Day 7: at least, bluebirds are doing well

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As we settle into our new reality, our new mandates. Stay at home. Self-quarantine, self-isolate and do not get the virus and/or pass it on. What then do we do? 

They seem to want us to stream. But isn’t that just watching TV for 12 hours a day and true, I have watched more than my share of Andy Griffith, but every now and then we all need to go back to Mayberry. Jeez, life was so simple then.  

Instead, we could read or write a book. Work one of those jigsaw puzzles hidden in the closet or, maybe, and this is the entire point of this: watch the birds just outside our windows.

This morning, a yellow-rumped warbler in breeding plumage took a splashy dunk in my birdbath. And I have been having great enjoyment in watching Eastern bluebirds come to my suet feeders. Why? I live in the woods and we all know that bluebirds prefer grassland and open non-woody habitat. It says to me that their population is doing well and they are reaching out to places they would not normally go.

We can take pride in this because roughly 100 years ago their population was in decline. That was reversed when people started putting up nest boxes for them. And speaking of Mayberry and the 1960s, the first bluebird box trail came to our area in 1968. That's when TVA biologists that included Ben Jaco and Dick Fitz set up a pickup truck full below Norris Dam.

Everything needs a sense of shelter and a home to stay in when a scary pandemic is all around us. 

Recently, I received several bluebird photos from Betty Thompson, our eye to the sky in Kansas. And for the photo at the top, she didn’t even have to leave her home.

Thanks, Betty!

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