Here birdy birdy

I like birds and cats and plants and bugs and beasts. I like watching birds and I like the convenience and the natural history charm of having a bird feeder in my yard. However, I used to have cats that ate the birds that came into my yard and hopped down on the ground to eat the seed that spilled out of the feeder. So no bird feeder for us for the past 15 years.

Now my addled senior cat is an indoor only cat and one upside to that situation is that now I can have bird feeders again (downside - cat pee smell in bathroom - see previous post). So about three weeks ago Lucy, Josie and I went to Lowes and bought two bird feeders to hang in the trees outside their bedroom window. Lucy also had a make your own bird feeder kit from a past birthday that she and Mitch put together. So we got our bird seed and our sunflower seeds and filled up our bird feeders and waited. And no birds came and no birds came and no birds came.

We went on vacation for two weeks and when we got back, all of the bird feeders were empty. I wondered whether a squirrel or opossum or other creature had come along while were gone and snarfed up all the bird seed. So last weekend I refilled all the feeders thinking we would see who came to visit.

And in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday I heard this, "Mom! Mom! Mom! Come quick, there's a bird at the bird feeder." By the time I got there it was gone. But Lucy was very excited. I missed another bird visit on Sunday. But after Sunday's visit I said, "Lucy, what did the bird look like?" And she goes, "it had red on its belly and some red on its head." And I asked, "What color was the rest?" And she goes, "Oh kind of a dull brown/black" Then I told her it was a house finch and I congratulated her on her fine powers of observation that she noticed enough about the bird that I could tell her what it was. Mitch asked her if she wanted to look at a picture in a bird book and she said, "No. Why would I want to look at a picture? I saw the real bird."

I am seriously digging her powers of observation and her keen interest in nature. Even if both of these attributes totally disappear later in life, I can still enjoy them now.