Rat thoughts

Doesn't seem to be bobbing along.


That's a wheel from a car, embedded in a tree.


The donkey likes to go walkies with me.


My Little Orgy

(clickie on photos for full size)


Male


Female

The cardinals around here are very flighty and will take off the instant I try to take a picture, especially the males.  The females are slightly more tolerant of my presence, but they'll fly away if the males do.  The other birds like the finches and juncos will scatter quickly if startled, but they also return pretty quickly as long as I remain still.  The cardinals are hesitant to do that if I'm anywhere nearby.  This makes them extremely difficult to photograph.

I had to hang around on the unheated kitchen porch with the window open for half an hour in sub-freezing temperatures and with a snow storm going on outside to get these photos.  The photo of the female was particularly difficult as the falling snow was interfering with the autofocus, so I had to focus the camera manually.

The birds have been absolutely ravenous lately.  I filled all the feeders late last night and by noon, the 4 quart sunflower feeder was down about 1/6th, as was the thistle seed feeder.  There was a half-dozen finches on the thistle feeder and at least 8 mobbing the sunflower, plus another dozen or two on the ground gleaning the spilled seed.

I saw a new species of woodpecker today, a Red-bellied Woodpecker.  It's a fairly large bird, compared to the Downy Woodpeckers who frequent the suet cake feeder, with a large splash of red on its crown and a back-and-white striped back.

The other day there were no less than eight cardinals around the feeders.  It was a riot of brilliant red amid the dreary white and gray of winter.

I had some bananas that sat around too long and turned to mush, so I tossed them outside under the feeders.  I wonder if any of the birds will eat them.

I've also been setting food out for the rabbits.  I saw one eating out of the container yesterday morning. 

A couple years ago I bought a cheap plastic bird feeder and hung it from a (relatively) low-hanging branch outside the kitchen window.  It stayed there and feed countless birds through the winter, until a powerful storm broke the branch off, smashing the feeder to bits on the ground.

Not wanting to throw money away on cheap plastic junk again, I replaced it with a wooden feeder I got at a discount because the chain was broken.  I repaired the chain and hung the feeder from a sturdier branch using a bent-up coat hanger.  It lasted just a couple weeks before one of the strongest wind storms we've ever experienced snapped the chain.  The feeder fell to the ground undamaged, but the chain and the coat hanger were never seen again.

I bought another bird feeder, a sturdier plastic material with a strong steel hanger.  It's in the shape of a barn, bright red with white and green trim.  I filled it with a generic "wild bird feed" which appears to be various kinds of millet, sunflower and safflower seeds and corn.  The birds have pretty much ignored it until very recently.

I then bought a small wire feeder which I filled with sunflower seeds.  The birds have gone crazy over this feeder, totally emptying it in less than two days.  I need to buy a bigger bag of seed next time.

After reading that some kinds of birds prefer pole-mounted feeders, I jerry-rigged a mounting for the wooden feeder and attached it to a metal pole.  It's a 3-station feeder and I fill it with the wild bird seed mix, the scratch grains (corn, oats and milo) that I usually feed the sheep and safflower seeds.  The birds had ignored this feeder until recently, now they're hitting it fairly regularly.  They don't seem to care much for the safflower, but they like the scratch grains.

The most recent feeder that I've put up was a cheap wood and wire suet cake feeder.  I load it with pre-fab cakes made with corn, oats, peanuts, almonds and pecans bound together with beef fat.  The woodpeckers love the stuff.

I've thought about buying a thistle seed (nyger seed) feeder; that kind of seed is a favorite for the brightly colored finches, but it's also obscenely expensive.  I've also thought about setting up hummingbird feeders when it warms up, but I've never seen a hummer around here, so it's probably pointless.

So far I've seen at least two different species of woodpecker, numerous sparrows, finches, nuthatches, chickadees and a titmouse.  All the feeders are outside the kitchen window.  The seed is fairly cheap in the long run and I think it's worth the small investment to have something pretty to look at while doing the dishes.  The woodpeckers in particular are amusing to watch, as they're almost as big as the suet feeder they love so much.

Gaggle of geese on the driving range at Bay Hills.

There were several people using the driving range while I was there.  Miraculously none of the geese got hit directly, although a few had balls bounce or roll into them, eliciting a storm of complaints from the goosed goose.

I went out walking with our Great Dane, same as just about every other day.  At one point, she was sniffing through some tall grass as if she'd found something.  As we walked back to the house, something about her seeming a little off.  She wasn't interested in playing or exploring like she usually does.

When we got back to the house, I picked up a dog biscuit to give to her because she'd been a good dog and did her business outside.  At first she refused the biscuit, then she very carefully deposited something on the floor.  She'd been carrying an egg in her mouth!  No wonder she was being so careful.


It's a fairly large egg, slightly smaller than a golf ball, and a light tan color.  I'm guessing it's a pheasant, because we have lots of them around here, they nest on the ground, and they're smaller than a chicken but still larger than most of the local birds.

I tried to find the nest to put the egg back, but didn't have any luck.  It was in an area with lots of very thick grass and I was afraid I'd just end up disturbing the nest further or even accidentally stepping on it.  I also tried calling the vet (closed), the Nebraska Humane Society (they don't deal with wild birds) and a local wildlife rehab center (no answer) to get some advice.

I wonder why the dog was so gentle with the egg.  If she thought of it as food, why didn't she just eat it right on the spot?  She has exhibited strong mothering tendencies in the past, but an egg is totally different from a puppy.

As always, click for full size.


A mourning dove in the maple tree outside the kitchen window.  Their drab coloration makes them rather hard to spot in the trees, but their distinctive, mournful cooing gives them away.



The Stinger 40 Watt bug zapper that I installed last year quit working when I plugged it in this spring, so I replaced it with a much more powerful Flowtron 80 Watt zapper.  The Stinger was a poor design; it used a metal grid to zap the bugs, which clogged up after just a single day.  If I didn't clean it out every morning, it would become totally useless within a few days.  The Flowtron uses a more open metal rod system that doesn't appear to clog.  On the down side, the bulb is extremely bright and it's more into the visible spectrum than the Stinger's blacklight bulb.   (I seem to be having bad luck with bug zappers; my Nosquito indoor mosquito trap also quit working.  At least in that case, it was just a dead bulb.)

Monday morning it got so cold (-11°F, -24°C) that a hawk froze to death.  I'd seen the body out there but wasn't sure what it was.  Today I finally got around to checking it out.  Judging by where I found it, it had been perched on the peak of the barn when it froze and fell to the ground.  It's a solid lump now and quite well embedded into the ice.  I'm surprised the dogs haven't tried gnawing on it yet.

There are birds outside.

Thousands of them.

The trees are swaying with their weight.

All of them are chirping at the same time.

The noise is deafening.

And every so often, they all fall deathly silent.

Just before they all take flight at once and the sky turns dark.

Spooky.