backyard birds -- the last gasp

One of the reasons we bought the house we currently live in was the back yard.  It's actually an old tree line, left or created as a windbreak between farm fields.  There are walnut, hickory, oak, and a variety of other good trees inside the fence, and just beyond. 

For the first couple of years we lived here, I kept a list of species that I saw in, and from, my back yard, which means flyovers like sandhill cranes and kingfishers (there’s a pond across the street), counted.  I stopped counting at 87 species.  I don’t know why I stopped.  Lost the obsession, I guess, moved on to another kind of list.  Lists come natural to indexers and writers.

Along with the great variety of bird life that passes through the yard, we also have plenty of squirrels and chipmunks, and variety of vagabonds, like raccoons and opossums.  Living here was the first time I ever saw a opossum play possum after Sunny, ever the lion hunter, chased one down that I didn’t see when I let him out to do his business.  Luckily, ridgebacks have a cornering instinct  and not a strong kill instinct and I called Sunny off the opossum without harm.  It was a great treat for me, though, to see this.  Maybe not so much for the opossum.

So, no matter the season, the yard is usually active.  Last week we had a (hopefully) last gasp of winter, and we had some interesting visitors.