Some Miscellaneous Photos

Here are some miscellaneous photos I've taken in the last couple weeks.......

A female Pileated Woodpecker showed up at the big suet feeder right outside the back door. That was really exciting as it's the first time I've have a pileated in the backyard. She's come back a few times since then, but she's not a regular daily visitor yet.

Oops! Dropped some suet! Check out those huge feet.....I think that each square on that mesh is about 1 inch.

Here's a pretty snow-covered evergreen in the backyard......just one of many. The snow covered boughs provide some nice protection for the birdies that roost inside the snowy shelter.

Look what arrived in the mailbox today!! Nothing like a couple seed catalogs to get my mind off the sub-zero windchills and 2+ feet of snow piled up on my garden beds.

Looking forward to some fantastic photos in 2011 with the fabulous new camera that my Honey Bunny gave me for Christmas. Thank you Mr. Johnson!

Another Snowy Saturday

It started snowing again sometime in the middle of last night and we continued to see light snow fall until about noon today. I know I'm not the only person in Minnesota who's getting really tired of the seemingly endless cold and snow we're experiencing this winter. At least the days are getting noticeably longer, plus hearing cardinals singing outside is another nice reminder that spring really isn't that far off.

The one good thing about this winter for me has been that I've had plenty of time for knitting. In the photo below you can see what I've gotten knitted so far this month for the Afghans for Afghans 2010 Youth Campaign. The green socks on the left are almost done as is the hat in the top center. When I bought that yarn I thought it was just about the ugliest color of yarn I had ever seen, but it's knitting up pretty neat into that hat. The socks just below it are knit of the same yarn and I thought it was interesting how the same variegated yarn ends up looking totally different when knitted into two different projects.

These projects have to arrive at the Afghans for Afghans headquarters in San Francisco by March 1st, so I'll have to be ready to ship the package by next Friday. I hope to be able to complete one more of each item this next week -- hat, socks and mittens. I'll post one more picture later in the week to show you the final outcome of my knitting efforts.

Backyard Trails

While Mr. Johnson was at work Saturday morning, I had the chance to spend some quality time with our little green Toro snowblower making paths in the backyard. In some places the snow had drifted to at least 30 inches and I was getting tired of putting on my snow pants and big boots just to go out and fill the birdfeeders.

I've made these paths in previous winters and it turns out that in addition to making it easier for me to fill all the birdfeeders, it also makes it easier for Sophie to get out on her potty breaks. It also makes it really nice for my backyard critters -- mainly deer and bunnies -- to get to their food too. Here's the view right out the basement patio door.....believe it or not, there were actually deer hoofprints right up to the patio! I sprinkle a little birdseed on the patio for the juncos and the deer came sometime during the night and ate up all the remaining seed.

Here's the convergence of trails right outside the kitchen window. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see additional deer tracks out beyond the trails. We have a double row of white pines right there, so it's a good sheltered spot. I'm hoping sometime this winter the deer will take advantage of that shelter and use it as a bedding area.

I also made some trails for Mr. Johnson to place his targets for his daily archery practice. Naturally, the critters and Sophie are also taking advantage of these trails too.

One more view of a couple more trails. In the top right of this picture (behind that evergreen tree), I have another birdfeeder that's only visible from the basement patio. That's also the area where the deer usually enter or depart from the backyard.

I wish I would have thought of taking these pictures a little earlier in the day so I could show you all the hoofprints on these trails. We still have at least 6 deer visiting the yard -- much more regularly now since the snow has arrived.

You Know You're From Minnesota.....

You Know You're From Minnesota When......

......Weather is 80% of your conversation
is it any wonder when we have weather like this?

......You keep snow tires on your truck all year because it ain't worth it taking them off for only 4 months!
and that's a darn good thing today!

This photo of my front yard was taken at 11 AM TODAY (October 12, 2009). I think I'll use it for my Christmas card this year!

......You have gone trick-or-treating in 3 feet of snow
only 3 more weeks till Halloween and I think it's gonna be one of those years!

......You laugh every time you hear about a blizzard shutting down the entire East Coast
I think this weather system is heading northeast and I promise not to laugh too hard


.......You know what "uff-da" means and how to use it properly
yup, that's exactly what I said when I looked at green leaves covered with snow: "uff-da!"

......You own an icehouse, a snowmobile and a 4-wheel drive vehicle
I don't even have to explain this one do I?

......You have ever worn shorts and a parka at the same time
I know if I went to the mall today, I'd see people in this attire

......You can name both of the seasons: Winter and Road Construction
Thank goodness, at least this means road construction season is finally over!!

......You actually "get" these jokes and pass them on to your other friends from Minnesota
and to all my friends not from Minnesota, hopefully this explains what makes us proud Minn-e-sodans!


Merry Christmas!

Snowy Weekend

We were in a winter weather advisory from 6 PM Friday evening until noon on Saturday. The weather service said we could get anywhere from 2-5 inches of snow before it was all over. This time they were right! It actually did start snowing around 6 PM on Friday and there was about 2 inches when I put Sophie out in the middle of the night. Here's what we saw in the backyard on Saturday morning......

Back to winter! And I believe the official total at the Rochester Airport was 5.2 inches. Since we can see the airport from our house, I always use that as my official total too. At least it looked like that much snow piled up on my "stump" birdfeeder.

It took a little while to get all the snow cleared off my birdfeeders so I could re-fill them, but the birds were very happy and there was lots of activity at the feeders all day, so it was definitely a good day to stay home and watch all the action.

It was also a good day to try out my new toy--the Jerky Gun. (Sorry I didn't photograph the entire gadget, but envision a caulking gun and that's what this thing looks like. It works on the same principle--pump the handle and the plunger pushes the meat out of the nozzle.)

I finally remembered to thaw out several packages of ground venison. Then I added some seasonings and let it marinade overnight. I dug my food dehydrator out of the closet, filled the Jerky Gun and in less than an hour, I had a delicious batch of jerky drying.

This Jerky Gun is a pretty nifty item. The ground meat squirted neatly out of the nozzle, making nice, uniform pieces of jerky. The dehydrator instructions said the jerky would need to dry anywhere from 8-10 hours. I started it at 2 PM and by 10 PM, it was done. I didn't want it to be so dry that you had to wrestle with it to bite off a chunk, and after 8 hours, this jerky seemed to be just right.

Here's what the finished jerky looks like. I know, it looks disgusting, but it tastes delicious!

Today I picked up a couple more jerky seasoning packets (teriyaki and spicy/hot). The Jerky Gun also has a tube-shaped nozzle (to make jerky in a "Slim Jim" shape), so I think my next project is to make some spicy/hot jerky sticks. If they're too spicy for us, I'm sure Mr. Johnson's buddies at work will enjoy them.

Another Backyard Hike

Our weather service is predicting daily highs above the freezing mark for the next 7 days, so I took advantage of one of our last cold days yesterday to take a hike in the backyard and photograph some tracks in the snow before they disappear with the melting snow.

Do any of you have crows visiting your backyard feeders? The crows in our backyard spend quite a bit of time just walking around looking for tasty morsels on the ground. I think their footprints are really neat.

Here are some nice cottontail footprints. Usually I never see their back toes spread out like this.

Here are the footprints from a cat that's been hanging around our yard all winter. I am not happy about this and have found some evidence of birds this cat has killed.

On Tuesday night, when I went to put Sophie out around 11 PM, I turned on the backyard light and got to see a fox eating birdseed from the ground feeder tray. Unfortunately, both of the spotlights needed to be recharged, so I couldn't get a really good look at it, but I did find a whole bunch of fox footprints in the backyard. Here are just a couple.

The deer were back one of those warm nights last weekend too. That was the first time they had been here since the weather got really cold. Mr. Johnson saw quite a few deer tracks up the street where the woods provide more shelter for the deer. (I think one of the neighbors up there feeds them too.) Even if you didn't recognize the deer hoofprints, the "scatological" evidence gives them away!

I found something else interesting in an area of the yard I don't often visit in winter. Last fall I raked up some leaves and put them in bags for use on my gardens in the spring. I put the bags down along the edge of my aspen grove and figured they could just get covered with snow and then in the spring the leaves would be mostly decomposed and I could just dump them on the garden. After finding this yesterday, I realized that won't be working out for me this spring.

Here's where several of the leaf bags were buried. You can see that almost all of the bags have been torn open and there are leaves all over the place. It looks like the fox was there and dug down into the snow--one of the bags was actually dug completely out of the snow and the other one (by the fox tracks) was apparently torn open by the fox digging into it. I suppose mice and voles have no problem chewing through the plastic bags and finding nice warm leaf insulation to burrow into. I can't figure out what else it would be, but needless to say, I don't think I'm going to have much leaf compost to put on the garden this spring.

Here's where a bunch of bunny trails converge and head over into the neighbor's backyard. The bunnies love hiding under these nice, thick evergreen trees. Just to the left of the trees in this picture, the neighbor also has a small utility shed and I think the possum is living underneath there (along with all sorts of other critters -- judging by the number of tracks leading to that shed).

Sophie accompanied me on this backyard hike. There are so many good smells for a dog out in the backyard. In this picture, it looks like Sophie is "pointing." I think I just caught her in mid-stride, but you can certainly see the intensity and concentration as she's tracking through the snow. This is the acre of backyard that I've discontinued mowing, so I'm sure there are all sorts of wild scents here.

Here's another picture of Sophie--whatever she scented here was extremely interesting. I find it fascinating that dogs have such an amazing sense of smell. It's really fun to watch a scent hound at work.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed this little backyard hike from the warm comfort of your home and I'm glad you were able to come along with Sophie and me.

Tracks in the snow

Mr. Johnson found these cool tracks in the backyard the other day. I'm not sure what bird might have left these, but I can tell for sure that it was a large bird to have sunk down that far in the snow. I think a crow is probably the most likely suspect--especially since it seems to have walked a bit and the crows in my yard do that.

I know there's a Cooper's Hawk who frequents the backyard and I also saw a Red-Tailed Hawk land on a utility pole at the edge of the yard last Saturday. I think both birds would be big enough to leave tracks like this too, but I didn't see any evidence of a deeper spot where a raptor would have plunged in for capturing prey.

I guess I'll never know for sure, but the tracks are still neat and give me another reason to be thankful for snow! (hey, I'm trying to be optimistic here.....)

Finally!

Do you recognize this birdie??

After weeks of seeing pictures of Common Redpolls at the birdfeeders of my Minnesota blogging friends, I finally saw one at my nyjer feeder this afternoon!

This is a female (no pink wash on the chest). What a cutie! This sighting made my day!


We had snow flurries for most of the weekend, so there was all kinds of bird activity at the backyard feeders. Here's a partially leucistic male House Finch I've been seeing around my feeders for most of the winter. I don't see him too frequently, but I managed to get this one photo of him yesterday afternoon while he was visiting one of the birdfeeders on my deck.

Check out this all-bird action at my dining room window feeder! I have a hull-less blend in there and once the bluejays have eaten all the peanuts, the little birdies flock in to eat the seeds in the tray. There are 3 goldfinches, 3 house finches and I'm always surprised when the juncos show up for seeds this close to the house.

I still have a pretty good sized flock of mourning doves every day at the feeders. Yesterday afternoon, I spotted 7 of them perched in the oak tree in the backyard. They sat there like this for a long time.

Here's a close-up look at the dove snoozing on the lowest branch. Apparently they must have a lot of faith in the bluejays who provide early warning shrieks when the hawk flies into the yard.

A little farther from my backyard comes the exciting news that the Operation Migration team was successful in finally leading the first 7 whooping crane chicks to St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. After departing Necedah National Wildlife Refuge on October 17, the OM team landed their ultralight aircraft and 7 whooper chicks at the refuge on January 17--exactly 3 months since leaving Wisconsin! What an incredible journey. If you're interested in learning more, click on this link to read the field journal reports and see photos from the migration. You can also subscribe to the "Whooper Happenings" podcasts through the iTunes store.

Come to the woods with me!

Today wasn't quite as nice as yesterday, but it was still pretty decent compared to what's predicted, so after we got out chores done at home this morning, Mr. Johnson wanted to head out to the woods and get some of our deer stands taken down. We left around noon and only got a couple miles down the road when we saw this -- holy moley, look at all those turkeys! This was worth stopping the car for. I didn't use the wide angle shot, but there were even more turkeys to the right of this shot! We guessed probably close to 75 total and a bunch of them were big ol' longbeards. Now that deer hunting is over, Mr. Johnson is really looking forward to turkey season again this year. Poor guy, he'll have to wait at least 3 more months :-(

When we got to the deer hunting woods, we split up. My job was to take down the little seats from our permanent stands and loosen up the bindings holding the ladder stand to the tree (to avoid damaging the tree when it grows more in the spring). I wanted to be home by 3 PM, but of course, I'm always the one who gets sidetracked and today was no exception. I headed towards the first stand through deer's known bedding area. I saw lots of tracks and finally spotted this area on a south-facing slope under a big cedar tree where some deer had laid down.

I crawled under the tree for a closer look and found this huge, fresh pawprint. Another "holy moley moment!" Since I didn't have a tape measure in my pocket, my glove has to do as an indicator of the size of this print. I measured the glove when I got home and it's about 5 inches across at the widest point. Naturally my first thought was this was too huge to be a dog print, but there aren't any wolves in Southeastern Minnesota, are there??

OK, well, I'd better get going on what I'm supposed to be doing. Looking down the hill towards my stand, I was amazed at all the tracks in the woods.

I was so absorbed in looking at tracks that I almost walked past the deer stand and had to backtrack a little bit to find it. There it is! (good thing that pink arrow was there!) I was happy to see that the deer trails still go up and down the hill right next to this tree. Next year, I will definitely get a deer from this stand!

I got the little seat down and started hiking up the hill to the cornfield. Easier said than done for this out-of-shape, middle-aged biker woman! The snow was sofa king deep! How do the deer walk in this stuff and where are my feet?

I finally made it to the corn field where the snow was not quite so deep and found more tracks! If you read my post from yesterday, who do you think made these tracks? If you said "fox" that's exactly what I thought. I know there are foxes in these woods because Mr. Johnson and I both saw them while we were deer hunting here last fall.

Here are some more fun tracks--a mouse! And see its little hole next to the corn stalk? How do they dig through all this snow? It's probably at least 8 inches deep here.

I saw some 'almost fresh' turkey tracks in these woods too. Mr. Johnson was happy to see these and plans to place a blind in this vicinity for our turkey season in the spring.

Here's another big pawprint again--on another game trail in this woods. Same animal? I never did see find any hair, poop, or other clues, so I'll probably never know who made these tracks.

Who says squirrels don't remember where they bury their nuts? Looks like he found one here or was at least attempting to.

Oh gosh, I'd better get going, I still have to climb another tree and pull the seat down.

Thanks for coming along with me to the woods. Wasn't that fun? And you didn't even have to put on your coat or boots!

Have a great week everyone and stay warm!

It's beginning to look a lot like.......

We survived our first major storm of the winter. The winter storm warning was issued early yesterday morning and the snow flurries started coming down around 2:30 in the afternoon. Predictions were that we could possibly get anywhere from 4-10" by the end of today. Fortunately, we ended up on the lower side of the predictions and once it stopped snowing earlier today, we had a total of 5.6" at our house, and that's more than enough for me!

Here's how the backyard is looking--you can just see the top of the metal pheasant's head now (compared to seeing almost his entire body on November 30th).

The weatherman had been predicting some pretty high winds after the snow finished, but we were thankful that those predicted 30 mph gusts didn't arrive after all, so most of the snow that fell just stayed where it was instead of blowing and drifting all over the place.

When we got home from work today, Mr Johnson fired up the snowblower and after he finished clearing the driveway, it was my turn to make all my paths to the birdfeeders in the backyard.

I love playing with the snowblower! I know some of you might think this is a huge waste of gas just cutting all these paths through the backyard, but it makes it so much easier for me to get out and fill all the birdfeeders every day, plus Sophie really likes running on the paths too. These are all her tracks in the picture below--she gets off the path when I throw her frisbee.

Before I went to bed last night, I checked to see if the deer had stopped to eat some corn and I was surprised to see at least 7 in the backyard. Mr. Johnson just got back from his walk and he talked to one of the neighbors who lives up the street who mentioned that he had seen 17 deer recently eating apples in his backyard. Holy Moly! It will be interesting to see whether the number of deer in our backyard continues to increase as winter progresses. I'll keep my camera handy and post updates as they become available.

Milestone: 400th Blog Post!

When I signed in to Blogger this morning, my "Dashboard" page told me that my last post on December 4th was #399, so today's post will be #400. Can you believe it? Me either!

I don't have anything particularly inspiring to share in this 400th post, but there are a couple of cool pictures from something I recently discovered in the backyard that I've saved for the end. (Don't forget, you can click on any of these pictures to make them bigger.)

After waking up to a temperature of -3 degrees (F) this morning, temps have moderated to a balmy 9 degrees and we're getting some light snow as I'm writing this post. Weather like this really increases the bird activity at all my backyard feeders.

Here are a couple of nice pictures of the always attractive Mrs. Northern Cardinal.

It's a little breezy too!

Of course, the bluejays are all hanging out waiting for me to dispense more peanuts. They can really fluff themselves up in this cold weather.

Now that the leaves are off all the trees, look what I discovered in the big weeping willow tree in my backyard:

It's a Baltimore Oriole nest--made with plant fibers and pieces of the blue tarp that was blowing to shreds in my neighbor's backyard. Isn't it amazing that orioles can create a nest like that without any hands?

Here's a look with the 32X zoom.

One of these days when it gets a little warmer, I'll have to take a walk around the backyard and see how many other bird nests I can discover.