Bird "Music"

We have two pie cherry trees in our yard.  Fairly young and quite small trees yet, but they are growing.  Last year they faithfully produced a small crop of cherries--of which I did not get a single one.  The birds stripped the trees long before those cherries were close to ripe.  I was somewhat less than happy.

This year we again got a crop of cherries.  A larger crop than last year and I REALLY want some cherry jam and at least one cherry pie.  What to do!  I didn't want to put out the money for bird netting this year, so instead I put some old computer game disks in the trees.  They spun and flashed and were actually quite pretty.  The robins were most unappreciative and stayed away from my cherries.  They began to ripen.

Well, this has been one of those years with a LOT of wind.  I no soonoer put those CDs in the trees than the wind blew at gale force and pretty much tangled up the strings with the branches.  I will hang them differently next time...But the wind also discouraged most of the birds from sitting in my trees and making a meal of cherries.

The wind died down some time late yesterday afternoon.  My cherries were close to ripe and I could hear a lot of bird conversation outside.  Every time I looked out the window the trees were unmolested.  However, Kent said that some of the cherries were looking brown.  Translation:  something had snacked on them.  This morning the birds were chattering and clacking quite loudly outside and I actually saw one lovely wax-wing variety sitting on the top of the tree.  While the robins didn't care for my CDs the blackbirds and other birds were completely unconcerned with them.  So fairly early this morning I rushed outside and picked all my cherries...

The trees will get larger and eventually I will have enough cherries to share with the birds, but in the meantime, I think that I will have to invest in some bird netting.  The CDs will be moving to the apricot tree.  It is also young and I want a pie...

We appear to have a bumper crop of raspberries and I spent most of the morning picking raspberries.  I DO have enough raspberries to share with whomever chooses to dine on them.  We had some for lunch with left-over homemade caramel sauce made with coconut milk.  It was a spur-of -the-moment experiment and was very good.

Of course, all this harvesting leaves little time for glass and beading.  I do still have some things to photograph.  My latest experiment has been to try making wings.  They resemble angel wings.  I wanted to make them sparkly, but dunking them in pixie dust was not very successful.  I may have to see what I can do with dichro.