Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Baby Birds and a Storm

It was sunny, really windy and warm today. When I was out filling birdfeeders after work, I noticed this spotty little fellow sitting on the edge of my garden plot....very cooperative and not at all camera shy.


He was about 20 feet from the evergreen tree containing the nest and when I checked the nest, sure enough, there were only 3 left, so this fellow is definitely in a hurry to see the world. Here are his siblings, still content to stay at home. I suppose there's much more room to relax in now that there are only 3 left at home.


After supper, a line of thunderstorms moved into the area. Here are some of the ominous looking clouds. We listened to the Twin Cities news and saw pictures and stories of the severe storms they'd had earlier in the afternoon. Fortunately for us, these clouds only looked scary. They didn't bring too much rain or wind, and thankfully no hail at all.



I'm kind of a cautious wimp when it comes to storms, but living here up on the top of the hill provides some excellent views of incoming weather and I can always grab the pets and quickly dash to the safety of the basement when that siren starts to wail.

9 comments:

Mary said...

What type of bird is it? It has a Robin's face but the "freckles" on the breat confuses me.

Your storm cloud photos are excellent, Ruthie. Like you, whenever I see strange cloud formations or weather coming my way, I'm there with my camera, kind of like Eyewitness News.

RuthieJ said...

Hi Mary,
It's a baby robin. They have a really speckly breast when they're little (it's kind of like the spots on a baby deer) and they will start fading when the robin gets to teenager size.

Ruth said...

The storms you get eventually come to us in southern Ontario. They are in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow morning. We do need rain but not the strong, damaging winds we had with last week's storm that came on the westerly winds..
Ruth

RuthieJ said...

Hi Ruth,
I see the radar was tracking all of these storms to the northeast. I also hope you don't get any of the high winds and hail, but the rain is very needed and welcome.

Mary said...

Ruthie,

Thanks. I didn't know what baby Robins look like. See how much I have to learn?

Lynne at Hasty Brook said...

I'm in New Hope up here in the cities and boy- did we get pounded! Two inch hail, tons of wind and rain. Luckily we only lost a few branches.

RuthieJ said...

Hi Lynne,
My spouse likes Jeanette Trompeter, so we always watch channel 5 news at 5:00. The pictures they showed from Plymouth looked awful. I couldn't believe those PILES of hail and trees blown right out of the ground. Scary stuff....glad you didn't have much damage.

Larry said...

I am in awe of storms like that-I just find them so compelling!

Anonymous said...

Jeanette Trompeter is on channel 4. I correct only because what an insult.