The Birds

Photo credit Treknature.com

This morning I was reminded of a darker time of my life as I looked out my window to the trees.  It was a particularly long cold winter and I started to suffer with some migraine headaches.  Not many but a few just enough to know I really didn’t like them at all.  At the time I was running an in-home daycare while my youngest was not yet in school.  I wanted to be a stay at home Mom but we needed some extra income.  I started a daycare , ran it for three years until my daughter was in school full-time and I got my first teaching job.

I loved the little kids and there was always some antic to laugh about while doing daycare.  I feel particularly old when I see those kids now as juniors,  seniors in high school and one already graduated.   That winter it was very cold and we had a stretch where the wind chills were too severe to let the kids outside to play.  They were going stir crazy and so was I. 

One evening I walked past some bird feeders and seed at our local hardware store and wondered “Would the birds come and eat if I put out some food?”  I had never had a bird feeder before.  I picked out a feeder and picked up some seed and went home and tried to decide where to place it.  I decided outside my livingroom window would be the best because the kids would be able to look out and see the birds from there if they came to the feeder.

I put out the feeder that evening and the next day watched.  No birds.  I was so disappointed and so were the kids.  Day two I watched again and once again no birds.  I thought maybe I had it in the wrong place, after all I never had a feeder before.  The third morning I watched as my first bird came to the feeder.  It was a purple finch.  I didn’t know that at the time because I didn’t know birds.  My next stop that evening was to the library for a bird book so I could I identify the different birds that came to the feeder. 

That winter the daycare kids and I learned about birds together.  Bird watching was a distraction from the cold weather but developed into a life-long passion  for me.  Each season brings different birds to the feeder.  One of my favorite birds to watch is the Nuthatch.  I love it because it approaches life from a different perspective.  It walks down the trees head first.  It is the most beautiful combination of blue, white and black.  We had many visitors to our feeder that winter:  woodpeckers, cardinals, finches, nuthatches, grosbeak, blue jays, black-capped chickadees and some I am sure I have forgotten. 

Sometimes learning something new is the best remedy to the blues.