Gawking at the window

Last weekend, May, Elijah, Nathan and I attended the Ohio Young Birder's Club Big Sit event.  This is where you sit in a 17 foot circle and count all the species of birds you can see or hear within a certain time frame.  At one point, a Song Sparrow sang.  Birds don't usually sing in the fall, although if you are out enough, you will hear them sing.  Singing is part of setting and defending territories and is mostly heard in the spring and early summer.  Anyway, when that sparrow sang, my heart melted and I said, "It feels like Spring!" (That was only partly right since it was a very cold day, but at any rate it sounded like Spring).

Inside, what was going on was that I was realizing how much I really LOVE birds.  I do.

Last night, Nathan had come home from a long bird walk and was showing us the pictures he was able to get when Elijah excitedly called from the kitchen that there was a Towhee under the feeder.  Here's the Eastern Towhee:

Image from allaboutbirds.com

This is a female.  The males are striking:

Image from allaboutbirds.com

So we stood, all of us crowding around the window to get a look.  Our bird was a female.  It was dusk and it was getting difficult to see and take photos.  All of a sudden, Nathan yelled, "There's a Nashville Warbler."  Sure enough, I got my hands on the binoculars and there was the tiny warbler hanging out on the edge of our old sand box.  Amazing!

Image from allaboutbirds.com

It wasn't quite this yellow because it was in fall plumage, but so cute.  These look so tiny compared to sparrows and our common feeder birds.

I've been glued to the windows all day long.  We've got lots of cool sparrows around.  Hard to peel myself away!