The Birds in My Backyard

Over the past few months we have worked to build a nature-friendly backyard. In some ways this is easy - we live quite near a very large area set aside as a park (Mission Trails Regional Park) that has a lot of wildlife... from deer to coyotes (neither of which we particularly want in our yard) as well as different kinds of birds.

As a kid growing up in Minnesota, we had a lot of different varieties of birds. My parents (who still live in MN) even get pilleated woodpeckers (the Woody the Woodpecker kind of bird) on their deck! We don't have that kind of variety where we live. But we have seen quite a few varieties.

Just this week we have seen:

House Finch

Lesser Golden Finch

Mourning Dove

Sparrow

Scrub Jay

Anna's Hummingbird

And our newest visitor, a Scott's Oriole!

The neighbors on either side of us get a lot of crows, but for some reason they stay out of our yard. Perhaps they like the cedar shake roofs that both neighbors have (you know, the ones that will catch on fire during the next fire that comes to the neighborhood and burn all three of our houses down? a topic for another day though) or perhaps they don't like all the other birds in our yard.

Either way, we certainly get a lot of joy out of watching the birds, listening to all of their songs and seeing them play in the bird fountain. Well worth the (seemingly constant) feeding and careful consideration of plant variety.

What's in your backyard?

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