The Robin on the Wire

See that speck there? It's right in the middle of that picture of wires and clouds. That is a robin.

This morning I stood up from my desk and stretched and looked out the window into my back yard and was surprised to see probably one of every bird species that exists in my yard. It was probably my imagination that they were all in orderly rows on the lawn, staring intently at the house, waiting for food to appear. That really is not too far off the mark, though.

The winter birds are back. They do not forget which houses are notoriously generous with the food supply all winter long. They might have very tiny heads, but they must have big brains crammed into that little space.

It took years to give up the old film cameras and move on up there with everyone else and purchase a digital camera. I now have what I refer to as my "practice camera," and while the neighbors all suspected I was a little strange all along, now that they see me taking a hundred pictures of the same tree at different times of the day, in different kinds of light, with the sun shining, during a thunderstorm or even just against that dark blue sky, stopping and changing the setting from "landscape" to "sunset" to "dusk/dawn" to "fireworks" to the "night landscape" exposure, they are scratching their heads and moving the children inside. There is absolutely no doubt that this house will be considered the Strange Old Woman's House at some point soon, the house that the children take dares to walk in front of.

By the time I had gotten the camera and turned it on and selected the setting I wanted to try to photograph those birds, they were all gone. They got tired of waiting, most likely, or maybe they decided to just play a trick on me, but it has been two hours now, and despite the fact that I have put out piles of bird seed in strategic places all over the yard, they have not so much as landed to take a crap in the yard. That, in and of itself, is bizarre, since usually they hit my blue chair from 500 feet, several times a day, just in the process of flying over the house.

Anyway, I might go steal all the food away soon to show them who is boss, but in the meantime, that photo in the upper right hand corner is the closest anyone is going to get of a bird today, so enjoy that!