I got my trailcam going lately. On windy days I aim it at stationary objects like this bird squirrel bath.
iNaturalist tells me this is a house finch.
A Blue Jay showing up for the party.
And here we have birds coming and going!!
INaturalist says this is a downy woodpecker.
And a goose whom I encountered on a walk at a local park.
(If you disagree with any ID’s please say something!!)
And a selfie with our Pomeranian puppy, Kodi.
I am linking with Saturday’s Critters
We’ve had this hummingbird feeder up for weeks. We keep stuff in and clean and refill regularly. The first day we had a hummingbird and nothing since then. Nothing in terms of hummingbirds. We got all sorts of other critters who perch on it or get behind it like this smart aleck squirrel.
And some more bird action in the background.
And here is a cardinal and a blue jay mocking me about my hummingbird failure.
I went hiking on Turkey Mountain and found this new (to me) bat nest.
I also found this black colored snake in the middle of the trail. He scooted off by the time I got my phone out and ready.
I also found this guy in the middle of another trail. I let him be.
I checked out the monarch waystation and there are more wildflowers popping up.
I saw this little moth looking creature on one of the blooms. Inaturalist says it is a “gorgone checkerspot.” I’ve never heard of that but I’m going with it for now.
And this doesn’t have anything to do with critters. It’s another jigsaw puzzle. I’m getting to where I am not intimidated by large expanses of sky or water. I’m really enjoying working on online jigsaw puzzles. No pieces are ever lost plus I use the setting where all the pieces are in the right orientation. I know, I am cheating.
I’m linking this to Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out.
I set my trailcam up on the back porch the other day. At 1 am we had a visitor.
I don’t know whether these are the same bandits or not. I think it is the reason we have had two bird feeders destroyed.
I took the camera down to Beavers Bend and set it up hoping to capture some deer but all I got was this ghostly image of a raccoon. At least I think it is a raccoon.
We have a hummingbird feeder. I have had the camera at it for multiple hours over multiple days and have captured exactly zero hummingbirds. We got a lot of critters in the background though.
Our bird feeders have lots of visitors.
I like the candid shots of them taking off or landing.
It would seem taking off or landing would be harder than flying.
I was hiking on Turkey Mountain the other day. I always keep a sharp eye out for copperheads. I didn’t see any that day but I saw this tiny critter hopping across the trail. At first I though it was a bug but I think it is the world’s smallest frog. Talk about good camo, when he quit moving, I couldn’t see him!
I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters with Eileen. Go check it out!!
It’s the love season for dove. Here’s a couple doing some mixed bathing, almost concealed because the blend in so well with the fence.
Mr. Squirrel gets kind of thirsty also.
And we have another cat roaming the back yard at night.
We have lots of sparrows stopping by.
I love the cardinals.
I was walking at Lafortune Park the other day and saw this goose checking everybody out. As I approached it he started acting restless so I backed off so he could chill down.
Grackles everywhere. I run them off whenever I can.
And a brief kerfuffle between a sparrow and a cardinal.
And I completed another jigsaw puzzle on my ipad. I am really slowwwww on these. But they are fun.
I am linking with Saturday’s Critters hosted by Eileen.
We are having it all this past week. We had 80 degree temps, then snow with well below freezing temperatures. Today we are having dry winds that are going to create a fire hazard. Oklahoma weather in the spring is always interesting.
We’ve kept our feeders full. The squirrels dominate the feeders so I’ve been checking the action underneath. Lots of birds play well with others, dove, juncos, sparrows, cardinals they all see to get along. Bluejays and Grackles are more aggressive.
Sorry about all the orange flagging. The telephone company had all the lines relocated.
Them grackles are like a group of noisy teenagers.
Here at the end of the ten second video a bunch of them fly up to the tree.
We got a finch feeder and guess what, finches showed up.
A little bird bath action
And Rascal, our Pomerania shows up to see what all the fuss is about.
Rascal’s thick warm coat comes in handy when it is snowing. Sorry about the bad photo.
We turned our fireplace on for a little bit. LJ loves the fire.
That’s it for this week. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Check it out, lots of great posts there.
Rascal, our Pomeranian (the black blob to the left” sufferred a hip and knee injury some months ago and has been getting therapy including acupuncture and it is really paying off. We have been walking him and Abby for a mile every day and they love it and pout when we can’t take them out. We have a one-mile route through our greenbelt that takes them by the backyards of several houses with dogs. The dogs give each a good barking.
Our lady of leisure, Lizzy, has taken over this tray on our coffee table. She has a number of favorite napping spots in the house.
Here’s an artsy shot of LJ in the shadows getting some sun. Sun is the next best thing to the fireplace for him.
All our multitude of birds have disappeared. I put out the trail cam one day and all I got was this female cardinal, all day long.
I love to capture the blurs of birds as they fly off, so this was a week and a half ago.
I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday Critters, come join the party!!
It got cold here on Tuesday or so. Our Lizzy has discovered the fireplace. She toasts both sides evenly. She hasn’t quite figured out why sometimes it’s not warm there. She will lay in front of it when it is not on with a quizzical look on her face.
She also loves reclining on things like a Roman Empress. The foot of the bed, a stack of freshly laundered towels, she loves leaning on stuff.
And she hates being wakened up from a nap. Here she looks like an unmade bed. Talk about grumpy.
All LJ, Lizzie’s brother, cares about is treats. Greenies or deli turkey slices are his favorite. Here is on the back of the sofa standing watch at the refrigerator.
And here is Abby, our happy girl. She loves eating and giving other dogs a good barking.
And Rascal, our rescue Pomeranian (all our animals are rescues). He’s such a diva. He has a hip injury and gets acupuncture and physical therapy. The ladies that run the place love him and he knows it.
Our in the back yard we are continuing to feed flocks of birds. I love the cardinals especially.
Here is a male making a sideways jump. Male cardinals are divas also.
On the ground below the feeder we have a whole other group of birds including mourning doves and bluejays and tons of sparrows.
Squirrels eat more food than all the birds combined.
Some of them are getting very plump.
Lots of snow, ice and cold weather in the USA right now. I hope everybody is staying warm and safe. There is a burger place here in Tulsa that serves coffee in a cup and saucer. Something about that is warming in itself.
Take care everybody. I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday‘s Critters. Come join the party!!
When the pandemic started last year and work and everything else shut down my family started spending lots of time in our backyard. It was great. Safe and secure from covid since it was completly disinfected by the professionals from https://www.mosquito-authority.com/mosquito-barrier-control-services site, so we thought, we talked and noticed that as we get calm the backyards critters appeared. This year, things are a lot more hectic but Friday night we hung out in our back yard and the critters reappeared.
A male cardinal showed up. They are quite the Romeos, singing their love songs.
And a mockingbird. They imitate other birds.
A rabbit showed up and stayed quite a while. Looking around and giving itself a thorough grooming.
It was very flexible. I’ve taken lots of yoga classes this year cuz I think my flexibility might be my biggest issue as I get older. This rabbit doesn’t need to worry.
It groomed and groomed for over 30 minutes and we left it to its further grooming. That has to be the cleanest rabbit in Tulsa.
Heather made a new friend today. What we think is a house wren. We are not birders so if you have better information we welcome it.
When Heather goes outside, the wren shows up and sings to her.
For such a small bird, it makes a big sound. We are in love with this little critter.
And we have our everpresent squirrels. This guy froze on our back fence for five minutes before it left.
We love rediscovering that if we just go outside and be quiet for a few minutes then nature reappears.
We are linking with Eileen’s Saturday Critters. Come join us!!
We had a little group meeting at work a few days ago where they gave us an update on what is going on and what is planned and so on. I started with this outfit when the group was pretty small and last year they were just a few million short of a billion dollars in earnings so we have been pretty successful and I have had my part in it and have been rewarded and that is great that have been and continue to be good to me and now I am in a support job which is fine and I’m thinking about retiring in the next year or so.
But a funny thing happened. I got into what the future plans were and thinking, I can’t leave now. I want to see what happens and I want to be a part of it! And then the IT guy got up and started talking about all the software tools and upgrades we are going to get. So it was like, wow, I want to see that also.
But then I realized that there is always going to be new things going on and there will always be new tools to use and that is great but I don’t want to be hauled out of work feet first, so to speak so it is going to be others taking up the challenge and I’ll be off doing something else.
I read a poem recently by Mary Oliver called Storage where she writes about moving from a bigger house to a smaller house and putting some of her treasures in a storage unit and then a few years later she hires a guy to haul it all off because they were no longer treasures to her and the poem closes with:
“…Things,
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own
nothing – the reason they can fly.”
So I need to make room for other things besides business plans and tools. Things like spending more time with my wife, reading more books, riding my bike more, taking lots more yoga classes, staying up late, getting up late, lingering over coffee, seeing more movies and not giving a second thought about what I left behind except to make sure the pension checks don’t bounce.
Heather and Logan went on their parasailing adventure the other day. I didn’t go, the pics were taken by a boat hand.
Up
And then way up there!
Before coming down for a little shark dip, and then the credit card went though and they went up again.
While they were up there, I went to the beautiful Gulf State Park’s Backwoods Trail.
And found some geocaches. No snakes, no bug bites (thanks DEET), but a few thorn scratches.
Heather and I have taken several long beach walks along the Gulf underneath everchanging skies.
And I have been crushing beers in the surf. That is what us guys do, we crush our beers. We have found some decent beer here finally. Alabama is a bigger beer wasteland than Oklahoma.
And I found me a friend at the fishing pier at Gulf Shores. I’m not much of birdwatcher except for the big ones like this Brown Pelican.
Today, we are going on a Segway nature tour of the Gulf State Park. I’ll give you a report later.