Friday, April 12, 2013

I saw my first cardinal!

No, not that kind!

Not that kind either.

This kind!

With all my trips to the East Coast, I've never seen a cardinal. I'm not exactly a bird watcher, but still, how can you miss spotting a good-sized bright red bird? A whale of any size is also on my list of never seen things. I've been at the beach when everyone is pointing at a whale doing that spray thing in the distance, but I'm always about a second too late and looking in the wrong direction.

This week I'm at my Mom's place in Connecticut and I decided to fill her bird feeder with a homemade concoction. I took a piece of bread and covered it with peanut butter and some kind of butter substitute. Then I sprinkled sunflower seeds on the fatty mess and put it in the suet holder. Sure enough, before we knew it, the squirrels were all over it. Fat as can be squirrels who seem no worse for wear over the winter came to steal the bird food. What else is new? But then this morning my sister told me to be very still, there was a cardinal out there too. So what did I do? Sit quietly like a good bird watcher and enjoy the amazing creature? No, I grabbed the camera to run outside to take a picture. That poor bird took one look at me in my bright red dog pajamas and hasn't been heard from since. But I did see it with my own eyes before it flew for its life. It was a cardinal. Not a pope, not a ball player but the real deal original bird kind of cardinal. Next on my list is to finally spot a whale. For that I'll leave the dog pajamas at home. 



Picture credits:
usatoday.com
espn.com
allaboutbirds.org