NOISY NEIGHBOR

I have a very noisy neighbor… not that I am complaining. I might even be bragging a bit! He and his family live in my woods and are not at all bashful about banging around on whatever they think will give them a good meal. A couple weeks ago, he was working on this stump outside my bedroom window. I got to try out my new Nikon on him… And for those of you who are not all that into birds, this is a pileated woodpecker.

He has a very distinctive call – once you hear it, it will be easy to know if you have one around. I will include a link with a sound link on it. Check it out!

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/pileated_woodpecker/id

FEEDING TIME

2 CHICKS

FIRST CHICK!

CHECKING OUT THE NEST!

We are sitting on the nest thinking things over. I am excited! Eagle watching begins today – well, at least for me! Stay tuned!

 

An older shot – with snow, both parents and 3 eggs, due to hatch today!

“WHAT? ANOTHER BIRDFEEDER?”

So said my neighbor as I carefully opened the huge box the UPS guy just delivered. “Well, the birds really like the old feeder where they can get in and eat safely, but you see, the squirrels pretty well demolished it a few years ago… and I just can’t get rid of it because the little guys love it so.” And they do. And the squirrels did. And they continue to demolish it every chance they get.

   

One very ambitious and determined old squirrel decided several years ago to chew his way thru the bottom of my birdfeeder – the one where he could not reach far enough thru the cage to reach the food. The one with a tray that caught the seed and did not let it spill as easily as he would have liked.

He must have broken his teeth crewing  enough for the drain holes to begin to rust enough for him to rip the metal a little more each time he worked on it. And he could chew on it by the hour! Eventually,  he had holes big enough that the seed just fell straight thru but he still wasn’t satisfied. I added a cut up pie plate to the feeder to catch the seed. That did not last long… not that I really expected it to last… but it has been interesting to watch him, or the next generation work on getting inside this cage. Yep, you read that right. This fellow wants to get INSIDE!

    

And so, it was time to buy a new feeder… but the old one is so much fun!

the BLACK AND WHITE of IT…

I finally broke down and replaced the birdfeeder my sister gave me years ago (my god has she been gone 10 years????). It is a Yankee Droll Flipper… Look it up on amazon. It has a little motor in it that turns the perch when the weight exceeds so many ounces, designed to spin squirrels off so they can’t eat all the food or destroy the feeder as they have done to so many of my feeders. Don’t get me wrong, I love squirrels, but I hate the damage they can do. Anyway, the thought is that one or even 2 Grackles can land on the perch, but more than that and the perch starts to move causing the birds to fly off. Now if you know blackbirds at all, you know they are like a mob, large numbers of totally unruly beasts… I won’t even mention their filthy habits like pooping on each other and pooping in the birdbath as they are drinking… but one can safely say they are not patient birds. As one or two birds would get tossed off the moving perch, 2 or 3 more would try to grab on being spun off in their turn while even more wait to grab on. Eventually there was this pile of blackbirds all fighting each other to get onto the feeder just to be launched off as fast as they hopped on. As they fought for the chance to be thrown off, I was reminded of a movie scene (no idea what movie) where a whole crowd of drunks gathered around a mechanical bull, eagerly paying their money just to get tossed to the ground in seconds as the next drunk occasionally climbed over the previous body to get on board.

All the birds in flight have been spun off the feeder or are trying to get on.

Now you might think this is mean… but the truth is, so much seed gets spilled in the process, the other birds, large and small, get to eat the seed off the ground (or the snow, as the case has been lately!) Obviously, no one gets hurt, and the smaller birds do get a good meal when the bigger guys are not around. And you get some good entertainment. Either Google Yankee Droll Flipper feeders or go to amazon. Both sites will give you a delightful video of the Flipper in action.

For those of you who might be interested in the birdbath deicer as seen on my blog, please note, it stops working when the temps are in the teens. You will get a thin skim of ice, but it thaws as soon as the temps get into the 20s. And for those of you who commented on the gathering of bluebirds at that birdbath, thanks for your comments. I have seen larger numbers of bluebirds from time to time, but not 11 in one little spot at once so I could get them all in one photo. I bet that will never happen again!

For days I have been hearing a huge roaring of geese as about a thousand or so fly over several times a day, settling in the fields about a tenth of a mile east of my house. i also have been hearing a lot of gunfire and finally figured out people are chasing the geese away from their property as that many geese are very noisy even just sitting on the ground looking for something to eat. The following pictures are of small sections of the field of snow geese… I could not get them all in the frame at one time or they just look like piles of snow out in a field. I managed to frighten the “guard” crew and they continued to circle over me until I left probably shouting back to the rest of the flock that I did or did not look dangerous, I was walking toward them, get up, move, or whatever. 

You see how close they are to the houses at the other end of the field… and I was standing in someone’s driveway taking most of these shots.

Winter Storm Janus 1-22-14

Well, Winter Storm Janus blew in last night in a bad temper. Snow is one thing we all enjoy every once in a while, the high winds are another thing. Then, too, temperatures in the teens are a shock to our sensibilities around here. My camellias are frozen. Not nice, Mr. Weather! In truth, we had only 4 inches more or less – with the blowing it is hard to measure how much actually came down – but here on the Shore, 4 inches might as well be 4 feet. The phones started ringing at 6 AM with cancellations. The radio had been broadcasting nothing but cancellations since 5 AM, foregoing all other broadcasting except ABC News and Mike Huckabee and a couple funeral announcements. I mean, who needs to listen to advertising when you can’t get out of your driveway anyway, right?

One interesting comment by our announcer (and owner of the station) was to tell the Good Old Boys to stay off the road. “Yeah, I know,” he said, dropping his voice and adding the drawl of the uneducated, “I got 4 wheel drive, man, I can go anywhere. I am out here to help people who get stuck!” Then he paused for dramatic effect, “And you end up in the ditch with the rest of them causing more problems than you can ever could fix, blocking road clearing crews and even emergency vehicles. So stay the heck home and off the roads!” Of course, the bulk of the sales on days like this are – guess… go ahead… milk? No. Bread? No… Baby formula? Nope, not that either… beer. Well, if you can’t get to work what else is there to do? So, half of the 4 WD pick-ups in the ditch are drunk drivers anyway. Whoopee.

OK, I digress… so what else is new? Anyway, here is the scene out my back door onto the carport which is protected on one side by the house, a little by the furnace room, and, of course, has a roof over it. Look at that snow, will ya? It was all the way up on the top step. See how it has drifted by the bottom step? I had to sweep off the steps to get to the snow shovels. I have 2 – one is an old aluminum shovel, one is plastic. This was an aluminum shovel type of snow because that is ice under there on the ground and on the concrete. My van was covered with almost as much snow as my truck that was sitting out in the yard.

   

The greenhouses were struggling to stay above freezing with ice crystals on the doors. My little incandescent bulbs were working overtime keeping my bucket of bricks warm. I hoped none of them burn out during this below 20 weather. I would hate to open the doors to change a bulb!

It was not a ‘pretty’ snow. The high winds blew most of the snow off the branches. On the other hand, that kept things from snapping and coming down on power lines… unless the wind did it. The prayer flags got a good workout blowing so hard you couldn’t even tell if it was Sanskrit or Hebrew on them. But the early morning sun was pretty and a promise that things would thaw. Eventually. The daffodils have been up, some as much as 6 inches, but they were invisible this morning. In a good year, they bloom the end of February. I have a feeling they will wait until March this year. But, who knows?

The Buddha was wrapped in a nice blanket of white while St Fwankie kept an eye on the birdbath deicer. The little critters were very thankful for that tiny pool of not quite freezing water. However, I have a couple wrens and sparrows that have discovered the cat’s heated water dish and take an occasional drink out of that. I tried to get a shot of one of the little fellows last week when it was so cold hunkered down at the bottom of the door to the furnace room. When I opened the back door, he hopped out a ways, but went right back to the door after I shut the kitchen door once again. I think he is smarter than Spook who has abandoned his heated box now that Punkin is no longer there to defend him. Bless his heart. A friend renamed Spook last week calling him a kittidiot. I have to agree. He is such a scaredy-cat that it often applies.

The new generator is here… but the inspector has not been here and I am on a long waiting list for the gas tank. I can only hope I don’t need it.

And these last 2 shots are of my CoCoRaHS official precip cylinder – minus the inner core that stays in the house during freezing weather where it will measure the melted snow for water content.

I hope the storm was not a bad event for you and yours. Stay in, stay warm, stay safe!

A DRY OCTOBER DAY

We had rain only twice in September, I think, for an inch and a quarter, total. Nothing so far in the rain bucket for Oct. But we have a promise of Tropical Storm Karen working her way up here beginning of next week. They promise 3 days of rain. Lord knows, we need it. Normally I would have drained the hoses and had them back in their garbage can for the winter, but not this year. I got some mums for my birthday, and they need to drink or die. I put some out front next to a campaign sign for one of my “boys.” Well, Ralph has not been a BOY for quite a few years, but once they are your boys, they are always your boys. Who would have believed that skinny little kid would be first a neurological pediatrician, then a Senator, and now running for Lt Governor? But he has always been a good boy, and that is what counts most, isn’t it? Anyway, I have a few of his signs up and this was a perfect place for some of the mums.

 

As I said, it has been dry. The deer are coming up into the yard to drink out of the bird feeders. I find them  drained dry every morning and have finally put a tub of water out for them. When there is water in the ground baths, it stays very busy. I was happy to get this shot since the other birds tend to scare the cardinals away from the birdbaths. Can you see him?

 

The veggie gardens are just about done, but I have baby yellow wax beans just coming. This is the second planting in my stand-uppity garden.

The tomatoes have been slow this year. Many of them just up and died. The ones I plant in strange places, after the tomato garden itself was full, are still going strong. Not often one sees tomatoes in an azalea bush! But this seems to be a favorite growing area.

I was told I did not show any of my window boxes… and these are right outside the window here, with my birthday camellia behind them.

 

Thanks for visiting my garden!