Mama and the twins have braved the presence of Scary Eunice, the snowman.
Barbecue and Hungry Girl came by this morning, too.
The Re-Farmer
Critters
It’s a bit deep
In the snow
The predicted snow finally arrived last night. While other parts of the province is storming, we have had a gentle snowfall.
The feed I left out this morning has been buried, but that is not stopping the critters from finding it. Like this squirrel.
Also, our satellite internet is having troubles due to the weather. My husband has been able to get enough signal for a wifi hotspot. Let’s see how long before I can upload and post this video! It’s already failed to upload twice as I’ve tapped this out on my phone.
The Re-Farmer
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Out Our Window this Morning
Things got busy quite early this morning. :-)
After putting out more feed, the grosbeaks, redpolls and chickadees were in in full force.
Then they all disappeared, en masse.
Why?
Hmmm. Could be the big orange Rolando Moon that came sauntering by.
Followed by Nasty Crime Boy.
Then Beep Beep.
Beep Beep was kind enough to pose for a picture.
Butterscotch came by, too. For a while, we had at least 3 or 4 cats, just hanging around.
It didn’t take much for the birds to come back.
Including this beauty.
Male Downy Woodpecker
Male Downy Woodpecker
I finally got some good shots of the male downy woodpecker. Look at those bright red spots! And those fuzzy little bits at its beak. So pretty.
He would be on the tree trunk (that tree is dead and among the ones we need to clear out out our spruce grove), drilling away, then he’d go down to the seeds, pick up a few, fly back to the tree trunk to peck away some more, then back to the seeds.
He was soon joined by the other birds.
Male pine grosbeak
It wasn’t long before the birds were chased away again, this time by Hungry Girl and Barbecue.
They are still really skittish, but have calmed down enough that I got a few good photos before they dashed off.
I think they have opinions about that.
Hungry Girl, sticking her tongue out at me again!
*giggle*
Barbecue, licking his chops
E tu, Barbecue?
*giggle*
I’m such a child.
The Re-Farmer
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Noooo!!!
Well, crap.
Yesterday, a few more photos were taken, so this morning I uploaded the last of the pictures on the camera. As typical, I removed the old photos from the card completely, so that it would go back into the camera with maximum space on it.
As I was transferring the files, I got a pop up. Did I want to replace files?
Sure, I thought. This typically means I’ve already uploaded some photos and didn’t want duplicates, so I usually just let it override the old files, so there are no duplicates.
I forgot two things.
One, I was uploading files from the camera card, not my phone, which I copy from, not remove completely. So it’s not unusual for me to accidentally overlap and grab images I’d already uploaded.
Two, my daughter had her camera set to restart files from 001 on an empty card.
Normally, it wouldn’t have been an issue, because I organize my photos in folders by date, but these were photos from yesterday, and they went into yesterday’s folder.
I didn’t realize it until I went to review the photos, but I overwrote the first dozen or so images I’d uploaded previously.
Crud.
Now, most of those first photos were the ones where I was using the 18-55mm lens, then switching the settings around, so they weren’t good photos to begin with. The “ghost bird” photo was the very first one I took, so I do have the modified version of that one (cropped and resized for the blog). But the rest are gone.
The settings have now been changed. It won’t happen again!
*sigh*
Meanwhile…
Here are some photos from yesterday.
Downy woodpecker
My daughter got this one for me. The downy woodpecker decided to check out the seeds. :-)
White Tail Deer
You see this? THIS is why I asked to borrow my daughter’s camera. There is no way I could have gotten this shot of Hungry Girl without that 70-300mm lens! No amount of zooming in with my phone camera could have gotten this photo, even though she was so close to the house.
Barbecue, meanwhile, was even farther away, but I could still get a wonderful shot of him eating.
Even resized to 30% (my usual resizing on the DSLR photos; my phone camera photos get resized to 25%), you can see those little lips and that tongue, picking up seeds.
Details like that are why I love taking so many photos. Once they are on the computer, I can see so much more than I could, looking out the window. Those little details, frozen in time.
I love technology.
The Re-Farmer
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Got a Camera
Hungry Girl and Barbecue visited again this morning. I didn’t even try and take photos with my phone. Instead, I just enjoyed watching them.
After they left, the birds came back in full force, including a total of 5 blue jays! Usually, it’s just two or three. There were also the massive numbers of redpolls (which I’d mistakenly identified as chipping sparrows, previously), lots of pine grosbeaks, chickadees and nuthatches. Squirrels made their appearance, too.
After a while, I broke down and finally asked my daughter if I could borrow her Nikon D80.
After a bit of maintenance (lens cleaning, battery checking, etc), I set it up and tested it, using the 18-55mm lens she had on already.
Ghost bird!
Then I took it off the manual setting. :-D
Though ghost birds are rather neat photo subjects.
I then switched from her 18-55 lens to the Nikkor 70-300mm lens we were using on the old camera.
Blue jay
Blue jays are one of my favourite birds. I love their incredible colour! It’s interesting to see how they try to pack so many seeds into their beaks at once. I didn’t realize they did that until I started taking photos of them with the zoom lens.
Pine grosbeak, male
It’s a real challenge to get photos of the birds when they are in the bush nearby. Usually, in the time it takes for me to notice them, then swing the camera around on the tripod, they are either gone, of have moved to another branch. One of these days, I’m going to get a picture of a nuthatch perched upside down on a twig.
The grosbeaks tend to hang around on the branches a bit longer than the chickadees, nuthatches and redpolls – they’re too big to hop around the way the little guys do. So I was able to get a pretty decent shot of a male grosbeak in the trees.
Pine grosbeak with redpoll
There tend to be a LOT more females than males among they seeds, but even they are usually outnumbered by the redpolls.
Downy woodpecker
Getting any images of this downy woodpecker was a challenge, too! It kept moving around, then went behind the branch in the foreground.
My daughter just swung by to let me know she got pictures of the woodpecker while I was posting this. I’m glad I made sure the camera still had a memory card in it when I took out the one with the above photos to upload!
The Re-Farmer
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Today’s pictures
I happened to be around when the deer came to visit this morning.
Hungry Girl and Barbecue showed up first.
Then Mama and the twins came by.
I do miss our DSLR. Zooming in with my phone’s camera just isn’t anywhere near as good!
It’s great for indoor shots that don’t need zoom, though!
He is such a silly boy!
I love how his little front paws are tucked into his chest.
While in town earlier, my daughter and I took advantage of the trip to swing by the grocery store. In a parking lot full of “winter parking” (where no one even tries to park in the lines, because you can’t see them!), I actually managed to park in a legitimate parking spot. I could see just enough of the lines though the snow. It was farther from the store, and there was plenty of room around me.
Or so I thought.
We came out to find this.
That’s our van to the right.
Now, being a woman of generous proportions, it’s still rare for me to not even be able to get to my door.
I also wonder how the driver of the white truck got out of their vehicle, because there is no way that door opened even half way. My mirror would have blocked it.
My daughter had to squeeze between the vehicles, open our door, and jam herself in.
So she ended up driving home. An opportunity to practice for her road test.
The sad thing is, the only reason the vehicle was so tightly parked was because they pulled forward from the other side. Which means they drove through an empty parking spot, and placed themselves right next to my door.
With our previous vehicle, a Grand Caravan, we’ve had this happen a couple of times. I was able to just go through the other door and clamber across to the driver’s seat.
With this van, the only keyhole is in the driver’s door. We don’t have one of those keys that locks/unlocks the vehicle remotely. The ONLY way into the van when it’s locked is through the door that got blocked.
Why do people do that?
Has this happened to you, too?
The Re-Farmer
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Incoming
Hungry Girl is looking so much stronger and healthier now!
And she doesn’t let Barbecue chase her off completely, most of the time now. She just moves.
The Re-Farmer
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They Came Back
After a brief visit by Hungry Girl and Barbecue this morning, things were quiet at the feeding station for a while.
Then it got real busy, all at once!
Mama and the twins came over, then Hungry Girl and Barbecue came back. Mama, the twins and Barbecue ate peacefully together for a while, then something happened, and Mama chased Barbecue off.
The feed hadn’t been topped up when the outside cat stuff got done, so with 5 deer hanging around, I decided I needed to get some out there. I startled the remaining deer away in the process and, for a while, I thought I might have chased them off for the day.
I was wrong.
There are actually 5 deer in this photo. You can just see the 5th one through the trees in the back.
They all stayed for quite a while, and every now and then, they would chase each other. Even the twins got in on it!
In the end, I think they all got a share of the feed.
The Re-Farmer
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Good morning
A photo my husband got this morning. This is before more feed was added! Still lots left. Which means the deer are getting plenty of food elsewhere.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 