Here on Usonia Road, I recently put up a bird feeder. It looks like a little red house with a silver top and a platform on the front, like a front step, where the birds feed.

Uncool, maybe, but actually, kinda cool. It’s the easiest way to see a diversity of wildlife just outside your window that I can think of short of moving to a ground floor apartment in the East Village. Right now, for example, as I type, I’m watching what appears to be a fight between a male cardinal and a significantly larger blue jay, with the cardinal pursuing the jay through the rhododendron tree that flanks the bird feeder. Why is that happening? I have no idea. But it’s pretty dramatic, I can assure you.

I get up pretty early, and watch the birds as the sun comes up—it’s when they’re most active. Yesterday morning between 5:30 and 7:15 I saw countless sparrows and chickadees and tufted titmouses, a pair of cardinals, any number of jays, a red bellied woodpecker (he’s a recurring visitor, and astonishingly beautiful), and a wild turkey. Okay, that wasn’t at the bird feeder; he was crossing the road by my driveway.

Maybe this is middle age speaking, but…it’s wonderful.

The jay and the cardinal are still fighting….

red_bellied_woodpecker_11
(A red bellied woodpecker, not the one in question)