As I was out strolling about in the garden this afternoon, I heard a bird land in the orchid tree behind me. I turned expecting to see the house finches making a meal out of all the orchid buds (they love to torture me by nibbling all the pretty flowers off my Anacacho orchid tree before they bloom), but instead I saw a fire-engine red bird sitting atop the tree. A Cardinal! Wow. The first one I have ever spied in my yard. You see, I live in one of those cookie cutter houses that was built on land that was scraped clean of Every. Single. Tree. Sad, yes, which is why when I moved in, I planted trees everywhere around my house. Five years later, the trees and shrubs are big enough to provide some shelter and I am now seeing birds I have not seen before venturing into the neighborhood. So the cardinal is pretty darn exciting! I tried to get a close-up photo, but all I managed to do was to scare him into the neighbor's yard. So I took the best photo I could (my camera is pretty old, has a lame zoom, and is slow to think, so it is a miracle I get pictures of birds before they move on me).
The first Cardinal to visit my yard:
Last spring, a cuckoo came to visit. He was ever-so pretty, but I couldn't get a photo before he flew off. He was making a meal out of the caterpillars that like to mob my Texas Mt. Laurel every year. I hope he comes back to visit again.
IF I had taken a photo, he would have looked something like this:
(Thanks to Fernbank Science Center for the pic)
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