February 18, 2021

by drplasticpicker

The Black Phoebe is my favorite bird. You could say she is my spirit animal, in a non-religious way. The Black Phoebe belongs to the order of birds Passeriformes, which means in Latin sparrow – like. Can you tell I’m reading Wikipedia? These are usually songbirds and perching birds, that have 3 toes pointing forward and one toe pointing backwads. Half of all birds belong to this family. Most passeri are smaller than other birds.

The Black Phoebe is part of the Tyrant-Flycatcher family. This bird’s range is from southern california to Oregon, and does venture to central and south america. Usually the Black Phoebe stays within it’s range and doesn’t really migrate. She is a songbird, and eats mostly insects. From Wikipedia, “The phoebe can be recognized by a characteristic “tail-wagging” motion, in which the tail is lowered and the tail’s feathers fanned out. It accomplishes almost all locomotion by flight, which is direct, with steady wing beats.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_phoebe

Anyway, I love the Black Phoebe. I see her a lot. She’s a pretty little black bird. Now that we have our composter which is working well in the corner of our backyard, I think the Black Phoebe is visiting more as there are little insects that are the natural part of the decomposition process. One was perched on my mother-in-laws fig tree the other day, sallying forth eating some unknown insect in our new container garden and bird habitat.

I also made this beautiful upcycled succulent planter basket, in between my chores yesterday. Most of the components of the upcycled succulent basket was going into the landfill. But because I always have cactus/succulent potting mix, I created something I think is lovely. I made it myself.

It’s ready in the back of my plug-in hybrid, and I will put it on one of the outside employee lunch tables at work. I need to spruce up our outside work space. Plus, I think it will bring people joy. They’ll look at it and think a little bit. If someone takes it home, that is okay. Maybe they needed a bit of joy. I hope it can stay and grow though, and provide happiness to my fellow co-workers who are sitting outside and eating lunch.