It's the Birds All Over

The time has come, as it does every year, when Ron Martin starts spending nearly every waking hour that he's not at work outside in our yard. You know how when you were little you heard that familiar "ting, ting, ting" of the ice cream truck entering your neighborhood and you ran to your mom, who was either taking laundry out of the washer or baking cookies, begging on bended knee for a nickel so you could get a fudge bar that would immediately start melting and running down your fingers and hands and got so sticky that by the end of five minutes there were all sorts of honey bees and flies smothering you? Remember that excitement? That sweet anticipation? The crossed fingers that would guarantee your mom would say, "Just take a whole dollar and make yourself sick with sugar"?

That's how Ron is about getting to play outside with his tools and his hands and his unending list of projects. And so, it has begun. Again.

On Friday afternoon, he was outside doing what he does. I was inside, no doubt watching some crime related story about a woman who ended up murdering her husband with a Qtip because he preferred the company of lawn clippings and compost to her(!) All of the sudden I heard a fairly violent "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." And then I heard it again. It took a couple of seconds for me to realize that Ron was jiggling the screened-in porch door, which is what we do to unlock it from the outside. (Don't get any bright ideas about sneaking into our house to steal the silver and Van Gogh's. I've since installed a very high tech alarm system and a pit bull named Pinky on the screened in porch).

I went to see what all the rattling was about and there he stood, eyes wide open, hands all aflutter. "You, you, you've got to make some more hummingbird food. I just saw a BALTIMORE ORIOLE on the telephone wire!"

I give Ron a hard time because he's just so darn funny. But, seriously. Have you ever seen a Baltimore Oriole? They are spectacular. Flaming orange and ebony black. This is only the second one we've seen in all our years of paying attention to birds, so it really is a big deal.

Later that night I heard Ron sawing and hammering downstairs and this morning he told me he'd built a feeder for the Great Orange One . . . a nice little platform with half an orange nailed on it and a lidful of grape jelly. Apparently this is what these birds jones for after they've had their daily fill of insects. Yum.

Stay tuned for more birdwatching reports. And funny stories about Ron Martin.