By Josette Keelor When it comes to wild birds, Bruce and Dolores Johnson have pretty much heard it all. After 12 ½ years in business, they might be considered experts in their field. And yet, every day, their customers have the chance to surprise the couple with news of something new and exciting flocking this way. “It’s not unusual to hear, ‘Guess what I got in my backyard,’” Bruce said on a recent afternoon, as hummingbirds from Canada were traveling the Shenandoah Valley on their annual migration south toward Florida and, eventually, over the Gulf of Mexico to Central America. “Right now, we’re getting swamped with hummingbirds,” he said. Another popular traveler to these parts is the bluebird, a cavity nester that Valley residents can easily attract with the right housing and food. Bluebirds love live mealworms, something the couple’s store sells in spades. “It’s the gourmet food for bluebirds,” Bruce said. And as the number of houses increases around the Valley through more development, the number of cavity nesters will also increase. Those who want to attract cavity nesters, such as tree swallows, should have success by setting up birdhouses in their yard. But fall and spring aren’t the only migration schedules to watch for, the Johnsons said. “One of the best places to see a snowy owl in the winter is the Outer Banks [in North Carolina],” Bruce said. Snowy owls, which hail from Canada, have, in recent years, been spotted all along the U.S. East Coast in states like New Jersey, Maryland and even South Carolina starting in early December. Though their nesting preferences historically kept them in the Arctic tundra areas of northern Alaska and Canada, snowy owls also seek coastal areas resembling tundra. In recent years, they’ve been hypothesized to head farther south in search of food or because of environmental or climate changes. But while the oddity of a snowy owl in temperate zones has become more common, the Johnsons, who own a Wild Birds Unlimited store in Winchester, say they still learn things in their line of work that surprise them. For example, the rufous hummingbird from southern Alaska and British Columbia, which would typically migrate down the West Coast, has been known to fly east and turn up here in December over the last several years. And it’s these sorts of surprises that can cause customers to flock over the Wild Birds Unlimited at 3103 Valley Ave. to share their stories with the Johnsons, who are just as eager to hear something new and fascinating in the world of wild birds. Customers all tend to have the same thing in mind, the Johnsons said. They all share a love of nature, and they love to talk about it. “They all want serenity in their back yard,” Bruce said. And most of them want to share that serenity through discussions at the store. “It’s fun, enjoyable; we get to meet a lot of customers.” His wife agreed. “We bring people and nature together,” she said. “That’s our goal.” The Johnsons are local store owners in the national Wild Birds Unlimited franchise. They purchased their business 12 ½ years ago on May 1, 2006, but they’ve long shared a joy for the outdoors. Dolores is French Canadian, and Bruce is from the Winchester area, but they were in Virginia Beach when Bruce said he “fell in love” with the Wild Birds store there, and they decided to look into opening a store of their own. Both were teachers—she an elementary school teacher and he a teacher of agriculture, natural resources, and environmental science. She ran the store at first, and in 2010, after...