| The Brosius Backyard Birds & Animals |
As many of you will notice from the pictures throughout our web-site we have in trying to be good
stewards of our land, also been friends to the birds and animals who choose to live in our midst. Or
better said: “those who tolerate us living within their midst.”
Those birds and animals have truly become our “buddies.” I can tell that each day when I walk out
on the deck and a blue jay we call “cheep-cheep” comes swooping down to sit on a limb above me
and very vocally lets me know that he is there and sure would like a peanut. He will now take a
peanut from our hand and sit there for a minute as if to say thanks. He has been fathering each
spring quite a bunch of little “jays” that he eventually brings around to show them how easy it is to
beg for a peanut and for awhile the vocal noise in our midst becomes a little much. The squirrels
have been sometimes fun and sometimes pests as they enjoy the kernels of corn, and or peanuts
that we put out for them. They become pests when they insist on burying the peanuts in every
flower pot we have sitting around. Re potting the plants all summer long gets to be a bit much. We
have learned however to put a layer of pebble rock on top of the soil in each pot to discourage this
“hiding practice.” Seeing the hordes of pelicans, swans, and ducks swimming around, and the
occasional eagle, diving and plucking a fish from the water has truly been entertaining as we are out
and about doing the yard work will surely be missed. Even in winter we continue to be entertained
by our neighborhood friends. This winter while ice fishing some fifty feet from our dock a pesky
little “muskrat” would pop up through my ice hole to take a gulp of air and then return to gathering
aquatic roots which was his food supply. Unfortunately if I left the ice shanty up overnight I would
return in the morning or next day to find a pile of half eaten “muskrat” lunch scattered about the ice
shanty. He was a pest, but after all, “who was the intruder,” him or me?
A few days ago I came home to find Kathleen sitting on the step of the deck, holding in her hand a
full grown red headed woodpecker. She was gently stroking his head as he looked up at her. He
had apparently flown in to our sliding glass door window and knocked himself out, but with a half
hour of tender attention from Kathleen he flew to the nearest tree and looked back at us for a
moment as if to say “thanks.”
I believe that our caring for those creatures around us will always follow us no matter where we go
or what we do, and I only hope that we will take the time to stay put once in a while long enough to
become their friends.
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| A little drop of "Ol' Man River" with us always |