Thursday, May 12, 2016

Where Has This Little Bird Been?

Hello from my new home in Jefferson, Maine!

No, I do not have any photos to show you yet because I need a new computer! I am posting this from my very small laptop and if I can figure out how to process and post photos on this I will soon have photos for you. I have been taking plenty!

So much has happened in the past three months. I had to have surgery again which a 6 week recovery period, and before that ended, we had to move! Thankfully my kids were around to help and we moved into an old farm house at the North end of Damariscotta Lake. A wide and lazy stream rolls past the house and we are surrounded by water on three sides! This makes for very good birding habitat and in a little over a month I am already up to 62 species in this new yard! More about that later, but here is a list of all my yards and their species totals from when I lived there:
  1. Livermore Falls, Maine--43 species (October 2002-March 2004)
  2. Sycamore Canyon, Corona de Tucson, AZ--83 Species (April 2007-August 2010)
  3. Andover, MA Yard--65 Species (October 2010-August 2012)
  4. Tucson Yard--69 Species (August 30, 2012-January 31, 2014)
  5. Mere Point Yard, Brunswick, ME--117 Species (February 2014-August 2015)
  6. Harpswell Yard--90 Species (August 2015-May 2016)
  7. Jefferson Yard--62 Species (March 12*-May 12, 2016)
*Note: I started counting birds here from the first day we looked at this house. We did not move in until the middle of April.)

This new yard is so amazing. I have already seen beaver, muskrats, gray squirrels, red squirrels, and chipmunks here. I have had loon came paddling up the stream past my house, and one night while Gus and I were on the back deck we saw tow Great Horned Owls fly into some tall pines at the edge of our yard near the stream. It is so hard for me to get anything done with all these birds and all this wildlife around. I have two families of geese that visit the yard on occasion, and this morning a momma mallard and her newly hatch brood of 8 ducklings. There are turtles in the stream as well as many frogs. At night we are serenaded to sleep by their loud chorus! I can see water from every window in this house and I love waking up and opening the curtains to see the new day. I feel so at peace here. I feel so at home. I am happy once again.