Migration time provides much excitement for birdwatchers when unusual visitors appear at or near the feeders. It may bring a great variety of birds to our area as some are going north to nesting areas and others venture to more southern neighborhoods.

I am especially envious this week – Joy called from Vermont to report that she and David are hosting an indigo bunting. This small finch is never to be mistaken, the male is entirely a beautiful blue – it looks like velvet, the female is a plain brown. This bird is tiny – it spends its winters in Mexico, West Indies or Panama. It is found east of central United States except northern tips of Maine and southern tip of Florida. A pair stopped every spring in our yard in Monroe – a special treat.

Wendy had a treat of having a rose-breasted grosbeak at her feeder. This beautiful bird frequents the same summer and winter territories as the bunting. When one visits your feeder for the first time, it is startling – the breast is so bright and is much different than any other visitor.

My special treat was not new but nonetheless was most welcome. I bought a new hummingbird feeder Sunday and put it up at dark, Sunday night.

I could hardly believe it when this tiniest bird was there having its fill of syrup Monday morning! It was a female and has returned several times but the male hasn’t been spotted there, as yet.

This Mother’s Day weekend brings a countrywide exchange of flowers and gifts, accompanied by cards and greetings of many kinds. It honors mothers and grandmothers, as well. My own mother and I were very fond of my great grandmother. She was only a little over five feet tall, slender and always gentle and with a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face. She was a perfect example of a perfect mother and grandmother. Without ever raising her voice, she was the center and the leader of her family of six children and numerous grandchildren.

This special lady raised her children in a primitive but comfortable cabin in the outskirts of Danbury. Her husband was a blacksmith and owned a horse and buggy, which was his transportation to his shop back at the Danbury Post Office on Main Street. One or two of his five sons worked with him at various times, and he provided well for his large family according to those early standards of living.

The petite grandmother managed her family until each member was married and never was out of touch with any of them in her entire lifetime. The family moved closer to the city, which was when I knew her well — we lived in the same two-family house. Grandma taught me to croche, which I loved, and to knit, which I finally learned after many difficult lessons; she and my mother taught me to embroider and tried without success to teach me to tat. I learned a lot about cooking as I watched the way she prepared meals for two or twenty.

I was especially interested in the way grandma baked pies of all kinds and cakes such as molasses and spice cake and one that was made with pumpkin when the fall harvest was producing pumpkins and a kind of winter squash that also went into pies. I begged to learn to make a pie, and finally grandma made a date for the first lesson – at 6:30 am in the big pantry, before breakfast. Happily that and several other lessons that followed were enough to teach me the way to make piecrust and to fill it with all kinds of fruits and custards and combinations like strawberry and rhubarb and butterscotch custard and mincemeat. I’d still rather bake pies than cakes.

My mother had very special lessons in embroidery from Great Grandma while she was growing up. We commented to one another about how well this lady was able to share her talents and pass along to other generations in the family.

The column last week ended with the well-known lines from A Child’s Garden of Verse by Robert Lewis Stevenson.

Who said:

“And the night shall be filled with music

and the cares that infest the day,

shall fold their tents like Arabs

and as silently steal away”?