A Frog's View

When our tiny development was first started, there were these lovely drainage areas built. They are all over the area, including the next development over. They are necessary as we are on the top of a hill and there is a lot of water up here. People have a tendency to like dry basements.

Over the years these drainage areas have filled up and are even now being fill by ground water as well as run off water and have turned into bog areas and ponds. You know what they say "Nature always finds a way."

You can just see the roof of my house from the outside banks of this pond. Also note the bluebird houses that are installed around this area.

This was left go natural and is teaming with life, even in the dead of winter. The bluebirds are always hanging around as well as the red-winged blackbirds. Water fowl come to spend the nights here.

Each year this little pond gets prettier and prettier, wilder and wilder. Now we have toads, snapping turtles, bullfrogs and any variety of insects living there. There are also a large variety of bog, water and field birds living around this pond. The deer visit her regularly and can often be seen from my deck playing here.

This year, at the finch socks, I'm getting the regular gold finches that are here year round. Lately I've heard a lot of noise and squabbling out there and noticed another species fighting with the gold finches. These had to be finches too, as they wanted the seed in the finch socks. It turns out they are pine siskins, here because of a seed failure to the north. I don't get these interesting little finches very often, so it was nice to see such a gracious flock of them. Besides the pine siskins, the redpolls have also come to visit for the same reason. Both of these are northern birds that consider this area a bit to far south to inhabit. There is seed here for them. And it's nice having them here.