A Lifer?

This handsome African Gray parrot is about the extent of my birding as of late. He lives at the nursing home where my sister is living now and from the first time I met him he has liked me. He talks quite a lot but mostly only when I turn my back. Last week he surprized me by asking "Wanna go to Albuquerque?" He gets as close as he can and gives kisses. About ten years ago he came in with a resident and has become a permanent resident himself even though his owner has since died. My whole family enjoys visiting him after we've visited with my sister. I will say though I have seen MANY red-tailed hawks along the freeway while driving back and forth to the nursing home.

My backyard is hosting all of the winter regulars, house sparrows, house finches, juncos, goldfinches, cardinals and blue jays, white breasted and red breasted nuthatches. The downy and hairy woodpeckers and chickadees are everywhere. Right now as I'm writing this it is two-thirty in the afternoon and the temperature is a whopping -7 with a windchill factor of -31!! The gusty winds aren't expected to die down until later this evening. There is a handfull of chickadees huddled and tapping their black oilers on the window air conditioner in the bedroom window. Birds often gather there on cold days because of the warm air that I'm sure leaks out through the window. Even on such a brutally cold day as today I am cheered to hear the spring songs of the chickadees and house finches. The male cardinals are singing territorial songs high in the bare tree branches. Because of my sister's illness, as tired as I am of the cold, I find myself trying not to wish for time to hurry us into spring. But no matter our wishes, the days lengthen and the sun passes higher in the sky in it's own time. There is so much in life that is unpredictable and out of our control but the seasons merge one into another in their own time too.