Season's greetings 2012

 

The magic of Christmas is in the air and New Year is just round the corner. It’s the perfect time to take a break from work and cherish the warmth of the season. Reach out to all your friends, family and loved ones this festive season and, if you're travelling, be safe! 

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Chumming for Birds

Technically ‘chumming is a fisherman’s term -- to throw out bits of chopped fish as bait.  Instead of bits of fish for fish I put out water to attract birds.  We were camping in the high desert.  No surface water for about ten miles.  We’ve camped here off and on for over thirty years.  There used to always be a leaky faucet .... but no more.  Maintenance has done an excellent job of making sure no water is wasted.  Whenever anyone uses a campground faucet, the birds hear and come flying in for the few sips that land on the concrete.  At least there were birds in the area.  In many areas of this arid high desert birds are scarce.  

I took the liberty of nestling a pint of water amongst some rocks. Directly over my pint of water I hung a sandwich bag filled with more water and with one pin hole pricked into the bottom.  The birds came immediately.  As long as I kept water in the tiny pool, it was never quiet for more than a few minutes.   First came the robins , the bullies.  they did their best to monopolize the pint of water.  

.... so pleasant sitting at the picnic table in the Indian summer sun and watching one bird after another crowd around and drink.  One robin sipped 38 times before leaving!  Eventually eight species of birds and two mammals drank.

For more about my little pool and some photos go to my blog:  www.elvafieldnotes.blogspot.com

Winter robins

Winter robins, and lots of them! They overwinter in the southern 2/3 of the US, but you don't usually see them in town in the winter. I loved getting out the binoculars and seeing the robins and starlings drinking and bathing in my neighbor's rain gutter. 

Robins will eat berries and drupes that stay on the trees overwinter when they can't get their preferred worms and bugs; the hackberry tree by my fence has almost no sweet black berries left today!    (The tree's other name is sugarberry, no wonder they were so popular with the birds and squirrels.)