Blog de Puree

It was late this Sunday afternoon, the sun was starting its descent in the west, behind the trees across the street in our neighbor’s yard. Directly behind our backyard, looking south into the trees within other neighbors’ yards, a huge number of black dots sitting in the branches made a rising crescendo of assorted bird calls. The group of house sparrows that spent most of their time in the bushes along the fence flitted more nervously than they usually do.

Instantly, there was a loud fluttering of wings as a black cloud of birds descended from the trees and into our back yard. Bouche, our cat, puffed up as if someone stuck an air hose down his throat. We had put no new food out in the last few days, but the block of seeded suet and the spilled seed and cracked corn around the feeders from the last few weeks was enough to attract at least 100 birds.

Within the spontaneous flock, the european starlings were frequent visitors and they mostly jockeyed for spots around the suet feeder. But on the ground along the fence and into the grass, approximately 10 crows, which we’ve seen sporadically in our neighborhood, and a flock of red-winged blackbirds busied themselves with cleaning the leftovers from the ground.

The blackbirds are a new addition to the ‘hood. Their tell-tale red and black-striped wings were magnificent against the black plumage that covered the rest of their bodies. They’re smaller than the crows that visited and were a bit bigger than the starlings. As they hopped around on the lawn, it was interesting that such a large flock, unseen here before today, would suddenly make a visit.

What’s more interesting is that the blackbirds typically can be found in wetlands and agricultural areas. While our town is somewhat rural, we live in a suburban neighborhood. The only explanation we can come up with is that there has been a lot of melt-off from the warm weather this weekend, and there’s an inordinate amount of puddling in yards and fields. I suspect that the large pooling of water in places has expanded their habitat somewhat.

Regardless, it was nice to see them and we hope to see them again, especially, for Bouche. For him, it was like “Must see TV.”

And for us, it is another bird species to add the colorful pantheon of winged creatures in our neck of the woods.