Hummers are here!

While I figured the hummingbirds had arrived as I watched the feeder level go down, I can officially say they are here as I just had my first sighting of 2011. I also wanted to share a neat website that tracks hummingbird migration. I just got done submitting my first sighting!

http://www.birdfeeders.com/advice/bird-watching/hummingbird-migration

We've got babies

You might think these are part of my bluebird family but this is actually my backyard neighbors, the chickadees!

You can try to count the number of babies in the picture because I can't figure it out other than there is still one to go!

I had seen the chickadees going back and forth to one of the birdhouse in my backyard but I wasn't sure they had really claimed ownership since the house wrens usually take up residence there and they were around it screaming. Today I decided to check the house and was shocked that there were babies already.

I don't think I've ever seen a chickadee nest and I have to say I'm quite impressed with their use of moss and other soft nesting material. If the house wrens were in there it would be all sticks and not quite as comfortable.

I'll keep updates on these babies too especially since the way this house is build it's really easy to get cell phone pictures without opening the door.

Colored Eggs

While the Easter eggs have been boiled, dyed, cracked and eaten, my bluebird eggs are still a brewin'. I check them on a daily basis on the hopes of catching a glimpse of them hatching but not yet. As you can see in the photo, there are officially six eggs.

By the way, I still plan to do some product reviews but considering I live in the region that is getting rain everyday and under constant flood warnings I haven't been able to do a fair review so watch for these whenever the big green, yellow and red blob on the radar decides to leave mid-America!

Surprise experiment

I already know that I want to keep up to date with the bluebirds babies on my deck like last year but the birdhouse door doesn't allow for the best photography with my camera. So I decided this morning to do an experiment with my cell phone camera.

I tapped on the side of the box a few different times to make sure the parents were out exploring so I wouldn't scare them and sounded the all clear. I put the cell phone camera up to the hole hit the focus button and then the 'take' button. After waiting the few seconds to see the results I was shocked that the dad was still sitting on the nest! So glad he didn't freak out and fly into the phone, that wouldn't have been pretty. You can see him in the bottom of the picture looking up like "what's happenin' here!"

After he left I played around with getting the right angle and it's not going to work perfectly but I think I'll do it this way this year and not mess with opening the door like last year. Maybe next year I figure out a permanent camera system of something. If you have any suggestions on that let me know. I might be able to do it this year in between babies.

Anyway, with the best one you can tell there seems to be 5 eggs for the spring batch! Could be another one in there but I think 5 is it.

Not So Happy Turkey Day

Today I saw two rare things on my drive back to work at lunch. The one road to work is known to have large flocks of turkeys during almost any time of day and on almost every single day, but no matter how many times I've seen them I still say "TURKEYS". However, today was a little different, I got to say "TURKEY" but then thought 'that's strange - only one turkey!'

The person riding with me thought the same thing and we had a little conversation about how you never see a single turkey. It was about that time that I noticed something strange going on in the traffic ahead, it was a cloud of feathers. I could have reached out the window and collected several. It was a sad sight which brought us to the second conversation of 'you don't see that very often either' but at least we knew why the only was alone.

I think in all my years of passing hundreds of turkeys on this road, I've never seen one hit and it's always rare to see a single butterball usually it's twenty to thirty together. So hopefully that lone turkey will soon find a new friend in the natural turkey farm I have the privilege to drive past almost everyday!

Spring is in the air....time to blog again

After taking a break from this blog for no real reason it's time to bring it back and I hope to give more to it this year with not only bird pictures and happenings but with product reviews.

So here we go! My bluebirds are back! Building in the same 'throw away' house from last year that I was just too scared to move for the fear they wouldn't build a nest this year. It's sort of like that old saying ' don't fix what's not broke' and since they successfully raised three sets of young last year I'm not planning on fixing anything. Well, I think I'll replace the bungie cord soon but that's it. The pair showed up last weekend and today were busy building the nest so shouldn't be long till I have updates on them so look for that soon.

The other thing this year is that I've changed part of my yard by removing part of a deck which opened up a whole new area for my love of birds. Duncraft loves this fact because I went a little nuts shopping on their site and I'll show you some of these recent purchases in upcoming blogs.

The picture here is of the super Squirrel Stopper System which by the way was not purchased to stop squirrels which I only have a few of and don't mind at all so mine should be called the "Raccoon Stopper System" or at least that's the hope. While I love raccoons I can't have them on my deck with a dog that see them as something to play with. Anyway, first impression of the 'system' is that I love all the hooks and most of the construction but for some reason it's wobbly at the base but we'll see how it works out. Also, in that picture you can see a few new feeders I'm trying out and will let you know about.

So I hope you will find this blog a little entertaining and informative and if you do I encourage you to share it to get the audience up to make it worth doing. I would also love feedback so comment away.