Busy at the Bird Feeder (first draft)

from Busy in the Sun: Big Old Garden book #3

In a very old tree just across the street from the Big Old Garden, in a very deep hole just above a broken-off branch, lived a honey bee. Well, that isn’t quite true. Thirty thousand bees lived in that hole, where they had built a beautiful home with everything they needed for the winter. Now at last winter was here. After working all through the spring, the summer, and the autumn, worker bee Newbie was not the newest member of the hive anymore. She had thousands of younger sisters, all of them with beautiful black and yellow coats, shiny wings, and fantastic dancing feet. They were hard workers, talented scouts, and fast flyers. But none of them would be going outside for a very long time.

For the next several months, they would stay inside, eat from the honey pantry, and feed the youngest bees the bee-bread they had saved. When the cold winds rocked their tree gently back and forth, the honeybees would huddle close. And when the temperatures outside the hive dropped far below freezing, they would shiver, all together, creating enough heat to keep the hive snug and safe.

Little Benjamin and several other meadow voles lived cozily in their hidden burrow beneath the ornamental grasses. They napped long naps, and took turns going out one at a time to nibble at tender stems and lick up what moisture they could find. It was a strangely snuggly winter for animals who spent summertime chasing, fighting, and squabbling with each other—but they did it every year!

Laulau the hummingbird had just finished flying 3,760 miles to Costa Rica for her winter vacation, and was foraging through a sunny patch of heliconia flowers.

But Helen and Harold house finch rambled happily through the Big Old garden (and the surrounding neighborhoods) with their friendly flock of chickadees, goldfinches, tufted titmice, and nuthatches, just as they had done earlier in the year.

By Cephas - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=130038821

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