Feathered Friends, Near and Far, by Larry Hurley

It’s never too early to lay in a supply of birdseed. You never know when the DC region might experience a Nor’easter snowstorm that shuts everything down for a few days, and your feathered friends are depending on you to make life easier for them. Here, from the window of our former home in Maryland in February of 2010, we have two male cardinals, a junco, and a white-throated sparrow perched on a potted laceleaf Japanese maple. They are staged to come in under an overhang, where the snow wasn’t as deep and where we had set out sunflower seeds.

Speaking of birds and snow, we were privileged to take a trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, and Antarctica in November. I remember when Stephanie’s mom Sonja came back from an Antarctic trip, and she was raving about it. I thought, what is there to see besides ice? It turns out that the ice, snow and glaciers are beautiful, but for me, it was all about the birds. We saw eight species of penguins, a half dozen species of albatross, and lots of others for my bird life list. The photo is from the Falkland Islands. It’s a Gentoo penguin picking up a chunk of mud to add to a small ground nest, which at the time his mate was sitting on. He just went over, tapped it onto the side of the nest, and then waddled back to get more mud. I thought I would include it as a “bow” to all of you who have been kind enough to read my writings over the years. ~ Larry Hurley, Garden Writer