Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Spring Inspiration

Posted: May 22, 2023 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Bird Watching, Poetry, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Uncategorized | Tags: Birds, Birdwatching, Poetry, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Writing to be Read | 2 Comments

Background of feathers
Text: Tales from the Bird Sanctuary with Kaye Lynne Booth

I love April. It’s National Poetry Month, which always puts me in a state of looking for and appreciating the beauty in the world around me, so I can express it in my poetry. And what better time to focus on the beauty in the world, than when things are just starting to green up, and the migrating birds are flocking in to the bird sanctuary.

“But, what does a bird sanctuary have to do with with National Poetry Month?” you might ask. After all, this is a “Tales from the Bird Sanctuary” post, where talk of poetry may not seem to fit. The truth is, since I started this blog series last year, I’ve been wondering what it was doing on a blog about books and writing. But as I spent most of April preparing and launching Poetry Treasures 3: Passions and compiling my own poetry collection, Small Wonders, and watched all the migrating birds coming in for the summer and the green of my tulips popping upm through the soil, it occured to me that Spring is the season of new beginnings, in nature and in my writing endeavors.

You Know It’s Spring…

You know that it’s Spring when new birds start appearing in pairs

You know it’s Spring whe the first Hummingbird buzzes by your head

You know it’s Spring when green pokes through brown whereever you look

You know it’s Spring when the sun warms the days, but the nights still carry a chill

You know it’s Spring when the buzz of insects fills the air once more

Bird Tales

This year, the first Hummingbird was spotted on April 4th, which was a bit early in the season, but I welcomed him, putting up the first nectar feeder of the year to accomodate my early guest.

Male Rufus Hummingbird drinking nectear from a feeder. — Photo by Kaye Lynne Booth

Mid-April I had more birds than I could count. New birds migrating in filled my trees raising a cacphony of birdsong and the bird sanctuary was a very busy place.

Photo of a tree with bird feeders hanging and several birds.

Photo of bird feeders with birds on them.

How many birds do you see? When Spring hits and the migrating birds come in, there are birds everywhere you look. The noise level can be quite surprising when you get so many birds all chattering at once. They are on the ground, too, but they all scatter when I come out and I haven’t been able to get that on film, as yet.

Phot of a Robin looking at the camera. — Photo by Kaye Lynne Booth

The first Robin is a sure sign of Spring. This may be one of last year’s youngsters, returning. I like to think it is the one that came right up to my porch and asked me for food when daddy would bring them out each morning, two years ago, but it’s more likely to be one of its youngsters. Perhaps this one will have a brood of its own this year.

Photo of a nuthatch on a suet feeder. — Photo by Kaye Lynne Booth

Nuthatch sampling the suet. Nuthatches hang at the sanctuary all year long. I have had multiple families over the years. Last year I had pygmy nuthatches make an appearance, and I’m hoping I will see them again this year. They are smaller, with rufus colored breasts. They are darling.

Photo of three female dear, momma and babies — Photo by Kaye Lynne Booth

And the birds weren’t the only spring visitors I had this year. The water attracts more than just birds, and so do my little green plants poking up out of the soil. They will be a challenge in my garden all summer. I planted a new raspberry bush which I will have to keep a close eye on. For now though, they’re just after the water, so I’ll have to refill the bird baths when they go.

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; and book 1 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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Want exclusive content? Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. She won’t flood your inbox, she NEVER sells her list, and you might get a freebie occasionally. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, just for joining.

Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Woodpecker Haven

Posted: February 20, 2023 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Bird Watching, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary | Tags: Bird Watching, Kaye Lynne Booth, Nuthatch, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Woodpeckers, Writing to be Read | 5 Comments

I get a wide variety of birds visiting my bird sanctuary, but today I’d like to focus on the different types of woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are curious birds that use their beaks in ways which other birds do not. No matter the type, they all have long, pointed bills, which they use to drill through wood and tree bark in order to locate and get to the insects underneath or to mark their territories. With strong claws, they cling to tree trunks, using their tails as props, and their flight patterns are termed undulating. There are many varieties, including woodpeckers, sapsuckers, and flickers, and several of them visit my yard on a regular basis.

Some varieties are similar in appearance with their black and white coloring, which always make them look as if they’re wearing formal attire. Among these black & white beauties are the hairy woodpecker, Nutall’s woodpecker, and Williamson’s Sapsucker, featured in the gallery below. The Hairy Woodpeckers are Robin-sized, (9 inches), with a loud distinctive peek sound and single-pitched rattled, and they are found all across the United States. Slightly larger, (9 1/2 inches), makes a soft churring sound. The Nuttall’s Woodpecker is smaller than those two, (7-7 1/2 inches), has a rolling preep call and a sharp pit-it sound.

Woodpeckers get their food by hammering holes in the bark, and extracting insects or grubs with long, flexible tongues. They start with a soft tapping to locate the food, and once located, they get down to business. It’s chow time! Hard, rapid drumming on dry limbs indicates that a woodpecker is claiming its territory and can be loud enough to be audible from great distances. One summer I had one who kept claiming its territory on my metal ladder, which was quite the alarm clock on early mornings.

More colorful are the grey and tan Northern Red-shafted Flickers, like the young one shown here, which I rescued last summer. (You can read about that here.) These birds are in the woodpecker family, building their nests in holes in trees, but feed on ants and ground insects, as well as berries, and repeat a loud wicka, wicka, wicka sound. They are elusive birds which are difficult to photograph. I only was able to get the photos like the one above because the little guy was stranded. He took off and disappeared into the forest just as soon as he was able.

Although they aren’t in the woodpecker family, Nuthatches have many similarities to them, especially in their ‘formal attire’, their long, pointed beaks, and the fact that they are cavity dwellers. They also nest in holes in hollow trees, and use their long, sharp beaks to tap-tap-tap on the trees, but their tapping is not as fast or as loud as that of the woodpeckers. They tap on the trees to crack open seeds, rather than to drill into the wood. But these small birds, (4 1/2 – 6 inches), don’t use their tails as props like the woodpeckers do, and are often seen moving down the tree trunk head first. I call them little forest acrobats because of this and the fact they they also can go the full diameter of a tree branch, walking on the underside with their heads toward the ground. Usually I have the slightly larger White-breasted Nuthatches, like the one above, but this past year, I also had visits from the Red-breasted variety, as well.

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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Want exclusive content? Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. She won’t flood your inbox, she NEVER will sells her list, and you might get a freebie occasionally. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, just for joining.

Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Rescuing a baby flicker

Posted: November 21, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Bird Watching, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary | Tags: Bird Rescue, Bird Watching, Birds, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Writing to be Read | 15 Comments

Today as I was out doing my landscape maintenance for the bird sanctuary, walking on the path which goes around the water feature, which is only half full this time of year as I prepare to drain it for winter, I saw a baby flicker sitting on top of the drainage pipe. I set down my bucket and stopped to have a better look at him, expecting him to fly away as soon as I approached. But he didn’t. Instead, he just sat there, staring back at me, holding very still.

Now I have wondered through the trees on my property for over an hour, trying to get a picture during mating season, when the trees were filled with flickers and the air was filled with mating calls, only to hang my head on defeat after concluding I wasn’t going to get close enough for a good shot of any one. That’s how skittish flickers are, so the behavior of this little guy was unusual, to say the least.

The fact is, the little guy was scared, and I realized that his tail was in the water, which could hinder flight. He was stranded, too scared or too wet to make an attempt at a getaway. He just sat there staring as I got closer, providing some great photo opportunities. I didn’t want to frieghten him even more by obliviously clicking pictures, so I set down my phone and got down on my knees at the pool’s edge. I reached down very slowly and placed a gloved hand around his body. Trying not to scare him more, I reached over with my thumb and stroked his little feathered head a few times, hoping to let him know that I was trying to help and meant no harm. Even through my garden glove I could feel the softness of his feathers. He hardly weighed aything at all as I scooped him up gently and released him onto the ground, where he flapped his wings and hopped off into the trees, reinforcing my suspicions that the wet feathers was what prevented him from flying off like I expected.

I tried to follow him just to be sure he would be able to fly once he dried, but I lost him in the trees. Had I not stepped in. I have no doubt that he would have sat helpless on that drain pipe until a coyote or other wildlife snatched him away. It was a satisfying feeling to know that I had helped one of my little bird friends and had at least, offered him a chance to survive.

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

Tales from the Bird Santuary: Babies!

Posted: October 10, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Bird Watching, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary | Tags: Babies, Baby birds, Birds, Kaye Lynne Booth, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Writing to be Read | 4 Comments

Every year one of the highlights of the bird sanctuary is discovering which birds have chosen to make nests and raise their little families here. Two years ago, in the spring, I watched as three baby woodpeckers grew and finally set out on their own. One decided that the sanctuary was a pretty cool place, and he hung out through the end of the season. That same summer I got to I also got to watch as a couple of robins raised a family of three, one which was almost taking food out of my hand, as well as monitoring the progress of a nuthatch family, several broods of chick-a-dees, northern flickers, evening grosbeaks, and a family of tiny little birds, which I was unable to identify, nested and raised their brood in the hollow tree just off my porch.

That tree has been home to many a bird family. During my first summer on the property, it was home to a family of chick-a-dees, which were written into my first children’s story, Charlie Chick-a-dee Makes a New Friend, after the violet-green swallows came in late in the summer and chased the chick-a-dees out to claim the nest for their own. Make no mistake. Birds can be brutal.

This year, I have a single baby grosbeak that hangs out in my coal box, which is just to the side of the feeder area, and comes out all alone to get seed each day. I don’t know what happened to its parents, but it seems to be an orphan.

It’s so much fun to watch as the babies grow and learn. (I had to throw in the photo of the baby deer because it is so darn cute.) So far this year, I’ve had a baby woodpecker pass through, but he must have found a better place to nest. I’ve had two batches of nuthatches and two rounds of chick-a-dees, and some baby robins, and rock doves, and evening grosbeaks. And of course, the hummingbirds. Lots and lots of young hummingbirds, juveniles, (we don’t see actual babies unless we happen upon a nest).

Hummingbirds mate twice a year, so I always get quite a few babies, but I can never tell which babies belong to which mamas and papas because there are so many of them. In the height of summer, my yard is a virtual fly zone.

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Frantic Hummingbirds

Posted: June 29, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Bird Watching, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary | Tags: Bird Watching, Birds, Colorado, Hummingbirds, Kaye Lynne Booth, Spring Storm, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Writing to be Read | 4 Comments

Colorado weather is always unpredictable. There’s a saying, that is you don’t like the weather in Colorado, just wait twenty minutes, and having lived in Colorado for all of my life, I can say that it is usually true. But this year, we had an unseasonal snow storm on May 21-22, and my area was hit hard. We got at least 24 inches of wet, heavy snow, which left me temporarily snowbound, and confused all the plants in my garden, like my rose, day lilies and lilac bushes, which already had new growth showing. The plants weren’t the only ones confused. After all, the previous week, the temperatures were in the seventies. I was a little confused myself. All the birds who visit the bird sanctuary and the hummingbirds, which have been in the area since April 18th this year, were absolutely frantic.

The snow began falling on the evening of the 20th, and the trees were already drooping low by 10 p.m. As I went to shut my generator off, It sounded like the trees were alive with the little twitts of hummingbirds. They should have been all tucked into their nests by that time of night, but for some reason, they were all perched in the tree branches griping about the weather. I believe that many of these tiny birds were just passing through and the snow stranded them, but for whatever reason, I could tell by the sound that there were a lot of them in those trees.

Hummingbirds are migratory and they fly great distances every year from South America all the way up to the northern regions of the United States. It’s really quite amazing how far these tiny travelers commute. What they don’t do is fly in the dark, at least not usually, but on that night, I must have startled one of them, because I actually got buzzed. At 10 o’clock at night, that is unheard of.

The next morning, I awoke to about a foot of snow and everything was covered in white, and at 5:30 in the morning, the hummingbirds were frantically fighting to get nectar from partially frozen feeders.

Hummingbirds consume mass amounts of food in order to maintain their high metabolisms. In situations where the food supplies are limited for some reason, like a surprise snow storm, they can find a perch and go into a torpor state to conserve its energy reserves, but for some reason, these hummingbirds remained frantically feeding all day.

I placed a fresh feeder under the porch where it would be sheltered for them, in order to up their food supplies. But, it was so cold that even that feeder was soon partially frozen. That didn’t stop them from feeding from it though. Below is a video I took from inside my cabin. My front porch was busy like this all day long. If nothing else, they provided good entertainment on a day when I was stuck indoors.

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Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.

When not writing, she keeps up her author’s blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. In addition to creating her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, she offers quality author services, such as editing, social media & book promotion, and online writing courses through WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. As well as serving as judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.

In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.

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Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Spring Preening

Posted: May 30, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Bird Watching, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary | Tags: Bird Watching, Birds, Hummingbirds, Tales from the Bird Sanctuary, Writing to be Read | 6 Comments

It’s hard work running a bird sanctuary. Make no mistake about it. But the rewards are awe inspiring and make it all worth it. I have a plethora of birds which visit the sanctuary of my property each year, and my visitors change with every season. (I wrote about the wide variety of bird visitors and shared images a while back. You can see that post here.) There’s always the regular day-to-day tasks of filling feeders, but this is the time of year when the hummingbirds start arriving and visiting birds expect baths to be available, that adds extra tasks to the sanctuary to-do list.

This week was my spring cleaning, when I spruce up the garden area, clearing away remnants of fall, cleaning out water features, and preparing the area for the coming bird season, because birds need a clean and healthy environment in which to thrive. Contrary to popular beliefs, they are not ‘dirty birds’. In fact, the bird baths and water features are my most popular attractions.

This year, I’m planning to renovate my main water feature, installing a new pump to create a waterfall, which the birds should absolutely love. This requires the old water to be pumped out and the whole thing cleaned out well before installing the new pump.

As I said before, the birds all love running water; any kind of spray or fountain will attract them, especially the hummingbirds. Today, since I was pumping out the water feature, I decided to see if I could attract some hummingbirds with the water, and hung the hose over a tree branch, suspending it above the ground, so that it made a good splash. This is a trick that usually works, and before I knew it I had two hummingbirds flirting with the idea of a spring shower, swooping back and forth near the stream of water coming from the hose.

The force of the water was now making an indentation where it hit the ground, and a small, shallow pool had begun to form, so I put my thumb over the end of the hose, creating a lighter spray. One hummingbird found a shallow spot, and literally sat in the pool and bathed. I had seen them take showers in water streams before, but I didn’t know hummingbirds actually bathed. If I’d had my phone, I could have gotten some excellent photos, but at the time, I didn’t want to take my thumb away from the end of the hose and scare him away with the sudden noise from the hard hit of the water. By the time I did run get my phone, she was long gone. But I was rewarded later with another young hummer, who danced around the flow of the hose as if she were performing a mid- air ballet, which I was able to photograph. She blends in pretty well with the background, so she’s kind of hard to see, so I outlined her in each one.

And it wasn’t only the humming birds who felt the need for a spring preening. The bird baths had a plethora of visitors, including the Robin and the Scrub Jay pictured below at the pedestal bird bath.

This post is my first official installment in the “Tales from the Bird Sanctuary” blog series. I posted a post last month about the bird sanctuary which received favorable response, so I thought my readers might have interest in hearing more about my little bird visitors, so I hope you have enjoyed this. The photos aren’t great. Birds don’t often pose for their photos and the lighting is often off. So, what do you think? Would you like to see more installments in this series? Is it worth it?

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