Bluebird Family

Here's a bluebird family history I found on YouTube:



Mine have moved to a new box, built a new nest, and so far I've seen four eggs. I also have wrens nesting with great vigor in my front yard, on the black cherry (cheremukha) in front of the deck, just what I wanted (there's a box there).

Updates

I know I haven't blogged for a while! Let's see what's been happenig to me recently.

I went on another great birding event down at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, where I got increasingly better at identifying birds by sight and by sound. When Jacob and I repeated this trip on my birthday earlier this week, I was actually able to point out to him a whole bunch of birds - green heron, a common yellowthroat, yellow warbler, a female and a male orchard orioles, catbirds, house wrens, and more. He, on the other hand, spotted a male roufus-sided towhee, which I also identified for him. I am getting quite good, actually, but I also learned that it's best to go birdwatching with someone who knows more than you!

I got a gift certificate to the nicest nursery in town, and am going to buy myself a rose bush to plant on the side of the deck, next to the climbing red rose bush my best friend Ann gave me for my birthday last year. I love planting trees and bushes, in general. They are a bit like stock market investments (I learned this year!) - no good to you for the next ten to twenty years, but deeply satisfying when you get there.

I spent a bunch of time mulching today - weeded and mulched my lily-of-the-valley patch, as well as the said rose bush and the cornellian cherry tree (kizil in Russian, I believe), that Jacob picked out and gave me for my birthday last year. See, I am trying to increase the diversity of fruit I can grow on this farm, to add to my budding jam making business (something I am going to try this summer, see how it goes!). We already have a massive amount of elderberries, a large red and black raspberry patch, a sour cherry tree, an apple orchard, and a strawberry patch I personally planted two years ago. This year has been very cold, however, so there were barely any blossoms on any of the trees, and the strawberries are just starting to form. Can you believe it? We haven't even put in tomatoes and peppers for that reason, and it's already June. Little Josie helped with the mulching and is now uniformly covered with what we call "bullshit" - that is, literally the bull manure from the local bull sperm bank operation, mixed with sawdust, which served as bedding. (Don't worry, it's long ago composted into beautiful black dirt mixed with wood chips, and is not what you think).

Jacob and I planned our trip to NYC this summer, and made necessary arrangements armed with our debit card. I can't believe how expensive it is to stay at a hotel in NJ where my cousin's wedding is, but what you gonna do - I am planning to get wasted, and there's no question of driving. I am very much looking forward to seeing Ksusha and hopefully Ira in NYC during our stay - we are arriving on the 1st, and I am leaving on the 7th. I will be flying out of NYC instead of Boston, as originally planned, because it's simply not gonna work - sorry, K and Yorik! We'll be flying out of Milwaukee, where we have quite a few relatives, though, unfortunately, my favorite of Jacob's cousin's Peter is not going to be there, as he's currently in the army at Fort McCoy. Too bad, because the guy has a great take on the world.

Jacob and I went to watch Sex and the City: TM. I liked it, though I think the show worked best in 30-minute segments. I am now catching up on the 6 seasons of the show, of which I only watched a bit at AUBG. I am now on season 2.

I discovered a disturbing fact that the female bluebird is building a new nest. I don't think any babies hatched from the old nest, there used to be two blue eggs in there, now there's only one, and I have no idea what's going on - I wonder if it has to do with my touching the eggs back when I first discovered them. This time I didn't touch the egg but used a hand mirror instead, which is what you are supposed to do. I also discovered that the wrens, did, after all, stay to nest on my land, only instead of the front yard (where I could enjoy them), they made a nest in an old pole along the fence row on the back pasture. That's OK - I can still hear them on this side of the house. I also discovered a whole bunch of barn swallow nests. Gosh, I love birds.

I am going to La Crosse tomorrow, to the mall - something I do very rarely - so I can get myself a nice dress for that wedding in NYC. It can't be black - better be nice green or blue or my all-time favorite, red.

The grapes are looking good so far this year.

This weekend is the free for all fishing weekend when you can fish without buying a license, and Jacob, with his newly-discovered passion for fishing, is hopefully going to take me fishing for some trout. We both have no interest in any kind of hunting or fishing activity that doesn't directly translate into food on our table - so hopefully we catch the right kind of fish to keep.

I am warming up to John McCain, sort of, but I don't think Obama would be a disaster if he won. If he doesn't get assassinated or something. Unlike the majority of other people I know (except several Hundts, my husband, and my best friend Ann), I am not at all taken with Obama.

So that's what's new with me.

Big Birding Event

This past weekend I attended a fabulous birding event, with two professional "birders" - a DNR bird researcher guy and a lady whose occupation I forgot, but who was also real pro, or, shall I say, fanatic. The whole thing was organized by a woman named Maggie - Maggie is retired, I think, and a conservation activist - among other things, she's fighting against the giant electricity-generating wind turbines - a bit like Don Quixote (that's in one of the most leftist communities you'll ever encounter), because they apparently "take up" an acre of the sky each, and kill a lot of birds.

Anti-Bush and anti-corporation sentiments aside, it was a spectacular day. Nothing like spending a day with a group of birders (and Democrats). I invited my best friend Ann and her husband Chris to come along (all four of us support Ron Paul, I even have a bumper sticker saying the same), and the three of us drove through the increasingly more hill-billy-ated the deeper your got Crawford county, all on a bright (if cold) spring morning. Bright and early too - had to leave my house at 7 am. (Crawford is a poorer county to the south of Vernon, where I live).

The moment we drove up, a lady, who later turned out to be Maggie the organizer, ran to us with the excitement comparable to that of winning a jackpot, while pointing to the nearby bushes and the buzzing sound coming out of there. "It's a clay-colored sparrow!" she exclaimed in utter state of ecstasy, and kept on repeating that it's apparently extremely rare for the area, hence the excitement. (Really, the day I saw a hermit thrush on my West Slope was like that for me - people still give me "Oh wow!" when I tell them that I saw it here).

The best thing about those events is that you know 50% of the attendees - here was Mary, the long time YIHS literature teacher, Harriet - a very active and energetic lady who works both for the Organic Valley and the organic certification agency, while growing starter plants on the side, and the guy who gave a workshop on raising and processing chickens on a farm at the last year's Kickapoo Country Fair - a big propaganda fair put on by the OV, where, by the way, yours truly was asked to give a talk on canning and freezing this coming summer. There was also Lila, one of the people at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve (I think?), and some other people I've seen around before.

We started out by listening to the birds right in the yard, followed by a talk and a power point bird presentation - the focus was on identifying birds by their song above all else - during which time a white-tail male walked right up to the pavilion and grazed shamelessly on our hosts' flower beds, and hardly moved away when I sneaked out to use the bathroom ("shameless bastard," I kept thinking). Later we walked up on top of the ridge of their gorgeous property - a very consciously managed CRP land (the land that is kept free from farming or any other activity - so it can become a mini-reserve), where, for the first time in my life, I saw and heard black-and-white bobolinks and a cooper's hawk in the distance. We then later split into two groups - the "long way" group and the "short way" group. The "long way" group ventured down into the woods all the way down the hill to the Kickapoo river to focus on the deep-woods birds. That was exactly what I wanted to do, because my property is tiny, and completely devoid of any hint of woods, so forget trying to spot warblers!

Boy, did I ever learn a lot- first of all, I finally learned how to (sorta) tell apart the very similar songs of an American robin from that of a rose-breasted grosbeak, and both of them from the sore-throated song of a scarlet tanager. That was also the first time in my life when I heard tanagers, though I couldn't see them at all. Other birds I heard but couldn't see included indigo buntings (as a matter of fact, that day I had seen an indigo bunting, but it was, sadly, dead, which is why I was able to look at it closely - a brilliantly-colored bird!), Tennessee warblers, field sparrows (though I saw one at my feeder before), ovenbirds with their distinct "teacher-teacher-teacher" call, and American redstarts - a black-and-orange warbler, to whom an entire chapter has been dedicated in my favorite book The Land Remembers (written about a Crawford farm practically next door). The ones I both saw and heard included roufous-sided towhee, gray catbird, and a pair of gray-blue (I think that's what they are called) gnatcatchers going in and out of their dome-shaped nest. There were also some others that I can't remember right now. Apparently, this time a year you can get what they called "a warbler neck" from trying to catch a glimpse of a tiny bird up in the treetops right above your head.

One other interesting thing that came out of this excursion was the discovery that both Mary (the lit teacher) and I were Walden fanatics, having both read it as sophomores in college (indeeds it's as sophomoric a book as it gets), which, you remember, was literally THE most influential text in my life after Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, both of which gave me the idea that life takes its most perfect form when lived in close connection with the natural world. And you know how we discovered that? She mentioned that wood thrush (which we didn't hear that day) was Thoreau's favorite bird, and I quoted the exact lines from Walden where he states this very fact.

Anyhow, I learned an enormous amount of new birding information, and experienced things I'd never experience at home. I feel like I know so much more now, and, at the same time, I all too keenly realize the limitations of my small homestead with regard to the range of birds that you can get here - this might be a bluebird paradise, but no matter what you do, there will be no scarlet tanagers or wood thrushes waking you up in the morning here.

And since I simply couldn't get enough, and there was another birding event coming up next weekend, I've signed up to attend that one as well, having invited yet another friend along. This time we are going to birdwatch at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve down in La Farge.

That's Where You'll Find Me

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?

The thing is, I can, figuratively speaking, and even if I don't, watching bluebirds just about does it for me. Yes, today is one of those days when the ecstasy of a dream fulfilled overcomes me like a spring flood, one of those days when it feels like somewhere over the rainbow is right here, on the Compostella farm.

Jacob took Josie to church up in his home parish at St. Peters today, [a male bluebird is singing right outside my office window right now as I type, perched on a maple tree with its electric-blue back to me and cheering me with its sweet, gentle warbles, as his sweetheart sits on a branch right above him], and I stayed home so I can prune my raspberry patch. This is the task that needed to be done, and it's very difficult to do with a two-year old.

I had this fabulous morning all to myself, and I decided to quickly check out the bluebird boxes before I went into the vineyard, where the raspberry patch is. I opened one box down on the South-Western corner of the West Slope where it meets the front-yard pasture. Sure enough, there was a nest being built here. It wasn't quite as neat as I imagined a bluebird nest to be, but I hesitated deciding that it was a sparrow nest and removing it. Instead, I closed the box, ran up the hill to the house, and went online to study the pictures of the nests of both birds. I was soon persuaded that it was, after all, a bluebird nest. Good thing I trusted my judgment. The nest, built out of dry grasses and a few barred rocks chicken feathers, complied with the online description. I ran back down to the box, checked it out again, and restored the screw that held the pivot side of the box in place. Exciting, no? I then checked out the remaining four boxes - one in the front yard was empty, two of the vineyard ones had a few sticks in them - as though someone had began to build a nest (bluebirds, no doubt). The third one had a nest built in it that was well on its way to completion, and looked a lot like the one in the first box - the bluebird nest.

My guess was confirmed nearly immediately, as I settled into pruning my berries. I watched a male bluebird hang out in the vineyard, hunting from the posts that hold up the wires that, in their turn, hold up the grapevines. Next time I saw him, he was with a female, and what do you know, they headed for my very box, the one with the most complete nest in it, and began to contribute to the nest, periodically disappearing inside, and at other times sitting perched on the wires right next to the box. I only saw the delightful picture of a bluebird hanging on the outside of a nest box online before, and I now at last I could see it with my own eyes.

Now, let me tell you, that this bluebird box thing is an important, however small, contribution to the "bluebird trail" effort to provide bluebirds with nesting sites, which, after the North-Americans got on it, practically saved this stunning and beloved by everyone species of birds from extinction. I am, first of all, very pleased with myself for making an effort to find out the right dimensions for the boxes, persuading my husband to build them, and then choosing what seemed like, and proved to be ideal sites for those boxes. Now I only have to hope that the damn English sparrows or wrens don't interfere with the bluebirds' efforts as they are known to do - bluebirds, as far as I understand, are not nearly aggressive enough to fight them off, unlike, say, robins, who the other day I watched beating the hell out of a squirrel who repeatedly climbed to the robin nest in the orchard (the first active bird nest I saw in my life, and, thus, significant in that way).

But, of course, this nest box mounting had a selfish reason behind it, too - my passionate desire to see and keep those most beautiful and magical of birds around - bluebirds of happiness indeed. So, thanks to the boxes and our large vineyard, I had a pleasure today of watching them continuously as I pruned, and listening to the male's sweet song, along with that of a cardinal, a mourning dove, a song sparrow, a killdeer, a chipping sparrow, house finches, robins, and more. So I can't help but to congratulate myself - seeing bluebirds regularly was one of my most aggressive dreams of late - and I now have resident bluebirds! I feel like Thoreau today, really (which I feel like A LOT) - a maverick, an amateur naturalist, and even a bit of a philosopher.

Oh, and you know what else I saw today? I saw a couple of tiny ruby-crowned kinglets today, and a couple of what were either vireos or warblers (I couldn't tell because I didn't have my binoculars on me).

So let me tell you, birding adds to rural (and any other) lifestyle immensely, really, so I recommend it to everyone, especially when you get to positively (hopefully) affect their life by putting out feed, water, and bird houses.

I can't wait for May to see if I can attract orioles and perhaps spot a few indigo buntings around. And hummers, of course. My feeders are ready!

Hermit Thrush

There's a great thrill in seeing a particular species of bird for the first time. By now I have read so much about different species of songbirds, that I am getting kind of good at guessing what the bird is before I confirm my guess through the use of a guide.

Today was one of those occasions - I just saw a hermit thrush feasting on the fat caterpillars on the "back forty" of our farm, that I like to refer to as the West Slope, because it sounds more poetic. The West Slope is more of a rough, rocky, steep territory, extending from the top of the hill where the house is to the bottom of the hill, where it meets the fence line and the neighbor's corn/soybean field. It is used as a pasture in the summer, but it's full of brushy bushes, scattered trees, and lots and lots of lime stone. As we were buying this farm three years ago, the son of the previous owner said that the West Slope, or the "Bluff" as he referred to one of its parts, was his favorite spot to retreat to. I can see how a place like this could harbor a whole world of wonders for a twelve-year-old. So it does for me, too.

The West slope is also the only "wooded" spot on our farm - it's not really wooded at all, but it's got a concentration of trees that is not found anywhere else, except around the house, the orchard, and the wild apple and bramble hedge along the fence lines. There's a beautiful green ash, a mini-grove of birches, one of which we dug up a few years ago and transplanted into the front yard - because I got an idea that I wanted a birch in my yard (it was, and still is, a tiny baby birch). There are also pines, of course, and I think also some cottonwoods.

Different birds can be heard and seen singing from the perch there, and it's also where the chicken coops are. That's where I saw my first bluebird, and also the hermit thrush today.

Hermit thrush does not winter or breed here - as far as I understand, it can only be found here during the migration. It spends the cold season towards the south of the country, and raises its young in the north woods - in the Northern Wisconsin, the UP, Canada, and so forth. So whenever I spot a migrant, I consider myself privileged.

I didn't hear its song - a famously quiet bird, unless on the breeding ground or getting ready to depart for its breeding ground in the late spring, hermit thrush takes its name from this habit. Slightly larger than a bluebird but smaller than a wood thrush (who, incidentally, was mentioned on the radio both yesterday and today on different programs), it has a distinctive rusty-red tail, and, unlike the wood thrush, it has spotting mostly on the top part of the breast, with a relatively-white belly. You can acquaint yourself with the hermit thrush here (picture) and here (song).

Thoreau on Wood Trush

Here's what Thoreau (and Thoreau's Walden, as you know, is one of the most influential books in my life), had to say about the beautiful song of a wood thrush - a relative of everyone's beloved bluebird and the most known harbinger of spring - American robin :

The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth and vigor that is in the forest. ... Whenever a man hears it he is young, and Nature is in her spring; whenever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against him.

Here's the song in question. I think I might have heard this song today and also before, but I am not 100% sure. Sometimes the actual birdsong sounds different from what you get on the recordings. It is supposed to be found around here this time a year, I think.

EDIT: It wasn't a wood thrush after all, but a red-winged blackbird, which sound vague similar if you don't know the difference. Sigh!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

April 3 was the first day of the year I've seen Eastern bluebirds on my property - twice. First I saw something looking vaguely blue, round, and bigger than a sparrow land on top of the green ash on the west slope of our farm, and after looking through binoculars, I saw that it was, indeed, a bluebird - and I also recognized its distinct (and not quite as pretty) song. After singing for about five minutes or so, the male flew off. Later that evening, just as I was getting ready to lower the blinds, I saw an electric-blue bluebird male perching, though not singing, on a wire holding up a power pole. It sat there for a while, allowing me to run to get the camera and snap a few pictures. I think I also spotted a female perched above him on the wire, and the two soon took off and headed for the vineyard, where, as you know, we have three boxes up and where they really like to hang out in the summer. This was literally the single most exciting moment of my year so far!

I also heard a few different calls that I was not familiar with, and was not able to identify. I have since ordered a Birds of Wisconsin audio CD to go with my B of W bird guide, and another book which apparently combines the sound with the picture and description. I am very excited!

P.S.: In case, by any chance, you are not familiar with the Wizard of Oz, the post title is an allusion to the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" sang in the movie. Here's the video of the song:

Harbingers of Spring

I always loved spring, and, of all places I called home, South-Western Wisconsin has most to offer in this department. It's true that the winters here, much like the no-nonsense Midwesterners, mean business, but, for that matter, so do the springs. By May, spring kicks in full blast, as every fruit tree in the state - still drab, gray, and naked less than a months ago - suddenly dresses up as if for a prom.

The spring, however, arrives here much earlier than that, at first treading carefully in early March, then growing more confident day by day, as the snow recedes, the mud - the inevitable by-product of the thaw, dries up, and the lawns gradually begin to sport more and more green.

The spring's vegetation too goes through its stages, from the gray and naked of early March, to the swelling of the brown buds closer to the beginning of April, to the first showing of that delicate golden-green down on bushes right after Easter (not this year!), up until the May crescendo.

Up until this year, the spring for me never really began until I saw the first crocus pop its curious nose from under the ground and the greening of the lawns. This year's spring was different, however, and, in fact, I've never anticipated or savored spring with more intensity. What made it different this time around was my sudden but strong fascination with birdwatching.

It started with the deer carcass in November. You might not think of it that way, but a deer carcass, stripped of the head, limbs, and loins but still covered with a thick layer of fat, is an endless feast for woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees. By spring, they literally strip it clean until all you see is the ribcage. (It works in the same way as suet, providing the protein and fat for the birds who supplement their diet with insects).

Following my mother's-in-law advice, we placed our butchered deer's carcass in the rainier cherry tree in the front yard. It didn't take long before I began seeing black-and-white, sparrow-sized downies working away at the carcass and got accustomed to their chipping calls. Encouraged, I put up feeders with mixed seed, and I was soon visited by chickadees, nuthatches, red-bellied and hairy woodpeckers, bluejays, and my very favorite bird of all - the red-hot male cardinals, and their more subtly dressed, pink-tailed female companions, sporting orange-red beaks as if it was lipstick.

That Christmas, Jacob has presented me with the Audubon's bird guide, a tube feeder, and a bag of nyjer thistle seed, that attracted the flocks of sweetly-warbling goldfinches. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

And it was the birds that gave me the first hints of the spring's arrival long before the (hopefully) last April blizzard. At first, the goldfinches, clad in their olive-green coats all winter, began to show shots of lemon-yellow here and there, as they started their spring molt. Next, the scarlet-breasted house finches made their appearance one day, which, apparently, begin to frequent the feeders as the days warm up. Then I realized that, all of a sudden, the cardinals began to appear in pairs, or, more specifically, one particular pair became a regular visitor to my backyard.

And then, all of a sudden, the silent cardinals of spring, known until then only by their chipping, more musical than that of the woodpeckers, broke out into a song. It's just that one day, as I was putting up my first bluebird house, I heard a distinct birdie-birdie-birdie call that I got to know from the singing toy cardinal that I bought for my daughter but had never yet heard in nature. "Is that a cardinal singing?" I asked myself, not quite yet so sure of my bird-call identification abilities.

"The cardinals are singing now," confirmed my mother-in-law a few days later. "We gotta get the baby outside to listen to them."

The next most-anticipated herald of spring - Emily Dickison's beloved robin - appeared, just like that, all of a sudden, sometime close to the end of March. It didn't matter if the leaves on the threes were not going to appear for another month - the robins really did it for me, and they have a beautiful song! Really beautiful - heard especially distinctly in the morning as you wake up and at dusk, outside my office window.

Then came the bluebird-box fever - Jacob built and mounted five bluebird houses, after much drama and bruhaha. We see bluebirds in our vineyard every summer, it's really an ideal place for them, and so we hope they might notice our nest boxes.

Then, one morning, I saw a strikingly-looking red-winged blackbird singing from the perch on my cherry tree and have finally identified its call, which I now hear every day - it's like a spring cricket, if you will, although today they've gathered in a huge flock, as they are known to do, and screamed in the Hitchcock-like fashion from the soft maple tree right outside my front door, which I found a bit excessive.

And, at last, this past weekend I heard and saw a killdeer which Jacob has identified for me - a "shorebird" which doesn't technically live on the shore (sometimes it does), but rather in the fields, where it also nests.

All of those sounds of spring are so dear to me, I can't even say, and brighten my days greatly. Even starting to hear the crowing rooster for the first time this year, now that the chickens are finally going outside again, is delightful. What can I say, it's a great way to start the spring, and I am looking forward to seeing and hearing more spring birds in April and May - bluebirds, indigo buntings, orioles, wrens, ruby-throated humming birds, and such.

The Robin is the One

A nice shot of Emily Dickinson before bed:

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

I think robin has one of the most beautiful, distinct mating songs, much welcomed this time of the year:



And, while I am at it, here's the song of my other favorite bird, the Northern cardinal, which is also singing right now (I think it's got a great song, as distinct as its arresting appearance):



Cardinals are wonderfully loyal - they stick around and keep coming back if you set out the food for them. And a robin is now waking me up every morning, just like the great poet indicated. I have a crab apple tree in my yard and a nice, big pasture/lawn in the front, and them robins just love both.

Bluebird Houses and Summer Birding Plans

Two or three years ago students at Jacob's school used our shop for a woodworking class, led by some of the most high-end carpenters in town (where just about everyone and his brother-in-law is a carpenter). Among other things, the project that they worked on was building bluebird houses, two of which they have given us as a thank-you. For two years I couldn't care less about those, and they just sat in a shed waiting for their time to come, I guess. And then, finally, this winter I got into birding - and remembered them. I just dug them out today and figured out how to open them (they have one pivot side, which is opened and closed with a screw) and am now cleaning them out. I'm gonna buy metal posts for them next time I go to the farm supply, and this weekend the houses are going up - given that the snow has melted in a few places. With the temperatures suddenly in the 40s, the robins and the bluebirds are going to be here, I predict, probably in three weeks or so, robins will come earlier, I am guessing. Maybe sooner? I don't know! But I am overexcited to put the houses up. The students, by the way, did a pretty nice job on them - much better than the Chinese would have.

And here is the list of improvements I am going to make to entice more birds this summer:

2008 Birding Plan

Houses:

Move the wren house over to the rainier cherry tree - six feet.
Place another wren house on the yellow delicious apple tree in the orchard.
Place a bluebird house in the vineyard - don't know where yet - and another one on the north-west end of the front-yard pasture, near the sewer tank (that's in the ground).

Equipment:

Buy a nice, big, stationary birdbath - birthday present!
Buy a second wren house.
Buy two high T-posts.

Bird-friendly plants to plant/buy:

Plant another Northern star (pie/sour cherry tree).
Buy a fuchsia plant, hang on the front porch on the big hook for hummingbirds.
Leave pigweed (wild amaranth) grow in some areas.
Plant sunflowers.
Establish a permanent purple coneflower/black-eyed susan patch.

I am planning on placing orange halves for orioles into my tray feeders.

I think our farm is probably very attractive to the birds in the summer, even though I haven't been paying close attention to them in the past. It's a real fruit farm - we have a massive patch of elderberry trees, over an acre of grapes, several different cherry trees (though two are still babies), a crabapple, blackberry bushes in the yard, a blackberry patch on the fence line, a decent red and black raspberry patch - both summer and fall kinds, a strawberry patch, several soft and hard maples, a mountain ash in the front yard, an apple orchard, and another apple tree patch being established, honeysuckle growing wild, gooseberry bushes, and a red currant bush that we planted this past summer. Seed-bearing weeds grow too! Plus, we pasture beef, so we have quite a bit of pasture areas for robins and bluebirds and such.

Birdwatching is also amazing to do with your kids - Josie now knows and can identify over 15 species, and it's just very sweet to do it together - she gets so excited. Like mine, her favorite bird is northern cardinal, because it's red! I can't wait to see what happens in the spring and summer and how it goes.