Birds and other animals on Grandma's farm

I remember how much you like birds when growing up - you loved to hear them sing and watch them fly whenever we went on hikes or into our backyard. Perhaps it was just because your were a toddler and preschooler, but I suspect we share a love of nature.

You would like visiting Grandma and Grandpa Bignell's. They have a lot of bird feeders, and so there are birds galore in their yard, even during the winter. We have a dozen red cardinals, a dozen bluejays, a woodpecker, and a bunch of smaller birds that I think are called junkos. In the fields surrounding the house are red-tailed hawks and bald eagles.

There are lots of other animals, too. We have a family of bunny rabbits that live in the yard. Deer also come up to the house and during the warm season can be seen in the fields The gold of sunset makes their brown bodies almost glow in the distance. For a while, we even had a woodchuck living nearby (Can you say "How much wood can a woodhcuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood" three times really fast?)!

I can't wait to show you all of this and enjoy watching all of these animals with you!

My little ornithologist...

A hummingbird has taken up residence in the tree overlooking our condo's stairwell. It's an impossibly tiny creature, too small one might think to be a bird yet clearly far too large to be an insect. Its long, stylus-like beak must stretch an inch and a half from its barely visible head. As you may remember, we have a number of flowers, ranging from roses to irises, growing on the grounds, and the hummingbird can be spotteed fluttering about them during the early morning hours, its wings beating so fast that it looks like an image out of a cartoon when some character wants to run.

I watched the hummingbird for a while, thinking of you, and though it acted nervous at first that some really large crature was tracking its movements, after a while it must have decided I meant it no harm, for it now ignores me when I walk past and when in the tree goes about its business as if I'm not even there gazing at it. You always liked little birds when a preschooler, found them fascinating to watch, and while I'd indulge you for a few moments, often I was too quick to rush us off to our destination, whether it be for groceries or the next carnival ride or into the bank. How I wish now I'd given you more time to watch those birds, and how I wish you were here with me today so we might watch that hummingbird together.