And then there were many...

After a lazy morning, and a lovely chat with bestie, Ellen, I headed out to the hide.  At first, nothing was working - the birds were ignoring my perches, preferring to tuck themselves into the branches of the cherry trees instead.  The chickadees and titmice were determined not to perch anywhere for more than a nanosecond.  And the cardinals refused to come around at all.  Not to mention that is was really cold in the hide.

And then... then I heard a sound...the sound of thousands of wings.  And as if someone had flipped a switch, hundreds of birds descended from the trees down into the garden and feeders.  The flock was mostly comprised of Common Grackles (on the right a male and female) and brown-headed cowbirds (incoming on the left).  There were also some red-winged blackbirds in the flock.  At one point, I looked up at the tree tops and it looked like all the trees were fully leafed - with birds.  They were mostly silent except when they would take flight and all you could here were the rush of wings.  Definitely a magical 10 minutes or so before the whole flock of at least 1,000 birds took off.  

I have put two other shots on Flickr, starting HERE - better looks at both species.  And in Extra I'll put a shot of one small section of the trees overlooking our garden just to give you an idea as to the sheer numbers of birds.

I'm going to cook up some bean soup this afternoon using the turkey stock I made last week and some turkey sausage that SIL picked up at the store.  A nice meal for a cold winter day.

I can't look at the Covid numbers today, but I know that my message remains the same...

stay safe, be kind, be loving...

xo
Debbi