This has been a bad week for blog entries, sorry about that. We’ve been preparing for the arrival of our new bundle of joy….ha, no, gawd no, stop even thinking it. A good friend of ours is moving in with us, and we’ve been getting his quarters together downstairs. That’s left precious little time to complain about people’s driving habits, comment about something I heard on Marketplace, or even to wax poetic on the exciting developments in the hot dog/hot dog bun arena.

One thing I would like to briefly mention is the interesting variety of birds we’re getting in our yard this Spring. If you haven’t checked out Birdie Cam lately, you ought to do so. We’ve got quite a population of Red Crossbills hanging out on the feeders. We’ve also spotted a couple of Black-Headed Grosbeaks and a Rufous Hummingbird, which is quite surprising since the Anna’s are so territorial and tend to keep competitors away.

I’m simply amazed, because we’ve never seen any of these species in our yard before. They’re all fairly common to the Puget Sound region, but we’ve never been host to any ourselves (Margaret says she’s seen a Rufous once or twice, but she lies. She also tells me she sees bats when they clearly aren’t there….more on that some other time). Maybe it has to do with the funky Winter we had, changing their migration patterns or something. I dunno. All I know is I’m really enjoying the spectacle. If this keeps up, I may have to pick up more feeders….and more birdie cams.

UPDATE: Add a mated pair of Evening Grosbeaks to the list of new birds we’ve seen at our feeder. I love the male’s bright yellow “Ming The Merciless” eyebrows!