birds at the feeder

Yesterday was such a beautiful day. I sat out on the porch steps and watched my children play in what was quickly becoming their mud wallow, while chickadees and nuthatch's landed in my lilac tree and tweeted at me. I was unable to feed them this winter due to the incredible amount of snow we had, but now that the snow in that part of the yard has melted, the birds were nagging at me to fill the feeders once again.


I dug out the 5lb bag of song bird feed that Mike bought me and made my way over to the feeders. One was hopelessly broken, shattered on the ground. Another was missing. At last I found one, tucked inside the lilac shoots and after a little tweaking, it was ready to hang back up. As I opened the top slide and lifted the bag I heard the call go out...I swear those birds can hear birdseed hitting a bird feeder a mile away! I ended up spilling a bunch on the ground...but knew that birds and chipmunks would clean it up soon enough...or I thought it would be chippys and small birds..the sight that greeted me this morning was not one I was expecting.




I got up fairly early...the dogs always make sure of that. I thought I might get to sleep in a bit as it is my birthday..but apparently the dogs didn't get the memo. I got up, let them out and made myself some coffee. After awhile Kismet started barking and looking toward the neighbors house. I figured they had just let their dog out or were out and about making noise and that was what his issue was. I let him in and put him and Bowser in the back room and fed and watered them and started my day. Aysha got out of the shower and all of a sudden I hear..in a loud whispered voice.."Mom! there are turkeys in the yard!". Sure enough, 4 turkeys were eating the spilled bird food. Our cats were at a complete loss at to what these ginormous things were. They finished up their meal and headed up into our woods, which we were glad to see. I like to have turkeys and other various wildlife in my proximity, it makes me feel close to nature. And the cool thing is, symbolically, Turkey means Gift...and they showed up on my birthday ;)