Cherry blossoms and birds

This is just a little introduction to the Cherry Blossom Festival. Also it's like 37 degrees. Be sure to crank up the volume! The traffic going by was rather loud.

Also, many of you may not know that Brando and I are crazy bird people (Brando more so than me!). I chalk that up to many reasons, the most compelling being every apartment we seem to move into over the years doesn't allow pets. While that has been a sad state of affairs, we have looked instead to our wild friends, supplying them with endless amounts of feed and perching spots.

With our move to VA, the story hasn't changed. If anything, we are excited to see new wildlife, while at the same time still missing our CA loves (like quails). At any rate, this has been a long introduction to tell you we will be listing the birds we see around our feeder and in the neighborhood (see "Our Backyard Birds" to the right). This is both a way for us to keep track and a chance for you to be a part of our weird avian world. One day Brando will have his parrot, and our downward spiral into feathered insanity will be complete.

Noticeably absence from our current list that were frequent visitors in Novato are scrub jays, house finches, towhees, and, as already mentioned, quails. We are hoping to attract the finches again since those guys are all across the continental U.S. There is also an eastern version of the towhee that will hopefully come around. The jays and quails, unfortunately, are west-coast dwellers so we will just have to live without for now.

Any other bird fans out there?