A little inspiration from WarnDog...

So, I'm not dead. Dead tired of birding my low dividend yard? Well, yes.

The truth is, I hardly get enough time to bird these days that when I do get a chance, I glass real hab. Granted, I do scope the yard every day for at least 5 minutes and I keep a keen eye on the neighbor's feeders but that's really about all I have time to do. I can't believe I haven't scored CORE on my neighbor's feeders yet this winter. Or WWCR with all the spruce trees in the neighborhood (no hemlocks though so maybe that's a key factor). But at least a flyover?

Speaking of flyovers, Rivers and I were out in the yard a few days ago testing out our new paper airplanes, when two BAEAs flew right over the driveway. An adult calling to an immature. Can't beat that. And Rivers pointed out the chickadees to me while singing along with them...literally. He just started saying, "chick a dee dee dee." Needless to say, I'm a pretty proud dad.

So the yard hasn't been great this winter but honestly, there's not much to keep most birds around. Just not any habitat (although my "brush pile" does seem to pull in decent numbers of HOSP). I can only stare at the sky for so long. So I've spent most of my time venturing farther afield within the county. Too much other interesting stuff to see. But I will say that my local patch about 3 miles from the house does indeed have WWCR and CORE and PISI and...everything else my yard doesn't at the moment. For crying out loud I just nabbed ROPI 3 days ago!

I'm glad you guys are having better luck but I'm a little jaded with The Cheddarlands at the moment. Things will hopefully pick up in a few weeks.

I did nab my 8th SNOW for the winter! Spotted it from inside the plane while taxiing down the runway at Ohare. Of my 8 birds (in three states), 7 have been self-found. That probably won't ever happen in my lifetime again...

Snowy Owl #6 (February, Michigan)