Nature at home - birds.

As you regular readers may remember, Charlie finally got a pond dug a few months ago. See: http://jbetzblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/catching-up.html He has put in some small blue gills, and bass.
Since then we have seen a couple of ducks on it, a king fisher, trying to get some of the fish, http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/61/_/Belted_Kingfisher.aspx and some yellow warblers. http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/343/_/Yellow_Warbler.aspx. I don't know if the warblers are here because of the pond or we just never noticed them before.

I saw a hummingbird this evening, but not at the feeders,and I am not sure where it is nesting. One year we had a nest in the maple tree in the front yard.

A pair of robins have also built a nest on a fence post by the horse barn. it is only about 4 feet off the ground and has 4 blue eggs in it.

Kathy said she thought she saw an Oriole when they were here for Easter, Charlie has seen it, but I haven't yet this year.

We also have a couple of Bluebirds nesting.

About a year ago we found this really cool bird identification website; Whatbird.com. http://www.whatbird.com/ You can search by entering the name of a bird or it will help you figure out what kind of bird it is by choosing colors, size, beak shape, location etc. It even has a bird song feature so you can hear what the birds sound like.

I don't remember if I mentioned that we took the mare down to "visit her boyfriend" a couple of weeks ago, Charlie went down to pick her up yesterday so we should have another foal about this time next year. Here is a picture of the stallion.

Charlie put our other younger mare in with our stallion, we are not sure if that "worked" yet if not we will have them try again in a few weeks.