When what to my wondering eyes should appear....

I love my birds.

We used to see rose-breasted grosbeaks and evening grosbeaks galore at our old house, but we had lots of pine trees around us then.

Here at our "new" house, which we moved into in 1999, we seldom see grosbeaks, because we have mostly oak trees, I guess, but oh, the birds we do see!

That's an indigo bunting in the first photo. He arrived one rainy spring day a few years ago and hung around only a few hours before moving on. He was kind enough to pose for this shot before taking off.

I'll never forget the day I was working in the kitchen and glanced out the window in time to see this at the suet feeder. It's a pileated woodpecker, and I'd seen only a few, from a long, long distance, before this one stopped by. I couldn't believe my eyes at first, because I'd never seen such a large bird partaking of the suet. He came back several times over the next few days and hammered away at the suet cake. He pretty much reduced the cake to a few crumbs in no time. We still have pileated woodpeckers in our woods out back, but I haven't seen one at the suet cake lately.

Bluebirds! I think bluebirds are my very favorite birds. I love their beauty and their shyness.

The first one shown here perched on the same bird feeder mentioned above, posing patiently while I snapped his picture, two or three years ago. When I e-mailed this photo to my sister, she accused me of having put a plastic bird on the feeder. I guess he does look almost too beautiful to be real, but real he is. (Click on the photo to get a larger view of him.)

There's nothing more striking than the sapphire blue of a male bluebird.

I hadn't seen bluebirds around our yard for a couple of years and was getting quite discouraged. I got even more discouraged when Grammie G posted these photos of bluebirds in her yard a little over a week ago. She lives in central Maine, so I figured if there were bluebirds in her yard, that must mean they'd by-passed our southern Maine home to get to her beautiful yard.

Wrong! Yesterday morning I peered out the pantry window, did a double-take, and hollered to Ken, "There are bluebirds in one of the nesting boxes!" Ken put up these new nesting boxes only recently, and we generously rent them for a song. :•)

And I've pretty much spent every spare minute at the pantry window, binoculars or camera in hand, watching the comings and goings of the bluebird couple building their nest in this nesting box.

A few minutes ago I watched the male waiting patiently on the box's roof while the female went off to gather nesting materials. She returned with a mouthful of pine needles and one old, dried leaf. The male grabbed the leaf from her, whittled it down to size so it would fit through the nesting box opening, and took it inside. She did the same with her pine needles.

I see baby bluebirds in my future.