Cabin Birding

One of the neat things about living in the cabin is how great the birding can be from inside, especially when I'm upstairs on the second floor. The trees are too close to the cabin, no doubt about it. I have trees that are only 2-3 feet from the upstairs window. I can reach out and touch the branches. Last year the leaves from one of the trees almost touched the window. I suspect they will touch the window this year, and that I will have to remove one of them.

But, the trees also make for some amazing birding, right at eye level with the birds. During migratation seasons, I've learned to carry my binos with me from room to room for those second story birds that don't come to the trees next to the house. On an every day basis, I see the local feeder birds in these branches--titmice, chickadees, blue jays, nuthatch, junco, etc.

On Christmas morning, I had two good sightings. One was a local brown creeper, a bird that lives here but that I don't always get to see as they are so screteive. The second encounter was when one of the local pileated woodpeckers arrived and proceeded to skitter up the tree, literally just a few feet from my face. When it flew into the tree, it was so fast and so large that my feral instincts kicked in, and I winced involuntarily, bracing myself against a collision. Boy, are those things big! There's nothing like a pileated woodpecker just a few feet from my face to wake me up!! It's one thing to see one fly through the woods and notice its size. It's even more impressive when they're as close as this one was. The bird books describe them as "crow-sized." I think they're a bit larger than that.