Life in the wilds of Albuquerque

[billeyler]

Danny and I enjoy sitting on the upper deck watching the birdlife in the evenings.  It's mostly hummingbirds, robins, house sparrows (finches) of various sorts, and the sweet-but-dumb varieties of doves.  It's a very relaxing time and we can now see some of the different personalities these feathered friends have.

Driving to work this morning, I saw yet another of these fabulous roadrunners wandering around, scouting out bugs and lizards.  This one was just on the other side of the street from the house.  They're even bolder than robins, so you can nearly walk up to them before they wander away.

No matter how I feel, these comical looking birds alway bring a smile to my face and make me appreciate that there is life outside my own narrow little path.

On the dove front, when I went out at 7am to feed the birds, one that had obviously slammed into a window *at some point wandered out from near the house in front of me.  I could tell it had a damaged wing, but it waddled away without too much trouble...right into the garage...I had just opened the door to get to the bird food.

I followed it around the garage until it wandered back out and strolled under one of the arborvitae.  I did warn it that the cats would be on the lookout for just something snacky like him, so he'd best either recover quickly or hide in the trees!

* All of our windows have full imprints of birds on them, especially after we just wash them.  It's like a comic-book scene when we open the curtains to see where a bird had splatted.   Although many birds love trying to fly through them, many find it a less than satisfying journey.

Comments

[redsquared.livejournal.com]

If you have many birds flying into your windows, you might consider applying predator bird cutouts to your windows to discourage the birds from flying into them.

We used to have a pet dove. Kevin and I were bicycling one day (about 10 years ago), and spied a flock of pigeons by the side of the road. Kevin recognized that one of the birds was in fact a dove.

He went ahead and caught it bare handed. It was weak from hunger and couldn't fly well since its wings were clipped (must have been someone's pet).

We brought it home and fed it. Adanac (named after the street we found him on) lived with us for about 7 years.