Birds are beautiful.....

Birds are beautiful

and sweet and charming. We feed the birds here on a regular basis, or rather hubby does. He fills all the feeders with sunflower seeds and the sweet little birds are so appreciative! They show their thanks by building nests all over our yard and raising their cherubic fledglings where we can watch them grow up.

I have "conditioned" a pair of mockingbirds to come to where I am by shaking a canister of raisins. They love them and when their young are old enough they bring them along. The babies then recognize that "Hey, that woman has goodies!" and proceed to scold me until I present them with a handful. The robins, catbirds, brown thrashers, rufous towhees, squirrels and racoons like them too!

Occasionally we get a bluebird in the backyard. They come and seem to be checking out the area to see if it would make a nice home. Apparently we have never passed the test for we have never had any nest back there. But they are so beautiful and a sight to behold with the sun glistening off of their blue feathers. We have Carolina wrens that live here too and one of their favorite places to build a nest is in the basement. Poor hubby has to keep and eye out for them as if they build in the basement they aren't able to come and go as needed. One year a pair succeeded in not only building a nest in the basement but also laying eggs in it. We had no choice but to leave the basement door open day and night until the babies left the nest. We didn't mind tho...:)