another bath.
3:11. A monarch comes to nectar at the butterfly weed which is reblooming below the studio window. A tiny beautiful bee flies by.
3:11:39: a ruby-throated hummingbird slams into the monarch and knocks it into the air. Hummingbirds can be so rude!
3:41. A juvenile scarlet tanager drops in for a drink and bath.
It actually goes up to the bubbler and drinks out of it just like a child at a playground. Score another favorite photo!
I'd taken 360 photos in 2 hours 20 minutes on one July day. I probably missed half the action when I was looking down trying to work. On days like this, I'm thankful that I can be here, seeing things like this right from my drawing board. My only regret is that there's no one here to share it with. But people who can sit at a window all day and stare out of it are hard to come by. People who will do that are even harder to find. So I roll it in my hands for a few hours and make a little mud pie of words and photos, just to try to show you how cool it all is, and how the show just goes on and on and never stops at all. It's not just here. It's everywhere. Birds are migrating, right now. All you have to do is look.
And putting out a freshly scrubbed bubbly birdbath on a hot summer day doesn't hurt either.
13 comments:
Just say the word, and I will drive down from Detroit with my camera. I've spent hours doing just that at a friend's place on the shores of Lake Huron!
I adore this montage of photo's as I too am a nature lover and bird lover.
However, I find it strangely odd in an American Culture kinda way that one has to add a disorder like A.D.D. to their article about watching birds which apparently is an unproductive, loafing around slacker, doing nothing thing.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing nothing. You do not have ADD. I don't have ADD. There is nothing wrong with us...If watching birds increases your imagination and creative juices and productivity.....DO IT.
Soo...Julie, how much do you need us to contribute to get a high end cam so we can all see all those birds? Many of us can't give the birds a good enough habitat to have so many around and we could just watch your birds.
At some refuges we can't feed birds but we can here. I've maintained several feeders. I've probably spent several thousand hours distracted from what I thought I should be doing inside until an animal came to share his life with me.
I would totally be there in a heartbeat if I could! Thanks for the view into your backyard. I can't wait to have one of my own where I can get lost in the action!
Thank you X10 for sharing what you get to observe from your wonder-window. You teach me a lot about your wild visitors, which I greatly appreciate. I too can and do sit for hours at times taking it all in and it does feed the soul.
Love the mango color on the redstart youngster, and the tanager at the fountain.
My daughter who is ADD, used to get totally distracted by the crows outside her classroom window in elementary school. Strutting crows beat grammar or times tables.
Yesterday while reading Anthony Doerr I copied a line from a poem he had included by poet Tom Andrews: Lord, "afflict me with Attention Surplus Disorder so I can see what is in front of my face.". I haven't looked up the rest of the poem as of yet, but this line made it to my refrigerator door:-) Another way to look at our "affliction"?
May have been covered here before, but where did you find the bubbling birdbath?
I want a bubbly birdbath just like yours. On top of everyone else, the juvenile red-start is just too much!
Beautiful post and pictures as always! All I can say is you are blessed!
Love the photos of your visitors!! Julie, what do you use to scrub your spa? (Is it cement? ie porous?) Thx!
Hi Jackie!
This bird bath is made of Fiberglas and cement resin. It's somewhat porous and rough, which is why the birds like it. I scrub it with Comet and a stiff nylon brush. I scrub it at least once a week with Comet and every other day with just the scrub brush.
Cleanliness is most of the reason the birds love it.
Julie, years ago when you first talked about your bird bath and said where you had bought it I looked it up. I was hoping my ship would come in so I could purchase one. Well, my ship got closer and I looked them up last week. Oh, my, the company has sold out and the ones who took them over does not list that spa anymore. Have any idea where you could still get one?
Rose
This is where you posted you had purchased yours:
Yardiac.com Magnificent Bird Spa
Alas, Rose,
the Magnificent Bird Spa is out of production.
If I had money, after residing and painting our crumbling house, and replacing the ca. 1978 windows you can't see out of any more, I would try to put that bird bath back into production. It is my favorite yard feature of all, the one that has brought me the most birds and the most joy. I handle it with kid gloves, as it is getting a little fragile, and put it in the garage at the first frost flake, and don't take it out until May.
I wish I could help. There is a void for a product like this now.
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