A couple of days ago, I was sitting in My Morning Chair and watching the array of birds that were dropping in and out of my birdfeeders. They shifted and re-shifted every few seconds, and it seemed that I was looking at my garden through a kaleidoscope. I am rather new to the hobby of bird watching, and almost every day, I had seen a bird that wa new to me. I wanted to know it all–Which bird is that? How does he sound? Will he be back or is he just passing through?

Suddenly, a gorgeious bronze bird began eating from a feeder that was just a few feet away from me, and I was fascinated.

Summer Bouquet – Jacki Kellum Watercolor Painting

Time for a little bit of background: I am a painter–and I am a colorist, I am not accustomed to noticing things that are bronze. Before that moment, I had always considered bronze things to be just more brown things, and I have never cared for brown before.

But as i sat there watching this bronze bird, I noticed that as he [she] bobbed around in the sun, his tail feathers seemed to be more orange than brown; At times, this brown bird didn’t seem to be brown at all–at times, he seemed to radiate.

I needed to know what kind of bird had happened upon my yard, and I went inside and began a frantic Google search for the bird that i thought I had seen — No Luck!

I returned to my post, and soon, my Bird of Paradise returned. His colors shimmered. Suddenly, a male cardinal jumped down and almost landed on top of my bird, After a brief greeting, the two birds skittered away, The gorgeous red cardinal was chasing my bird across the sky. Whoa! Was my glorious bird a female cardinal? I had not seen a crest on top of my bird’s head, and I was confused. I returned to my Google search, and I discovered that the crests on top of cardinals’ heads seem flat at times.

Was My Bird a Female Cardinal?

The truth is that I had never paid attention to female cardinals before. Compared to their male counterparts, they might seem drab, but on one lucky day, I was allowed to see female caldinals through a new lens. I was able to see my bird not as a creature that was relative to another. I was allowed to see my bird as she is–a beautiful, bronze bird with touches of billiantly irridescent orange–especially as she flashes across the sky–with or without a man,

Every Creature Deserves to Be Viewed Indivually and Not as Relative to Another,

Just Another Lesson from My Garden