pine grosbeak

A few more steps forward.

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Well, I got a couple of things accomplished to move us forward today.  This morning, I had a consultation with my lawyer about the Co-op situation.  I’ve been consulting with a lawyer about their actions against me for some time, but I really thought that would be over with, now that we’re no longer living there.  *sigh*

The next thing was certainly more positive.  I had to go in to town for a prescription refill for my husband today and FINALLY remembered to grab the information the pharmacy needed to be able to transfer my prescriptions from our old pharmacy over.  I could have done it by phone, but just never remembered during business hours.  I haven’t been taking my meds since I ran out before Christmas.  Reduction in stress meant I was already reducing my doses, anyhow.  My goal is to get off them completely, but with the Co-op BS still hanging over my, that’s going to be a bit more difficult.  Still, any progress is better than no progress!

Today was baking day for the girls, and this time they made “piggies in a blanket” by wrapping ropes of our usual sourdough bread around hot dog wieners and baking them.  It works well for a treat every now and then. :-)

With how warm it’s going to be for the next while, the girls and I are planning on getting things moved out to the shed again soon.  Which means back to packing up more of my mother’s things that we’ve been ignoring until we could actually get them out.  If all goes well, we’ll finally get 3 more dressers out of the way (my parents seemed to collect dressers!), and once a weird little nook beside the old kitchen is clear, we can FINALLY move the cat litter out of the corner of the dining room and into its permanent spot!  We’ll be able to clear out some stuff that got shoved into the sunroom, too – it’ll be nice to be able to open the door all the way again, when we go in for the cat kibble and deer feed.  Once spring has reached a point that everything is dry outside – at least near the house – we will empty the entire room, clean it out and set it up to suit our own uses.  I have a few ideas the room can be used for, along with just enjoying the room itself.  My dad used to love sitting in there.  His walker is still there.  I’ll be hanging on to that, just in case.  There have been more than a few times when I’ve wished I’d had one handy for my own use, given how my knees and metatarsals tend to dislocate unexpectedly.  That’s always fun.  Not.

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, it’s the “bad” photos that are my favourites. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Out Our Window this Morning

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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

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

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

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.

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Hungry Girl, sticking her tongue out at me again!

*giggle*

white tail deer

Barbecue, licking his chops

E tu, Barbecue?

*giggle*

I’m such a child.

The Re-Farmer

Out our Window, Today

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Some highlights of the activity out our living room window today – at least the ones I was there to take pictures of. :-)

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Whenever I get photos of the male pine grosbeaks, my goal is to capture the incredible red as much as possible.  This one is very close!

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Mother white tail deer with her twins.

Mama and the twins came by today, and I quickly grabbed a group shot with my phone’s camera, since I would have to change the lens on the DSLR to get all three in one shot.

I was going through some of my older deer photos with my daughter, and saw some of the very first ones we took of Mama and her babies.  Seeing them, it struck me how much the twins have grown in the past couple of months!

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Young white tail deer.

The group was very active today, and very nervous about the cats hanging around.  It was cute watching them staring down whichever cat was there, stomping their hooves at them.  Which, for the most part, the cats ignored!

The above picture is one of the twins, after it had shied away from the feed because of a cat.

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Bleh!

“MooOOOoomm!  He’s sticking his tongue out at me again!”

I can’t help it. I love these shots!

The Re-Farmer

 

Got a Camera

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

 

Deer Drama

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It has been very busy at our feeding station!

I had a sleepless night last night and had gone into the living room at around 4 or 5 am, unintentionally startling some deer.  After I had a snack and turned the lights out, I saw one had returned.  The moon was incredibly bright, casting shadows so sharp, I thought I was seeing two deer instead of the one that was there!

My husband posted a video of Mama and her twins, taken a couple of hours later.

After that, Hungry Girl showed up.  I think she’s starting to look less hungry!  Then off in the distance, through the trees, I could see a couple more deer coming closer.  After a while, I couldn’t see them anymore, but it was Hungry Girl who showed me where they were.  One little guy was gingerly making its way through the bushes.  Much to my surprise, she actually defended her space and chased it back.  Another little one tried from another direction, and she stood her ground there, too.

Then Mama showed up and chased Hungry Girl off, so that her twins could eat.

For a short while, all for of them were there, but the presence of the Mama and twins made Hungry Girl very nervous, and she moved away.  Mama chased her off a couple of times, too.

The twins are looking so round and fuzzy!  And Mama is a big girl!  I’m sure she’s taller than Barbecue, and just as sleek, though not as round an meaty.

Unfortunately, our camera has started acting up again, the motors refusing to focus and the shutter sticking again.  I was only able to get a few photos.  Here are the better ones.  I will check the images I got on my phone later and see if any of them are worth uploading, too.

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The birds were busy, too, but I was only able to get one decent photo of this pine grosbeak.

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Look at how fuzzy the twins are!  Their coats are so thick.  Even their faces look rounder.

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Here is Mama with one of the twins.  You can see the burrs stuck under the baby’s chin.  They had burrs stuck in their tails, too.

Mama kept a very close watch on us in the window!

It think we should look into some sort of film coating for our window.  Partly so that the animals can’t see us inside, while we can still see out, and partly to reduce reflections, as birds are flying into the reflections of the trees on the glass.

Now, it’s time for me to go and start some sourdough bread baking.  My younger daughter had taken on the break baking role, but she’s not feeling well today, so I get to do it, this time! :-D

The Re-Farmer

 

 

 

Hello, Deer

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Today was a very busy bird day!  Especially the grosbeaks.  So many of them!

At least until the deer came.  It was continual back and forthing between the birds and the deer!

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While there were plenty of chickadees, as always, and a blue jay also made an appearance, it was the grosbeaks that really stole the show!  There were so many red ones today, too.  Constantly flying in and out of the area.

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Also very busy today were the chipping sparrows.  Just masses of them!  They dash in and out a lot faster than the grosbeaks.

Then, out from the garden, a deer came loping enthusiastically in, and the birds took off.  Much to my surprise, it was the little hungry looking one!  The other one she usually follows came prancing in some time later.

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He did try to chase her off, but amazingly, this time she just shifted to another pile of feed, and they both ate together for quite some time!  A couple of times, she got chased off a bit farther, only to come back again, prancing in quite enthusiastically.

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It was so good to see her getting a decent amount of food, for a change.  And to see her being less skittish. I look forward to seeing her get all sleek and fat, like the other one.  That one clearly has seen no deprivation, this winter!

I wonder if the little one had gotten sick at some point?  Aside from when we had that polar vortex some in, with bitterly cold temperatures, it’s been a light winter, with very little snow to prevent deer from foraging.  There is lots of wild food to be had.

Eventually, he chased her off for good.  Then ran off, himself, later on.  He came back a couple more times throughout the day.

I’m thinking of calling the mean one, Barbecue.

The Re-Farmer

 

 

 

Busy Out Our Window

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We got quite a bit of action outside our living room window today!

The beauty of digital photography is that you can take lots of pictures and not worry about running out of film, then go through them later to pick the best ones.

The downside is that you can take lots of pictures, and then have to try and choose the best one!  Today, alone, I took about 200 pictures.  Oh, how to choose!

Well, here is a sampling.

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The pine grosbeaks were back.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen them.  I forgot how big they are!  Almost as big as the blue jays.

Speaking of which…

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The blue jays are funny to watch.  They have a definite preference for certain seeds, and are large enough that they can use their beaks to flick through the seeds, flinging them all over, just to find that special one!  They’d eat the others, too, but only after picking out their favorites.

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I got some really good photos of the outside cats that showed up today, like this one of Butterscotch, who is staring at our mama cat in the window.

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Then there was Trüllbus the Crime Eater… also checking out our cats in the window.

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Nasty Crime Boy also made an appearance.

I have a hard time telling Crime Boy and Trüllbus apart when they are not right next to each other. :-D

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Even The Mothman made an appearance today!  It’s been at least a week since I’ve seen her.  Then I realized all over again, what a big frikkin cat she is!

She spooked the deer, too.

Yes, we got deer as well.  Two of them; the nasty one and the one that stays close to him for some reason (see video)

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I picked this photo, not because it was the best one, but because you could see the difference between the two, a bit.  The little one looks thin, and its coat is rougher, compared to the round belly and smooth coat you can see in the other deer in the background.  It’s not as clear in this photo, but you can see her hip and shoulder bones sticking out more prominently, too.

They did eat together for a while, then something spooked the little one.  She went off to the side for a while, but she she tried to come back, the other one chased her off.  She then went into the spruce grove and hung around.  At least she has things to nibble on in there, even if it might not be as good as the feed I’m leaving out.  Still, the poor thing looks quite hungry. :-(

The Re-Farmer

 

 

 

New Bird Visits

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I don’t know the names of these ones.  Time to break out the bird books!

If they’re unpacked…

Unlike the jays, the chickadees are quite comfortable grabbing some seeds while these birds are around.

Update: The one with the most red on it is a male pine grosbeak.   I thought the one with just a red cap might be the female, but from what I can find online, it is the yellow one that is a female grosbeak.