03/4/17
house finch

House Finch in Breeding Plumage

House Finch in Breeding Plumage, on Rose ‘Mermaid’

house finch

House Finch in Breeding Plumage, on Rose ‘Mermaid’

The house finch is a very common backyard bird here in Albuquerque. During breeding season, the males take on a much more colorful plumage. This guy seems pretty pleased with himself.

He is sitting on a branch of ‘Mermaid,’ a hybrid bracteata introduced in the US in 1918. Regular readers will recognize it as one of my favorite roses. I have hung a cylinder feeder near it, and any birds hang out on ‘Mermaid’ as they wait their turn at the feeder.

Roses are beginning to leaf out. ‘Mermaid’ is the one rose I cut back in the fall, for reasons I have explained multiple time over the years on this blog. So, I can just watch it leaf out and then bloom a little later.

The other roses, however, are leafing out a little earlier than I would like, and I will be pruning them soon. Hopefully, it will be safe… One year, before I knew anything about roses in Albuquerque, I pruned in February! I had one of the best spring blooms ever that year! But, I also recall 2005, when I pruned in early April and did not fertilize until late April. We got a hard freeze in May, which pretty much wiped out the spring bloom here. That was a freak occurrence, but in the time of climate change, who knows?

Nevertheless, I am ready to begin pruning roses, and will hope for the best.

I will also enjoy the birds that come to the yard. 🙂

02/20/15
bird American robin

Bird Portraits

Bird “Portraits” from the Great Backyard Bird Count 2015

Bird “portraits” are always fun for a photographer. Any place works for viewing them. One of the joys of having a garden in the desert Southwest is attracting birds, bees, butterflies, and other things to it.

The Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico has many different microenvironments, and we get to see many different birds simply by going a few miles in a different direction. But, this past weekend was a beautiful one to be out cleaning up the yard in preparation for spring. So, I did my count and photography in the garden this year. These are a few of the very common birds in my yard at this time of year.

House Finch

bird house finch

House finch

White winged Dove

bird white winged dove

White winged dove

American Robin

bird American robin

American robin

Scrub Jay

bird scrub jay

Scrub jay

Birds – another joy of gardening in the desert Southwest.

07/26/08

This Is Why Gardeners Garden!

It's the Simple Things!

The reward for the time and effort spent gardening? It is the simple joy of spending a morning like this enjoying the beauty of the flowers and the birds and the clouds and the sounds!

The rose in the foreground in ‘Cesar E. Chavez,’ a hybrid tea.

The two larger birds are house finches.

The cute little black-and-yellow birds are a pair of goldfinches.

Sheer joy in a Saturday morning!