Tweedle, Deedle, Dee

The birds are quickly figuring out that there are feeders here now, they sing to me morning and night.

I survived my first night alone, wasn't nearly as scary as I feared it would be.  :0)

 

Birds, birds everywhere

Squawking red-winged blackbird.



A meadowlark?



What is this fellow? Yellow bottom, sparrow type bird with dark head with yellow throat.





Silly white-crowned sparrow.





A goldfinch pretending to be a leaf, lol.

Bohemian Waxwings and Sparrow

Sparrows seem to fear nothing!

They kept going in and out of the tiny hole in this wall. His shadow made me giggle!

I heard a rumor there was a huge flock of Bohemian Waxwings in Door County and we were lucky enough to find them - about 300 of them - what a lovely sound to hear!

The bad thing was lack of sun. I could not get any better photo than these with all the fog and mist. So they are marked off my "seen it" and "got any photo" lists, but are still on the "great photo" list.

tweet, tweet

Hey I found a dark-eyed junco in our yard who would cooperate momentarily!

I'm pretty sure this is a type of sparrow, but what kind?

He would not come out from behind that branch, but he has a little bit of yellow near the beak, and black stripes with white in the middle on his head.

Does seeing this side help?

The white-breasted nuthatches are typically zany.

Lil dive-bombers, lol

Who's in my yard?

A coy sparrow

The white-breasted nuthatches stay all summer, but the red-breasted are back now too.

We have a plethora of chickadees tour our yard daily, but a few have gotten zany, hoping over the plastic divider and into the seed! They often hop back out the other side. lol

We have several woodpeckers visit daily. This one was not in our yard, but you'll be seeing one of them soon.

And this dark-eyed junco is not in our yard but many are - they just don't cooperate as well in my yard.

The chipmunks are gathering for the upcoming winter. Their puffy cheeks always make me giggle.  The squirrels are driving me crazy getting into the seed too!  All except one, Pixel (the flying squirrel) has been making appearance again - I'm hoping she'll move back into the birdhouse for the winter.

I have not seen turkeys in our yard but I often see them a few blocks away from our house.

A nice day for a walk

Just a short walk down a path on a nice autumn day. This same path is now being used for cross-country skiing.

First I saw a white-throated sparrow perched on a branch.

A white-breasted nuthatch hiding food in an old woodpecker hole.

I almost stepped on a butterfly, but right before my foot crunched down I noticed him and of course 'snap, snap, snap'. But I was clueless what kind this little flutterer is. Finally, I dug out my butterfly book. I bought the Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America when I drove to Oshkosh in July to meet Marilyn, but I think of her every time I see it and I hadn't been able to look at it without thinking about the fact that she is no longer here. Damn cancer! I had a hard time making cards for a while too but have pushed through it and decided it was time to open up this book.

So, I have it narrowed down and am pretty sure that it's a Comma. I think it's a Green Comma, but it could be a Hoary or a Gray – I'm no expert, obviously.

When I got home I was happy to find my little shrew out and about. In fact, we have two living here now, one is darker than the other.

And the dark-eyed juncos came back!

Boys and Bows

You may remember seeing this cake (DQ of course) a few days ago. We had thought we would take Haden camping for his birthday but with the weather we keep having we wussed out. We did however take him to the Archery Range to sight his new bow.

Dennis needed to sight his too. I guess this is when they adjust the little dealybobber to where they can hit the bull’s-eye.

Looks like they need a little more adjusting.

I quickly got bored and went in search of critters.

I found a singing sparrow.

Boring.

But then a tiny frog came hopping by. He stopped long enough to say hello!

And as Haden was doing this, I looked up and. . .

. . . a hawk soared above.

I’m not so sure Haden noticed.

While the ants busily built their home,

Haden practiced on. In fact we left him there, maybe we’ll pick him up next year.