My Beautiful thing for today.
Lots of birds at the bird feeder, a quiet peaceful relaxing day.

Birds nest

Just thought I would post a picture of the robins' nest, while I think of it. There are 4 babies and I think they still have another 3 days to 7 days before they are old enough to fly, the first one had hatched on June 3 and the according to vegsource.com they are ready to fly in 15 to 20 days. It looks a little crowded in that nest, I'm not sure there will be enough room for them in 7 more days.

Robin's Nest Update

When I posted the pictures of the robin's nest a couple of days ago, I didn't realize they were almost ready to hatch.

They look like little mice. On second thought more like tiny naked trolls with the little hair/feather tufts. I guess I have never seen baby wild bird, I've seen chickens, but never wild ones, and chickens have more feathers at birth.


We also have a nest in a cedar tree in the front yard. I thought those had hatched and flown a long time ago, but apparently not, as evidenced by this picture.



Our rhubarb has gone to seed, I never seem to get out there and pick it before it goes to seed, but it is rather pretty this way, but look at the size of the leaf compared to the chicken.

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.

Happy New Year

We did nothing last night, Charlie didn't even stay up long enough to wish me happy new year. He was out before 9:00. I did manage to see the ball drop and call Shonda and wish her a happy new year.

We woke up this morning to more than 4 inches of snow. I managed to go out and get some pictures before there were too many tracks, even before breakfast. See what happens when you go to bed so early.




Irish toast
In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, never in want.

Birds and Buds

It 's Friday but yesterday seemed like Monday most of the day. I hate two Mondays in one week. If thats not bad enough Charlie woke me up at 6:30 AM Wednesday and asked me if I was going to work. I rolled over said, "NO its A Holiday" he said it is?

Lots of things about birds this week, I am not sure why.
A week or so ago on his webpage, Arthur, my nephew- in-law, said he had baby Robin challenge him to a “duel or something." Well we had a pair of Robins build a nest in the tree just outside our south living room window. The nest is only about 5 ½ feet above the ground, I walked under it yesterday and the adults tried to dive bomb me. Later I found out why; the baby was ready to leave the nest I found it on the East side of the house hopping around and flapping it wings a few minutes later, luckily neither of the cats or the dog found it. I tried to get pictures but I am not fast enough. You will have to use your imagination and I know some of you have will have a wonderful picture of that, especially with me hobbling around with my ankle brace. Now the nest is empty and the robins are no longer guarding the tree so it is safe to walk or even sit under it.

I was driving by the Grand golf course today and just off one of the fairways at the west end of the course were two sand hill cranes. Cool.

On Tuesday Charlie went out to feed and water the pheasants and found 31 of them beheaded. Something got into the pen, it could have been an owl, or weasel or racoons. He found a couple of holes in the top of the fly pen. He thinks a couple more got loose, because the dog caught one, but Charlie rescued it, and he saw one that he couldn’t catch. We think we heard it last night in the horse pasture. He mended the holes, and so far the rest of them are OK so far.

We bought some plants for around the house too, one of them a dark red, (burgundy) lily. The pink lily we have had for a few years had huge buds, but seemed to take for ever for them to bloom. We planted the new one and it was almost like they exploded over night.

Our project for this week was a new water feature next to the deck in the front of the house. The birds are drinking from it already and it is not quite finished. Here's what it looks like so far.