Wordless Wednesday: Bird Watching Roster

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
I've been reading the new book release Shelter by Sarah Stonich (really another story for another day), a memoir of a single mother coming to northern Minnesota to buy land and build a cabin. In the early chapters, she quotes several familiar northern Minnesotan writers, many of whom lived just down the road a piece from where our cabin sits today, including nature writer Helen Hoover. Stonich writes of Hoover: "Childless, she eventually grew critter-happy, establishing a sort of soup kitchen for the wild, feeding every creature she could entice, not just with precious feed paid for with scant dollars and carried in to their remote site, but as often with their own food."

Here at the cabin, we serve up only a sunflower seed buffet (with a side of compost, if you're so inclined), but we do keep pretty close tabs on our winged visitors thanks to our participation in Project Feeder Watch. Here are the birds, by the numbers, so far for the 2010-11 PFW season.

Pine grosbeak, average group size: 18.
Black-capped chickadees: average group size 3.
Hairy woodpecker: just 1!
Purple finch: 2
Red poll: average of 16
Red-breast nuthatches: 1

4 comments:

  1. It sounds like a great book. I love personal stories of adventures. Love the little birds!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your birds are much more fluffed up than they are in Virginia. When does Spring thaw occur? Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How I love the photos of the birds! It must have been difficult to capture them, as birds of small sizes move so quickly! How wonderful that you are providing food for them in winter.

    ReplyDelete
  4. These little birds just made my day:)

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails