Birder's Christmas Ornaments

The weather here in New England this weekend has been very wintery - snow has been falling almost non-stop since Friday afternoon. It's still beautiful and white, which helps to bring on the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, my Christmas Bird Count today was cancelled because of it. (Most CBCs are usually just delayed by weather, but one where you need to schedule a boat are harder to re-schedule I guess.)

Anyway, since we have been spending our time indoors this weekend, we've been 'birding' in other ways. On-line - looking at various trip reports and photo galleries; on the TV - watching David Attenborough's "Life of Birds" (again - I just cannot get enough of it); and around the home - but not in the way you might think. We live in a condo that we bought last year, and have not tried to put up feeders yet. No, I have been noticing how much bird-related stuff we have here. In addition to the things we've bought ourselves, there are the many bird-related gifts that we've received over the years. I think that I will soon post photos of some of the more interesting bird stuff we have here. But for today, my plan was to share a few of my favorite bird Christmas ornaments that we have on the tree this year, like the partridge in a pear tree that started off this post. Since Pamela and I got married this year, we received quite a few "1st Christmas" ornaments like:

We have also each brought a few of our own ornaments to the tree from the years before we were together. For instance, Pamela had a few that I consider a more 'traditional New England' style birding ornaments:

I had accumulated a few Snowy Owl ornaments myself (at one point, I thought I would have a tree completely decorated with Snowy Owl ornaments)

And, new to our tree this year:

We got this handsome carved owl while in Texas last spring

Maybe someday I will have the tree with just Snowy Owls

I have to have a few woodpeckers on the tree. I've had some resin ones in the past years but couldn't resist this beautiful Austrian glass one when we saw it in Newburyport a few weeks ago.


But without a doubt, my favorite ornament on our tree is one that Pamela gave me a few years ago after she returned from a trip to Costa Rica (we had only been dating a month or so at the time) - a beautiful hummingbird, hand-carved from a Tagua nut: