Attracting Birds to Your Backyard - Sally Roth

536 Ways to Create a Haven for Your Favorite Birds
Rodale Press, 1998
paper $16.95
TPPL 598.07234

Well, for some reason after many grownup years of total disinterest in birds, I'm getting a boot out of watching the finches outside my study window. I went to Wild Birds and bought a niger feeder with a contraption to stick it onto my window. It sat for almost two months before I had any visitors, but now they've found it and are nibbling happily away. They're pretty cool to watch up close.

So I returned two weeks ago and bought a feeder and contraption that screws to the top of my wrought-iron fence out back. And to my great delight, last Saturday morning, amid finches and other birds, along came a CARDINAL! This was a pretty big deal to me. I do not recollect ever seeing a cardinal before. I may have, I just don't recollect it.

I'll miss the northeastern robins, though, that always meant that spring was finally, FINALLY coming to the coast of Maine!

I just finished reading/skimming this helpful, interesting book. It's full of information about different birds, different seeds and feeds, who likes to eat what, plants that are helpful and nutritious...all sorts of really nifty information. Groan, groan, I'm going to start a journal/notebook. I'm too old to hold all of this in my head. But at least I've gone from only being able to identify a chickadee, robin, pigeon, crow, seagull, quail, and owl to a fine purveyor of Tucson winter finches - of the house finch and goldfinch variety.. Cool colors, reds, and lime greens and yellows. Pretty fun!