A little birdy told me..
Sitting in a swing..
“Beth Ann, come sit down with dad”. He sat out there every day. My dad, David, was the original bird man to me. Before my parents passed away I was so lucky to live just down the street from them. Well, I typically lived down the street from them no matter where they lived. I kind of followed them like a baby bird I guess. In their last house he had a small backyard with a little deck. Mom and dad would sit outside on the deck on a glider swing they had. It was a nice little swing, covered with a little green awning that sat perfectly facing a birding station he set up. In last several years of my dads life I was lucky enough to be invited to sit in the swing and watch the birds.
I got my love of the outdoors from my dad. He was an avid hunter, fisherman and loved anything to do with the outdoors. The biggest memories of my dad watching birds though was when we lived in Arkansas. His house was, of course, down the street from mine. We lived in a wooded area where the streets were a single blacktop road. His house was deep on a lane in a cul-de-sac with only one other house close by. The woods were thick and his “backyard” was basically a small forest. The deck on the back of the house was close to a third story high. When you looked out all you could see were trees down below for miles. My dad would sit out on his deck and watch the squirrels. Squirrels are not my favorite thing to watch now a days. They eat my expensive bird food. More on that another time….
The woods were filled with so many amazing birds. You could hear the echo of the pounding woodpeckers and the beautiful sounds of the song birds. He started with putting some bread crumbs on the railing. One day there was a corn cob feeder on the tree. He nailed it as high as his ladder would reach. The next time there was also a single feeder nailed to the rail. A bird feeder this time. A cute little wooden house feeder with trays on each side. The birds were always there. Soon, there were multiple feeders. Some hung off a hook hanging out from the rail while the hummingbird feeders dangled from the eves. Eventually there were elaborate lines hung from a tree to his deck that he could hang feeders from and pull them in by a pully to fill them.
This is the location that I became fascinated by the mighty piliated woodpecker. They are so solid and their peck is fierce. You could hear it it’s whacking like a jackhammer on the dead trees. Boom, Boom, Boom and it would just echo through the trees. It’s a large bird. Best described as the biggest, most striking forest birds on the continent according to Allaboutbirds.com. It is about the size of a crow. It is black with thick white stripes down the neck and a flaming-red crest. That crest is impressive and stands up in the shape of a triangle. You would never mistake this bird for anything else. Once you’ve had this bird in your site you are hooked on bird watching.
When my parents moved to their last house my dad brought his feeders with him. We were in a subdivision but it was right off a county park and large lake area. The birds were slightly different but there were just as many. The piliated woodpecker was no longer a visitor to his feeders but the song birds were abundant. I started my birding life journal from this location. As we sat in the swing, we would brag to one another about which bird we had seen and tried to one up each other with each new siting. As the years went by and things got a bit harder I took over filling the feeders. We became so obsessed with attracting new birds that our feeding station grew by leaps and bounds. We tried new types of feeders and added new variations of seeds just to see what we could get to come to the feeders.
When my dad passed away I brought his feeders home to my house. I also brought that swing. I set up my new birding station so that I could see it well from that swing. The types of birds I got were mostly the same as we were close to his home. There were a few that didn’t come around because my house wasn’t as close to the woods but it didn’t matter. As I sat in the swing watching the feeders things felt differently. It wasn’t a sad feeling but it wasn’t the same. I no longer had someone to compare notes with but that didn’t matter. What I was missing wasn’t the few birds that didn’t come, it was the person I sat in the swing with.