Share my passion for all things gardening!
It’s always exciting when we see new birds visiting our garden. This time, it’s the Gray Catbird. What, you’ve never heard of it before? Well, they really do exist and have quite a large range. In Washington state, they are more likely to be seen east of the Cascade Mountains… which is great since that’s where we live! Catbirds use […]
Read more
Nothing is too good for my sweet bird friends! Here is the latest addition to the bird feeders in our garden: an Edwardian Bird Feeder from Gardener’s Supply. Isn’t it a beauty? As you can see, the birds think it’s quite wonderful. While the design is attractive, it has an extra benefit that I’m sure many of you will appreciate: this […]
Read more
I think (hope?) you’ll agree this is a pretty amazing bird photograph. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. I was walking through a park one summer’s day. As I passed a large flower bed filled with daylilies, I heard a couple of rustling sounds. I suspected it was a bird but had […]
Read moreI wanted to do a follow-up to my July 13 post (“Keeping the birds out of the cherries“). That way, you’ll know how things are going. You’ll recall I recently purchased some 2″-wide holographic bird scare ribbon. They’re my attempt to keep birds away from the ripening cherries. Well, it has worked great! It hasn’t completely kept the robins out of […]
Read moreDon’t you just love fresh cherries this time of year? I’m crazy about them but, unfortunately, so are the robins, magpies, starlings and sparrows. We have 5 cherry trees and it’s a battle to get any amount of fruit off of them. A couple of years ago, we tried an experiment of covering the trees with huge sheets of floating […]
Read moreThis young Chickadee mugged for the camera in my garden last summer. Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Bringing in the birds. (you can also read my column lower in this post.) It’s about one of my favorite subjects, which is attracting birds to the garden. If you regularly follow this blog and/or […]
Read moreWe had a pleasant surprise yesterday. A huge flock of Bohemian Waxwings paid us a visit — or more specifically, came to dine on the berries of our American Cranberry Bush (Viburnum trilobum). Usually, we tend to see Cedar Waxwings from time to time but the Bohemians come less frequently. And they are so brightly feathered that I have to […]
Read moreThe Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) is one of my favorite birds that visit our garden. They are a large woodpecker with beautiful markings. These guys are a little over 12 inches tall and have a wingspan of 20 inches. The feathers on their backs alternate between black and buff-colored stripes. They have a white rump directly above their tails. Their […]
Read moreLook what visited our garden this weekend! You are looking at a female Sharp-Shinned hawk. They are the smallest hawks that fly into our yard this time of year. Since we have a bird-feeding station, there are lot of birds flying around which attracts the attention of these hawks as well as Coopers’ hawks and Goshawks. All of them eat […]
Read moreAs you know, birds absolutely love to eat cherries. We have a few cherry trees in our little orchard. Every year, it’s a battle to keep them from robbing our harvest. Last year, we covered our trees with huge sheets of floating row cover. Partly to keep the cherry fruit flies from laying their eggs on the cherries. But we […]
Read more