Post 1 Birds and Breakfast is in its sophomore season after finishing up last year with a solid performance during its 5 week season. The bird sightings and the breakfast bitings will be hard to beat from last year but the team is poised and ready and after week 2 it seems B and B is catching it's stride, and coming back from the off season with grit and bounce. Week 1 Beautiful morning for the opening kickoff. The Brookfield Farm parking hummed with anticipation around 6:55 AM as 8 bird curious folks showed up for the walk and subsequent breakfast. The group was made up mostly of beginners and a few folks with some field tested experience. We birded two main locations: home farm and the Snyder farm. The former abutting a 1000 acre swamp and the latter tied into almost as much semi divided farmland. The home farm provided great looks at Yellow and Black and White Warblers. We focused on 3 bird calls for the morning, the three most prolific during that time: song sparrow, chipping sparrow, and the bouncing whistles of the northern cardinal. By breakfast most everyone was pointing them out to me with some real pride. At the Snyder barn complex brown thrasher stole the show early. He flashed through some low brush and finally popped up to sit all streaky breasted on some rose. Chalky blue bluebirds were the treat for the walk back to the cars after seeing osprey, red tails, and crowding around my book to make certain they were indeed savannah sparrows. Breakfast followed and was bang up from the eggs, potatoes and muffins to the table clothes, flower arrangements, and beautiful outdoor seating. Everyone ate, drank coffe and tea, chatted with each other and slowly filtered out. A great start. Week 2 Overcast and chilly to start but soon sunny with a nice light breeze. Multiple returners from the previous week and host of new people as the walk grew to 11. A harder week for interpretation due to the amount of bird activity. I would find myself starting to talk about orioles, their nests, habits and then a black throated green would fly in to take my attention and just as people were doing their best to train their binoculars on the bird it would have flown as well as the orioles. This kind of thing happened a lot. Blue winged warbler singing then a loud Drink your Tee would sound, a kinglet would fly up to a branch with an American redstart and both would fly away. It was awesome but the looks were fleeting and the group rarely had a look long enough to get on it and really check out these birds. I minded more than the group, they were loving it and blown away by all the "magic". We spent the whole walk at the home farm because there was so much going on I didn't want to leave it. The walk back to breakfast gave us killdeer displaying, a female rose breasted grosbeak, Pileated overhead, and another osprey. Breakfast was delicious and plenty. Spuds, frittata, fruit, yogurt, rhubarb bake, coffee and tea. 2 hours of walking and all they want is to sit down and get down on some food. Everyone sits and chats, trades stories sometimes bird related sometimes not. I feel like a proud papa looking down the table and seeing everyone smiling and talking, eating and listening. I challanged Arianna, a 9 year old and gymnast stud, to a handstand competition. She beat me in the following events: headstand, handstand, bridge, cartwheel, walkover, round off, and splits. She was really cute and would do some trash talk but also encourage me and say that's pretty good for a guy or my dad can't do that or well, gymnastics might not be for you. She and her mom are signed up to come back to the next 3. Arianna and I's competition inspired some others to join and soon the backyard was full of people, young and old, trying moves they hadn't attempted in years. There were hoots and hollers, falls, drops, thuds and lots of laughs. The folks cleared out eventually, I cleaned my kitche and , watched my neighbors high school ultimate frisbee game. Week 2 might be hard to beat.