Birds

I refilled my bird table and hanging feeder with black oil sunflower seed. I also put out an orange and the last of my homemade peanut butter suet cakes. The birds usually get fed on the days that I empty the cat boxes. The sun is out, bright and beautiful. The temperature, I am guessing, is around 28 or 29 degrees, so it was a great day to be outside. I decided that I would soak up more vitamin D by staying out for a bit, and so I emptied out my bird houses from last year. Unlike my father-in-law, I am not observant enough to always tell when my bird houses are occupied, or when each particular brood has left the nest. As a result I usually do not clean out the houses until well past bird migration. Imagine my surpirse today when I found a house containing not only tons of sticks, but another round nest of grasses and feathers, containing a frozen but whole egg, about 1/2 inch long. It is a pinkish egg with brown speckles, but after more than two months of freezing temperatures, I wonder if that is the original color.

I am reading Robin Kane: The Mystery of the Phantom, 1966. Robin's father draws the comic strip, "The Family Scene", for which he uses his own children as models for his characters. Sounds just like Bill Keane's Family Circus to me, although my guess is that the book was written first. Funny!