Christmas Eve in Wisconsin

Mourning doves, cardinals, blue jays, house finches, juncos, goldfinches, purple finches, starlings (8 in a square foot patch of grass!), city sparrows, a downy woodpecker, and some kind of sparrow we didn’t recognize showed up at the bird feeders and the snow beneath this morning. We watched for a while, and then called Eldest Son, who walked a couple blocks over to see.

Of course, they were all gone when he arrived. He hung around a few minutes, and then left. 10 minutes later the crowd was back out front. Birds are still dripping out of the trees to the feeders this afternoon.

I took Youngest Daughter to buy a present for Eldest Son. She isn’t exactly swimming in cash, so her choices were a bit limited. I made suggestions, but she said “I want to buy him a Star Wars book.” “You don’t have enough money for that—look at the prices,” I replied. “Well, I’ll buy him a short story,” she answered.