Bird Feeder Joy

I have been planning to buy and put up a bird feeder for months now. I even chose birds as our nature study focus for several months in a row as I anticipated finally buying a bird feeder that month. The thing with having three little children is that you don't tend to go to any more stores than you absolutely have to on your weekly grocery expeditions. I just didn't happen to go into a store that carried bird feeders in all that time. However, the wait is now over. I installed it where we can see it from our living room window. We have a buffet of sunflower seeds, mixed bird feed, and a tube of suet/peanut butter/bird seed that seems to have been a mistake...it is very solid in the cold. We'll see.

We noticed our first visitor yesterday. A little, dull grayish bird with striking black and white wing and tail feathers. We searched through our bird books, then started looking through the Cornell Ornithology Lab website. It took some looking and thinking before we realized that it was a female American goldfinch in winter plumage (which is why I hadn't noticed any yellow). Three more came to visit this morning, and since we were looking for it, we noticed a yellowish tinge to some of them. I don't know how long it will take for other birds to visit, but we will always remember our first little visitor. The goldfinches first went for the sunflower seeds, but also moved on to the mixed bird feed.