Yesterday

I was doing stuff in the kitchen (likely making a cup of tea since it was in the afternoon) and was able to catch a few pictures of this critter out the kitchen window.

Since it didn't seem to care about being watched, I was able to get several of  it popping up while eating (and then it would pop back down to grab another sunflower seed, or whatever it was finding in there).

After a few minutes of the up-and-down of finding things to eat in the pot, it decided to head up and see what was in the bird feeder hanging above its head (which pretty much sums up why there is food in a planter). Fortunately a couple of taps on the window resulted in a quick hop down and run up a tree.



Today it is raining and I haven't seen much in the way of furry wildlife around, just a variety of the feather covered type. Tonight the rain is supposed to transition to to freezing rain, leaving  tree branches, wires, and such coated in ice, and then more rain tomorrow with "sleet, freezing rain, and light snow Wednesday night with mainly snow falling by Thursday morning. During the day Thursday three to six inches of snow may accumulate in southeastern Minnesota" with more to the north and west. Fortunately it had gotten warm enough in the last couple of weeks, most everything is melted of, and even better the ground has thawed out enough that at least some of this is soaking in. However, our county is under a flood watch, with others near us under  the next level up of a warning. Not that it is an issue for us directly, thank goodness!
That is pretty much a summation of the excitement around here right now.

It is starting to look

a lot like spring might actually show up! The Goldfinches that have been around all winter in their drab winter coats are starting to put on their "Look at me! I'm so much sexier that that guy!" outfits.

(The disappearance of three foot high piles of snow on the deck helps with the illusion of spring coming!)

This morning Oribel was desperate

to go outside, which isn't terribly unusual. Well, at least the telling us she needs out part is desperate and usual, but when it comes to the actual going out part, not so much. She always thinks she wants out, until we open the door and she finds out it is cold/windy/snowy (or any combination) out there. Once she realizes it is cold, no matter how sunny, or the wind is blowing "too" hard, she has to think about it, which of course involves standing in the doorway with just her nose, or maybe as much as her head, sticking out. This morning I told her that she wasn't even going to get to sniff the air since I needed to leave, but I did promise her she could go out once I got home.

When I got home, I could immediately tell Hubband had fulfilled my promise to her, and that she was already back inside.  (There was a towel near the door to go with all the footprints, so part of her had already been cleaned up. )  He told me that he had been able to work on her feet a bit, but that her tail still looked like it had been dipped in mud and her feet were still a bit messy. I was able to wash the tip of her tail off and her feet seemed to have at least dried off so she wasn't leaving any more mud blotches about (and Hubband also had closed the bedroom doors, so she couldn't stomp mud all over the bedding).


Shortly after I was done messing with Oribel's tail, this beautiful guy flew in to see about a snack. He was able to find a few scraps left in the feeder (and stuck around there long enough for me to grab the camera and get several pictures of him through the kitchen window). 

Then he flew over to the deck railing to check out the suet feeder there. I had to grab a picture of him quickly, since it was likely he would startle easily, since there were only about twelve feet between us.  (Last week I did see his lady friend fly into the feeder, but I was upstairs and the camera wasn't, so couldn't get her mug shot.) 
Needless to say, we are both pretty excited to have these in our woods and coming to the feeders. Good thing going suet shopping tomorrow was already on my to-do list.

This is even more exciting!

I found a way to upload pictures directly from my computer without using Pisca; much easier to use the computer keyboard than the iPad. (Sadly, I am not sure that you can enlarge the pictures at this point. ETA: You can!!!!)
This is the pheasant feeder we got from some friends that weren't using it any more (they got it from a pheasant organization). It turns out to be a pretty basic thing and we could easily make more if we decide we want/need another one/several. There is a bit of a flaw in the size of the holes for the corn to come out in terms of how quickly the corn flows out, it slows the deer down in their feeding, but they were still able to consume a lot of corn. However, the biggest flaw in the hole size turned out to be that they weren't small enough to keep squirrels from crawling inside the bucket to get stuff to eat.
Our solution was to put some hardware cloth on the inside of the bucket, which made a big difference in how fast the corn flowed out and how easy climbing inside was. However, either the deer or the squirrles, or both, figured out how to push the wire mesh up enough to render it only partly useful, so Hubband judiciously used staples to keep it in place. The deer and squirrels still eat the corn, but the pheasant is also seems to be getting plenty to eat whenever he comes to eat (maybe even two different ones). Night before last I looked out the window and noticed that the deer had kicked the lid off of the bucket and were eating out of the top, so Hubband took some screws and the electric screwdriver out to fix that problem. So far it seems to be holding well, though it is about time to add more corn. Just in case anyone is interested, a five gallon bucket holds about forty pounds of whole kernel corn.

Wednesday night's fog

left for awhile sometime on Thursday; I even got to see some sunshine and blue sky for a little bit. It also warmed up to somewhere in the mid-40s, and the combination seemed to cause a lot of activity on the deck. (Warning, random picture heaviness ahead!)
This Red-Bellied Woodpecker decided that the house side of the suet feeder would be an OK place to eat for a change.

 

Normally it eats from the other side of the feeder and peeks around to see if I am standing at the kitchen window watching. (Kind of reminds me of how Sadie used to go around to the back side of the island to see if she could convince a cooling loaf of bread to come down to visit her. Right. Like we couldn't hear her tags/nails/self giving her away. "Just because I can't see you, doesn't mean I don't know what you are doing.")

 

This dove was very cooperative about having a portrait session.

 

 

 

There were Downy Woodpeckers about,

 

as well as Blue Jays, but they were being very skittish. I felt lucky to get any pictures of them at all, even if it was shaking its head.

 

White-Breasted Nuthatch

 

There was also some activity in the yard,

 

that moved onto the deck.

 

 

There were also Goldfinches and a few other random birds.

 

Needless to say, all this deck activity caused a fair amount of indoor activity of chatter and moving back and forth from window to door for the best view.

 

The fog moved back in sometime during the afternoon.

 

Same spot, just zooming in on the neighbor's pasture,

 

and more zooming in on their barn (when Hubband first saw these, he thought I had walked down the road, but I hadn't moved).

 

The fog moved in on the back too, for some funny reason. It got a lot thicker and hasn't lifted much today.

 

On a totally unrelated note, I am making cheesecake tomorrow for a party Hubband and I are going to Sunday evening.

Maybe I should

consider washing the kitchen window again if I'm going to keep taking pictures through it.

Not the best pictures I've ever taken,

but hey, they are pictures and they are here. Just sharing the view I have when I drive into town via West River Parkway. There are two of them that live in that house and they have been busy working on the spring housebuilding addition.
(The very first time I came around the curve and saw the nest last fall, I knew immediately who was living in it, even though they were off to dinner at the time.)

On Monday,

I was talking to DTE on the phone while sitting on the deck dead-heading geraniums. Suddenly there was a little mouse headed my direction and as soon as it saw me, it turned and ran a different way. For some reason it seemed to decide that was the way it should go so it came back toward me, freaked out and dashed off again in a different direction. That direction was going to lead to the open screen door and I didn't want to have to live with the results of it getting inside.
I quickly took the opportunity to grab my camera while getting the door shut. Of course my moving around just upset the mouse even further, so it ran over to the edge of the deck and took advantage of the lattice work down the side. About that time Sadie discovered the fresh mouse trail, so she and her nose went into high gear snuffling out its path. She did an excellent job of tracking where it had been and taking the newer scent path whenever an old and new one crossed.
It didn't take her too long to figure out just where the mouse had gone; I think she would have really liked to figure out a way to get off the deck and join it on side of the deck.
Around that time, Someone wandered by, or out from under the deck, I didn't really catch which.
It didn't take her very long to do her best to get up close and personal with the mouse. Suddenly hanging out eight feet up in the air on some lattice work wasn't so appealing and it got out of there. I think it went back up onto the deck and scurried off the other edge, but I don't know for certain. I do know that it was no longer anywhere around by the time Oribel climbed down and dashed around to a spot where she could jump up to the deck to see where it had gone after it ran away from her.
(Do you know how tricky it is to lean over a deck railing eleven feet up from the ground while kneeling on a bench, talking on the phone, and taking pictures?)

Sunday afternoon I asked Hubband

if he wanted to go investigating with me. He did, so we went off to get an up-close-and-personal look at something I had noticed one day when I was taking my dad home. I had seen evidence of some interesting activity at the edge of a major parking lot and wanted to see if it really was what it looked like.
It was, but doesn't seem to be currently inhabited, though it couldn't have been abandoned very long ago.