I'm just home from a week in St. Croix. Quite an adjustment to suddenly be in freezing sleet and snow instead of on a sandy beach at 85 degrees! Last year when I returned from staying on the island with the same friends, three of whom I've known since childhood, I wrote two columns about my visit, one on the coral reef and the other on St. Croix's Botanical Gardens.
This year when I saw an incredibly beautiful worm about 3 inches long, his body striped yellow and black with red fuzz at either end, I got out my camera, thinking I might write a column on St. Croix's wildlife. I took pictures of hermit crabs in all sorts of stolen shells, a walking stick on Liz's bedroom ceiling and a teeny gecko I found in my suitcase when I got home, but that was it.
I never got another photo, and nobody knew the caterpillar 's identity or what beautiful butterfly he might turn into. I thought I'd get a picture of a mongoose, but even though I saw a dozen during the week they were just too fast for me. So here I am at the computer, staring out at the white world beyond my window, trying to come up with a column.
Ah, birds! Let's talk about birds. There's a net bag of suet outside the window with a downy woodpecker pecking at it. Are you feeding the birds? Besides suet, I offer my feathered friends both sunflower seeds and thistle seeds, two feeders outside my bedroom window and another two just beyond the new picture window downstairs that I had put in this fall. I've been trying to take a photo of the birds at these feeders, but they don't show up very well.
I see all the standard winter birds - chickadees, downy and hairy woodpeckers, tufted titmice, goldfinches, which really ought to be called grayfinches at this time of year, one lone red-bellied woodpecker, and once in a while the thrill of a brilliant cardinal. Of course I also see dozens of greedy blue jays, but they can't balance on my feeders and must take the leftover on the ground along with the juncos.
I gave up on the tray feeder outside this window as it was only visited by squirrels and blue jays. I used to get so disgusted with how those jays gobble up a dozen seeds at a time, hull and all. Ugh! Like eating a banana without peeling it. But then I learned that these birds are similar to cows. Once they've gobbled their fill, they fly off to some quiet spot, regurgitate the seeds and open them one at a time to get the meat.
The sunflower seedlings that pop up each spring from under the bird feeders will produce flowers, but if you want giant heads its best to buy a packet of seeds. IF you plant them on the north side of the vegetable garden where they won't shade out other plants, you can let your pole beans use them to climb. Both like soil that is sandy and slightly acid, about 6.7 pH.
I feed the birds all summer, even though the environmentalists say we shouldn't. What, am I spoiling the birds? I see rose-breasted nuthatches, purple finches, really gold goldfinches. I even get doves balancing awkwardly on the feeders, something my cat loves to watch.
I hope you're feeding and enjoying our feathered friends.
