We are bird fans. We have a long-standing love affair with the blue friends (Steller’s jays), the chickadees and the spotted towhees. (Robert has a soft spot for these cute little ground feeders, making sure that they get some of the peanuts that we put out for the Stellar’s jays.)

But we’ve seen several new birds in the past week! We downloaded the Cornell Lab Merlin app to help with identifying our new feathered friends. It helps identify birds by their song or a photo. First: a goldfinch. I realize this is no rare bird alert–it’s the state bird of Washington after all, but it has proven elusive. We saw a woodpecker we haven’t seen before, maybe a red-breasted sapsucker? Plus a pair of black-headed grosbeaks, including a male and a female.

We are working on a new garden area near the large birdfeeder so we moved it up to the porch temporarily. The dinner crew is putting on quite a show this evening.

Photo by Jennifer Uppendahl on Unsplash