Birds

Listening to and seeing birds offers proven mental health benefits, reducing anxiety, stress, and paranoia while enhancing mood. In early February, I put up a bird feeder that I got for my birthday - it’s one of those ones that has a camera in it so you can login and watch the birds dig through the seeds, finding the ones they like best. Every day since, there has been a feeding frenzy of redpolls, red breasted nuthatches, chickadees, Steller’s jays, European starlings, magpies and the occasional squirrel. ...

The other day I put up the bird feeder that my wife had given me for my birthday last month. It’s one of those feeders with a camera so you can see the birds up close. Within 2 hours, we had a squirrel and shortly after that, chickadees, nuthatches and redpolls. I’m getting more than a hundred pings each day with all the hungry birds that come to feed. Here’s a drawing of one of my visitors, a chickadee who came to rest on one of the lower branches of our oak tree. I drew this on a sticky note to save time and show that you can draw with any kind of supplies that you might have lying around, even when you’re taking a short break at work :-) ...