Our Beautiful World - Bird is the Word

Looking at my first couple of photos one might think that we suddenly sprung ahead to mid-spring, but that is not the case.  The word of the week for Our Beautiful World is BIRD and I have a plethora of bird pictures to choose from, but I will keep it to only a few of my favorites.

I just loved being able to get close enough to get a picture of one of our bluebird visitors at the nest box while the clematis was blooming.  Sadly, the plant died and this past summer the blues bypassed our yard, but I still hold out hope that they will return again this summer.  We think this might have something to do with the multitude of nest boxes that our neighbor installed on their property last spring and the fact that we were not able to prepare the garden appropriately enough for our visitors to be comfortable there.  The bluebirds like to nest in open areas and unfortunately, because of my back issues and HWNSNBP's busy schedule, the garden got away from us this year and looked more like a field of waist-high weeds. 

We hope that with some concerted effort we might be able to clear out the offending area and be lucky enough to get more pictures like the one below.  Those open mouths remind me of spring crocuses.

I promised only a couple of bird photos so I am just going to add this photo that I took last week (and posted last week already) as it inspired me to do the little watercolor below it this week.

I'm kind of bummed today because we had to have one of our beautiful maple trees from the backyard removed today.  We noticed that the tree was wet last weekend during a dry, warm day meaning that the trunk probably had been damaged/cracked.  Being only about 15' from the house, there was too much of a risk of it cracking further and damaging the house or harming someone so we opted to have it removed.  It was one of the trees that we hung our bird feeders in so now we will have to find new hang-outs for the feeders.  Hopefully, not too far from the house so we can still enjoy looking at the birds that have become accustomed to their 3-squares here.  

The tree not only provided a place for the birds to eat, but it provided shade for our kitchen area and back of the house - that will be missed dearly in the summer.  I shall have to get used to the new landscape.  

Please take a look at all the other bird photos from around the world that have been posted at Our Beautiful World this week.  

Oh, and if you would like to see more of my bird pictures, please click on the Bird, or Bluebird links on my sidebar.