Winter Wonder

I thought robins went somewhere else for the winter. And since I don't have any feeders out this year I didn't expect to see any birds around my yard. However, over the past several days we've had dozens of robins roosting in the trees and this morning I came home from taking kids to school and discovered cedar waxwings in my (not-right-now) flowering pear tree. I was surprised the small berries had lasted this late into winter, but the tree will likely be picked clean after today or tomorrow. The robins and waxwings will see to that. I also discovered some details on the waxwings I had never noticed before because I could never get close enough to them to see. Thanks to a pair of binoculars I now have, I could stand on my porch and enjoy looking at them up close to see they have a band of bright yellow at the tips of their tails and a bar of bright red across their secondary wing feathers. I also noticed that a number of them have bright yellow across their undersides, close to the legs. They are so beautiful! I hope you get to see some in your yard. My bird book says they stay in flocks of about 40 during the winter, looking for berries to eat.



I have also had dark-eyed juncos in the backyard. They seem to like the berries on my cotoneaster shrubs, as well as something under the bushes bordering the park.