Bird feeder

I recently picked up some more mixed bird seed and added it to our feeder.

I find it interesting, which seeds get eaten right away, and which get left behind.

And the lengths some birds will go to, to get their preferred seed, while ignoring other seeds that are easier to get to.

Like this nuthatch.

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All the birds seem to prefer the same seeds.  Which is weird, as the seed blend is designed to appeal to a variety of birds.  Our visiting birds don’t seem to want variety in their food!

The above photo was taken yesterday, before the snow fell.  (I got some others, I will post over the next few days.)  Today, they were digging through the snow to get at the seeds.

They were being watched, as they did so!

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The Outsider was very interesting in what they were doing up there!

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Gosh, he’s an adorable cat.

When it gets dark out, we can still see the white of the hanging bird feeder, but the rest of the platform and stand is barely visible.

Last night, while sitting in my crochet corner, I noticed the hanging feeder swinging away and thought it was getting quite windy!  Then I saw some movement, as the stand itself seemed to move.  We’ve had wind gusts strong enough to knock it over, so that got my attention.

Which is when I saw the black shadow, moving around on the platform feeder.  A splash of white came into view, and I found Doom Guy, looking back at me though the window!

Too funny!

That makes three of the kittens that we’ve seen up on the platform feeder!  Makes me wonder how often it happens, when we’re not there to see it. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Birdwatching…

Heading over to my crochet corner, I noticed something odd on the bird feeder.

At first, I thought it was Butterscotch.

Then it looked at me.

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Why, hello, Rosencrantz…

or Guildenstern.

All the birds were on the ground while she was up there, and she was VERY interested in watching them.

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Guildenstern (or Rosencrantz) wasn’t quite sure what to make of me.  Normally, she runs off as soon as any of us comes near.  Which means this is probably the best look at her I’ve ever gotten!

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Of course, as soon as she was on the ground, all the birds were on the feeder. :-D

Such a pretty kitty!

The Re-Farmer

Well, hello there!

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As the snow fell, it accumulated on the hanging feeder – but just on one side!  Which meant we got to see more of them on this side.

I’m not entirely sure what bird this is.  It was among the juncos, and there seemed to be just the one.

The Re-Farmer

A Deer Returns!

Note: I’m trying something different with my photos this time.  We’re close to our storage limit on our free WordPress account. I don’t want to reduce the number of photos we post, and we’re not in a position to upgrade yet, so we now have a Flickr account and I am going to try embedding the images.  Please let us know in the comments, if you are having any problems with the images loading, etc.  Thanks!

My darling husband has taken on the morning feeding of the critters.  With the bird feeder, this includes scattering seed on the ground for those birds that prefer feeding that way, and for any deer that happen by.  We’ve seen the odd deer, but they haven’t really hung around.

Well, this morning, one did!!!

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He’s a young one, and I’m sure he is one of the little ones that visited us in the winter.  There’s something about that swoopy snout that I recognize.

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Just look at those little antlers! :-D

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Getting the photos was a bit of a challenge for two reasons.  One, we keep the telephoto lens on the camera (for those new to this blog, we keep a Nikon D80 on a tripod in our living room window permanently, to photograph the wildlife out our living room window).  The deer was almost too close to the house for the lens!

He looks like he’s laughing at us, in this next one!

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The other challenge is reflections on the window from inside.  At the time I was taking these photos, I had to contend with reflections of my avocado on the glass.  :-D

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If it seems like he’s looking at something specific in some of these photos, that’s because he is …

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Sometimes, it was us in the window.

Most of the time, it was…

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… Doom Guy!

I wasn’t able to get a photo of it, but at one point, they were nose to nose!  So adorable!!

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He was quite attentive to all the noises around him, but not at all skittish.  Which is good, because it’s warming up today, and after all the snow yesterday, it’s falling off the trees with clumps.  We are hearing “phwomph” noises all over.

Also; avocado tree reflections. :-D

Then we got another curious kitten!

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In this photo, the deer had moved to the far side of the bird feeder, and The Outsider was on this side, watching him, while Doom Guy was on the other side of the feeder base, though he had left by the time this photo was taken.

I’m so happy to see deer back again!

I also managed to get some really fantastic pictures of The Outsider after the deer left.  Those will get their own post, next. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Crazy kits and cat strangers

Just before I headed out to my mother’s to help her with some cooking, my husband starts laughing out loud in the living room, calling us over.

If you’ve seen his previous post, you know why!

I managed to get some photos on the DSLR, too.

Too funny!

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What a handsome boy he is!

While he was going around the platform feeder, birds would start flying over, see him and abruptly change directions.  It looked like they were dive bombing him!

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He so wanted to get onto the hanging feeder, but it kept moving! :-D

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I don’t know what he found to nibble on up there.  We saw him chewing on things a few times.

I probably don’t want to know what he was eating.

He also was standing on his back legs, trying to climb even higher, but I wasn’t able to get photos.

While Corvo was busily entertaining us, Doom Guy and The Outsider also came over and hung out at the bottom of the planter.  We couldn’t get pictures at the time, but my older daughter caught this one.

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He’s here all the time, now, and seems to have made himself at home.

My daughter also got a photo, a few days ago, of one of the mystery cats that sometimes shows up.

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This is one of two strange adult cats that have been showing up now and then.

He seems pretty chill. :-D

Beyond getting entertained by cats at home, I spent some time with my mother, doing some cooking that will be used by home care when they come by for meal assist later on.  I noticed that another jar of the chili we made for her finally got used.  She told me I should take it home, because it wasn’t “fresh”, and she needs to only eat “fresh” food, for her health.

Well, she eats plenty of stuff that isn’t “fresh” all the time, so I know that’s just something she came up with to excuse not eating the chili.  I explained again to her that the reason I put them up in jars the way I did, was so that it last longer.  It didn’t matter.  Like the chicken my sister-in-law made for her, that ended up going to the cats, she’s simply decided it has gone bad, and that’s that.

So much of the fresh food that was prepared for her ended up being thrown out, because she wouldn’t eat it for some reason, and it actually did go bad.  Such a waste.

I had a chance to show my mother some photos of the clean up I did along the fence line up to the gate, because of a concern she brought up when she phoned to ask me to come over.  It seems “people” have been telling her that I was not just cutting down dead branches, but taking down living trees.  Now, I’ve been keeping my mother in the loop about what I’m doing, including clearing trees from the fence line, because we will need access to it to repair it.  Then she started talking about her lilacs.  She had planted special lilacs by the gate.  I told her on the phone that they’re still there, I just cleaned out the dead stuff and the poplars that were growing in the middle of them.  She seemed taken aback when I mentioned poplars, but she was really upset that I had apparently cut down her special lilacs.  I assured her I hadn’t, then asked who it was that was gossiping about us that she was listening to.  I found out, and was not at all surprised it was the person that is the reason we have to lock our gates.  *sigh*  Ah, well.

So I showed her a picture of the area by the gate I had cleaned up.  Including this one.

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I don’t know what kind of lilacs those are (I wasn’t sure they were even lilacs; she has the usual purple lilacs on the other side of the gate).

It turns out, this wasn’t the gate she was talking about.  She thought I had cut down her white lilacs.

These ones.

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We cleaned up this area, months ago.

She has seen this area since I’ve cleaned it up, so she knew what I had done with it.  But when she was told I was cutting by the “gate”, she thought of the gate into the yard, not the gate at the driveway.

I’ve made a point of keeping my mother in the loop of what we’ve been doing, showing her photos every chance I get, until she is strong enough to come and see for herself.  Yet, all it takes is one person, who has no clue what we’ve done or what we are doing, to start gossiping, and she starts to panic.

So disappointing.

She saw the pictures, however, and I talked about the repairs to the fences that are needed, and the section with posts that will need to be replaces, and so on.  She was happy with what she saw.  It worked out well in the end. :-)

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Just for a moment

I got a serious of photos while the birds were flitting on and off the feeder, including several of a couple of nuthatches.  This one came and went quickly, so it wasn’t until I uploaded it to the computer that I found myself wondering.

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Is this really a nuthatch?  In all the other photos, the nuthatches are completely white around the eye, but this one is different.  It was there for just a moment, and it looks just like any other nuthatch, except for how the black is on its head.

Now I’m curious.

The Re-Farmer