While birding is generally an outdoor activity, seasoned birders know that certain indoor locations can offer productive and unobtrusive viewing sites, especially when they overlook good avian habitat. Such is the opportunity provided by one of our bathroom windows.
Just outside the window is a naturalized hedge of lilac shrubs. Untouched for many years, the lilacs still produce attractive and fragrant flowers but are also riddled with dead branches. Better yet, beneath the shrubs, the soil is especially rich and coated with many years of dead leaves and twigs. As a result, the lilacs and the ground beneath them offer ideal hunting grounds for a wide variety of avian residents and visitors.
Spotted towees are especially fond of the shrub line, scratching away in the leaf litter to find a host of tasty invertebrates. Other common patrons are chickadees, bushtits, dark-eyed juncos, house wrens, gray catbirds and house finches; occasional visitors include hermit and Swainson's thrushes, white-crowned sparrows and yellow-rumped warblers. Personally, I have found that birdwatching while tooth brushing is an efficient way to start he day!
