Baby Bluebirds

I thought you might need a short break from turkey hunting adventures, so I will start this post with pictures of the baby bluebirds. I checked the nestbox last Wednesday and there were 4 newly hatched babies. I checked tonight mainly because I wanted to see if either of the other 2 eggs had hatched and to get a picture to share with you. Father Bluebird was patrolling the area and Mother Bluebird was doing her duty in the nestbox. There is no way this mom is going to leave her babies. She scooted a little farther back in the box, so you can see a couple of the babies towards the front of the nest, but I couldn't get her to fly out to do an accurate count of the little ones. She's really a good mom.

We moved to a new turkey hunting location today. We had gotten previous permission from one of my former employers who has about 23 acres and lives only a couple miles from us. They have a huge and fabulous flower/water garden on their property and Mrs. H. was more than happy for us to come in and "shoot 'em all" as they were getting into her newly planted flowers and scratching everything out. Of course, this would be illegal, but we told her we would be more than happy to try and get the 2 allowed by our permits.

The area we hunted was in a sheep pasture. Having no previous experience with sheep, we were curious as to what the sheep would do upon discovering our hunting blind and turkey decoys. They were curious, but not nearly as curious as cattle can be, and after studying our set-up for a few minutes, they decided we weren't interesting enough to warrant a closer look.

We had heard a turkey gobbling all morning and around 9:30 he finally made his way up to our pasture. Rick actually saw 2 birds coming, but unfortunately one of them was a hen. The tom was interested in our decoys, but not willing to leave the hen, no matter how convincing I tried to make the calls sound. He never came any closer than 21 yards and Rick decided not to try the shot because of all the weed stems in the way. If a person was gun-hunting this would have been an easy shot, but hitting even one of these little sticks with an arrow is enough to deflect your arrow and turn a good shot into a bad one.

Here's what our blind looks like from a turkey's perspective. The inside of the blind is coated with some sort of carbon fabric sealant (to inhibit human scent if you were going to use the blind for deer hunting) so the interior is completely black and opaque. Therefore, instead of regular camouflage, we wear all black clothes inside and try to cover up as much of our faces as possible so we blend in with the background of the blind. (Rick is sitting in here on the right side of the blind and I took the picture from about 16 yards away.)

I finished the Nora Roberts book today, so tomorrow I'm going to start "Last Child in the Woods," loaned to me by one of my friends at work. I've heard about this book, but never had the chance to read it, so I'm glad he offered it to me.

Sunny Saturday

We were out in the turkey blind again this morning. It was much nicer than yesterday, not nearly as windy and about 10 degrees warmer at 5:15 AM.

Another slow day for turkeys. We saw the same hen around 8:30. She spent quite a bit of time checking out the area around our blind. I think she was waiting for our tom decoy to visit her.

We saw quite a few more birds and other wildlife. I got some nice looks at a great crested flycatcher through the binoculars. This nice, healthy-looking fox squirrel posed in a tree near the blind.

We saw a red fox run into an area overgrown with gooseberries and other shrubs. I checked over there before we went home in hopes that I might find a den, but didn't find anything. I did find some pretty flowers though.

Wild geraniums (with a dandelion thrown in)

Little blue flowers (does anyone know what these are?)

Here's a close-up. I have never seen these flowers before and the closest thing I could find in my Wildflowers of Minnesota book was Forget-Me-Nots.

Here's a beautiful blooming tree. Again I have no idea what it is.....maybe some sort of crabapple or cherry? You can see that the cattle have eaten all the branches off the bottom, that's why it looks kind of flat on the underneath part of the tree.

Hunting in the blind is really nice because if nothing's going on you can always lay down on the ground to take a nap or read a book. Plus you can stand up to stretch out when you get tired of sitting.

There's nothing like a Nora Roberts romance to help pass the time on a slow hunting day!

First Day of our Turkey Season

First of all, we found out that 4 AM is too late to get up. By the time we got ready, got out to the pasture and all set up it was about 5:30 and pretty light already. Tomorrow we will get an earlier start.

Set-up went pretty smoothly - I got the decoys ready while Rick got the blind set up. Then Rick set out the decoys and I secured the blind with the stakes (this procedure kept us out of each other's way). We got the rest of our gear inside the blind and it was time to wait for turkeys to show up. The one thing we had been hearing from other hunters was don't do too much calling. I guess this late in the season it doesn't do much good anyway.

Here's Rick watching out for a turkey to show up to visit our decoys.

It was a pretty slow morning and it got progressively windier as we sat out there, so our tom turkey decoy had some feathers blow out of his tail (not good!)

Around 9:45, Rick spotted a turkey out his window. He watched it for a while and found out it was a hen. In the spring turkey hunt, you can only shoot a bird that has an visible beard, so we just got to watch her. The interesting thing was that for the entire time we watched her, we never heard her make any sound. Sometimes when the hens are out walking around they will be making little clucks, but this one was completely silent.


She was a really big bird and spent lots of time pecking on the ground for bugs. She didn't pay any attention to our blind. However as she came out from the woods behind us, she did seem quite interested in the decoys.

"Hey, where did those guys come from....I thought I was the only turkey around here?"

She continued her slow journey across the pasture and passed within probably 3 yards of the decoys. The hens seem to be a little bit smarter than the toms and she apparently recognized right away that these were not real turkeys. (I don't think Tom's tatty-looking tail added any authenticity either!)

The hen decoy is a pretty good likeness though, don't you think?

We packed everything up around 1 PM and headed for home. Though we didn't get a turkey, it was a nice morning, not too chilly, and we were serenaded for a good part of the time by a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak in the trees behind us.

Turkey Hunting

Our turkey hunting with bow and arrow season opens tomorrow morning at 1/2 hour before sunrise, which is 5:41. That means we will have to get up at our normal time, which is 4 AM. The main difference this year is that we will be walking to our hunting place and as gas just went up today to $3.25/gallon, we can really appreciate not having that 40 mile round trip drive to get to the turkey hunting spot.

We walked down to neighbor Jack's pasture this evening and marked the location where the blind will go up tomorrow morning. It will be an interesting experience as there are cows and calves in the pasture now. They are curious critters and I'm sure once they spot the blind in the morning, they're going to come right over to investigate. I'll be taking pictures to share with you tomorrow afternoon.

Everyone we've talked to so far this turkey hunting season has different stories to tell of how the turkeys have been behaving. So far we haven't heard the same story twice, so we have no idea what to expect. The only thing I do know is that if a turkey comes within 9, 11, or 13 yards of the blind and it's my turn to shoot, we're going to be eating turkey for dinner!

This photo shows the results of my practice session today. I love my new Mathews bow. It's hard to believe a bow can make such a difference in accuracy, but I was never able to shoot this good consistently with my old Parker. Rick got his new Mathews bow a few weeks ago and his shooting is even better than mine.

Blogger Addict!

OK, it's official.....I'm now a blogging addict. Else why would I be sitting here at 11:40 at night posting something when the alarm goes off at 4 AM! But, I've just seen the most amazing thing in my yard and blogging is so much more polite than calling someone on the phone to wake them up and tell them I've just taken pictures of A FOX IN MY YARD!!

Wow, this is just the coolest thing and something I never expected to see in my yard.

Sophie woke me up to say she had to go out. When I turned on the backyard light, I could see something sitting by the ground feeder tray eating. It was definitely too big to be a rabbit, so I grabbed my little binoculars (yes, I got them all over the house) and looked to see it was a fox. No wonder those dogs are always sniffing around in the morning when we get up.

I was able to hold the spotlight up to the glass with my leg and take these really bad pictures, but I think you can definitely tell it's a fox. I wonder if it has babies somewhere....

Good night, I'm going back to bed and I'm going to thank God for the opportunity to experience this and maybe dream about baby foxes.

Bad Day/Good Day

I had a sore, scratchy throat all day yesterday and my voice sounded like somebody who had a 2-pack a day habit for at least 35 years. I slept fitfully last night because my body was starting to get achy and I was coughing. Yuck....I hate being sick. I didn't have a fever, so I couldn't really be sick, right? So I forced myself to go to work for a couple hours this morning because I had some work that needed to be done today and with no paid sick time, 6 hours of unpaid leave was better than 8 hours. (this is the 'bad day' part)

I got home shortly before 8 AM, had a healthy breakfast of Tylenol and rhubarb cake a la mode, and crawled back into bed with the dogs for a long snooze. We got up and I watched birds and knitted for about an hour and then went down for another nap. I felt quite a bit better after that.

I have to get better before Friday morning because that's when we start turkey hunting and I can't be coughing and sniffling out in the blind.

The afternoon was spent with cups of tea, a couple of "chick flicks" and lots of therapeutic knitting. (this is the 'good day' part)

Here is the latest update on the Irish Diamond shawl I'm working on. I have about 52 more rows to go. Right now there are 598 stitches on this round and there's an increase of 8 stitches on every other round. I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of yarn before I get it done, so I may have to adjust the pattern a little bit. I don't think anyone will notice and once I get it blocked, it will still be a good size for a nice and cozy shawl. I'm really enjoying working on this pattern. Just looking at the picture, I thought it was going to be a pretty complicated design, but it has been easy to work with since the pattern is the same on each panel section in the round.

In case you've forgotten, here's a picture of the shawl from the pattern book. I'm now out to where the pattern changes (if you can tell where that is from this picture).

It was sunny today, but quite windy again and only in the 60's, so I didn't spend much time outside except for taking the hounds out to do their business.

Penny and Daisy always enjoy sunbathing. The pets were very happy to have me come home early today.

Look Back for Today's Post

I started a post yesterday, and saved it as a draft. I finished it up this evening, but I learned that Blogger saves drafts from when you started them, so today's post actually appears before yesterday's and is entitled, "The Backyard Habitat." Just click on the link over in the right-hand column listing under 'Blog Archive.'

I have lots more to learn about Blogger features....

A Walk in the Backyard

I took a little walk around the backyard today. The dogs had to go out anyway, so I took them first and we investigated a few holes in the ground to see if any gophers were present.....sorry girls, no gophers feel like getting chased by dogs today.

I have to walk them around on the leash, because they like to run around and chase the birds and other critters. They pretend not to hear me when I call them, so it's on the leash they have to stay. Plus, the temperature was about 90 degrees this afternoon when we got home from work and I don't want them to get overheated from running around like the wild hounds they are.

The grackle eggs have started hatching. Even if I didn't hear the babies chirping and see the parents flying in and out of the trees where the nests are, I would have figured out by what's in the birdbath.....fecal sacs! Yuck! I think I hate this most about the grackles. They have an uncanny ability to deposit these fecal sacs in any bit of water they can find. I really shouldn't complain too much because I can dump these birdbaths out very easily and refill them with clean water. I'm really glad I don't have a backyard swimming pool!

Can you tell how windy it is? We had sustained winds of about 31 mph all day with gusts of 40-45 mph. I had a couple of plastic birdbaths blow away and also the dinnerbell feeder blew down (even though it's got a little wire holding it to the hanging bracket). I'll have to wait till the winds die down a little bit to put the mealworms out for cardinals and orioles.

Here's how the wildflower garden is looking 2 weeks after the controlled burn.....lots of plants are growing up quickly now. Hopefully we'll get some rain tonight and with more warm temps predicted for the next few days, things will be looking great in another week.

Can you see all the new little staghorn sumac plants that are popping up (in the foreground of this picture)? Pretty soon I'm going to have to decide how much space I want this sumac area to take over and then start keeping things under control with the lawn mower.

While I was looking at this sumac, I noticed a brown thrasher skulking around in the unmowed area that's actually a part of the highway right-of-way. We use it as a dumping ground for old branches and other yard debris. This has turned into a really thick brush pile area because there's also grape and Virginia creeper vines growing all over everything, creating a really dense and predator-resistant hiding place for nesting birds. I'm sure the brown thrasher has a nest in here somewhere, but there's no way I'm ever going to find it. There was a song sparrow singing over here also, so I'm guessing they have a nest in there somewhere too.

A tree swallow has started a nest in one of the plastic super gourds. Here you can see her getting ready to fly out in search of more insects or her mate.

I opened the gourd and found that they have filled the whole inside with dried grass. (When I put the gourds out this spring I put a layer of cedar shavings inside to give them a nesting base layer and also in hopes that the cedar shavings would help repel insects.) When the swallows nest in these gourds they lay the eggs way in on the back wall of the gourd. I felt inside where the nest depression is, but no eggs have been laid yet.

I walked down the hill at the far end of the yard, gradually making my way towards the bluebird house to see if any eggs have started hatching yet. Along the way I found the remnants of one of last year's milkweed plants.

I also found this little bush with really pretty pink flowers. Can anybody identify this plant? This is also along the highway right-of-way and I didn't plant it, so I've no idea where it came from (but we never mow in this area so it's a great place to see butterflies in the summer).

And now......I've saved the best for last. I have no idea whether the baby bluebirds have started hatching yet, because Mrs. Bluebird is holding tight on her nest. I opened the door and took a couple of pictures, but there was no way I was going to try and budge her off. Isn't she cute? I think she's going to be a very good mom.

The Backyard Habitat

In 1998, we received Backyard Wildlife Habitat certification number 23839 from the National Wildlife Federation. Some day I will post the pictures of where we are today from what we started with in 1988. It's truly amazing, even to me, because a person tends to forget what something looked like when you see it every day (like I've forgotten how thin I used to be.....)

Anyway, I never stop looking for ways to improve the backyard habitat and here are a couple things I've added recently. You can get lots of good idea from the National Wildlife Federation's website (www.nwf.org) and also from the National Audubon Society's website (www.audubon.org) (click on the "Audubon at Home" link).

Last summer I had an overgrown shrub that I decided to remove, but it had become so overgrown that the grass around it had died too. While driving around one evening, we found a big boulder that would be perfect for my plan.....after reading on the Audubon At Home link that birds (and sometimes butterflies) like to sit on large rocks. Fortunately, Rick was able to supply the muscle to hoist this boulder into the back of my Blazer and we drove home with. I set it up in the middle of my new little butterfly garden, then planted my butterfly flowers, put down the landscape fabric, the mulch and voila--a new bird and butterfly habitat was created to replace the ugly old shrub.

This really isn't a huge rock--it sits maybe 2 feet high, but it really does attract birds--in summer and winter (as evidenced by the whitewash showing up on the top of the rock). Robins especially like it this time of year, but the juncos used it quite a bit during the winter also. Last summer I did also see butterflies sitting on it in the afternoons and basking in the warmth of the rock and the sun.

Outside the kitchen window is our septic tank. We added an underground extension to the top of it a few years ago so we didn't have to dig such a deep hole when it's time to pump it out. Consequently, there's only about 3 inches of soil there and the grass just doesn't grow anymore. This is a really unsightly spot and I've been thinking about putting something there for the last couple years. Yesterday when we were walking I mentioned to Rick that we should keep our eyes open for another big rock or a tree stump or something to put on this dead spot that I could put a flowerpot or birdbath on.

We were almost home and there it was! A really nice chunk of box elder that's been laying in the ditch right by our street from some boulevard trees that were removed last summer because they had grown into the power lines. We walked home and got the wheelbarrow. Then Rick's superior strength was again called upon to hoist this huge chunk of wood into the wheelbarrow. And here's the result.... I had this brilliant blue ceramic birdbath in the shed and it looks just perfect here. I think in the winter it will be a perfect spot to put some peanuts for the bluejays.

The really cool thing about both of these habitat features is that they cost me almost no money, plus the tree stump has been recycled into something useful.

The third habitat feature that has been really successful for me in attracting birds is the birdbath. Half of my birdbaths are the large saucers and setting low to the ground. The birdbath on my deck has a little bubbler in it. I kept this bubbler going all winter because the birdbath is also heated. The bubbler has been a really fabulous addition to the birdbath as far as attracting birds goes (they're especially attracted to moving water). The cardinals even go to this birdbath, in spite of the fact that it's about 3 feet away from the living room patio door. The other low birdbaths are out in the yard and I don't know whether the birds prefer them because they're lower to the ground or just the fact that the size is much bigger. Every day I carry my buckets of water around the yard and fill the baths with clean water. I usually scrub them out once a week, but replacing the water every day helps keep the sludge from building up so fast (also prevents mosquitos from reproducing).

And last, just a couple pictures of the female hummingbird who showed up for some nectar on this chilly afternoon.

Happy Mother's Day

Today we celebrated Mother's Day by taking the Moms to a delicious brunch buffet at Tarsilla's Cafe on Main Street in Stewartville. We really like this little, local, family-run restaurant. We normally go there every Friday night because Rick likes their all-you-can-eat fish special. We missed this past Friday night because we were getting ready for the rummage sale, but we hate for a week to go by without a chance to go see these nice folks and have a delicious meal. It's nice to go to a place where the people know you and appreciate your business. And once again, we weren't disappointed.

There were 8 of us: Rick and me, Rick's mom, my brother Dave from St. Paul, Mom and Dad, and my Sissy with her youngest daughter, Kathy. We had a fun time, ate way too much food, and enjoyed looking at all the nice gifts and cards that were received. It was a short celebration.....we had to give up our table after an hour an half because the next group of reservations was due to arrive. I think the time was too short for the moms, but I still had to mow the lawn (since I was busy with rummage sale all day yesterday), and Brother Dave also had to get home for some overtime work with his job.

Here's the card I received from my cat Penny. This cat looks very large....if it was gray and white, it would look just like Penny!

In case you can't read it, it says, "Hail to thee, your Royal Momness." The dogs names are also printed real small at the bottom. On this card, Penny rules!

Rummage Sale Saturday

A handsome little male house finch.

We survived the rummage sale. Sales were not brisk but we did end up selling almost $200 worth of stuff. Unfortunately, there's still quite a lot that didn't sell. Now I have to figure out what to do with everything left over.

The weather was very cooperative. We had a few sprinkles around 7:15, then the skies cleared up and it was sunny until about 2:30. The sale was over at 3:00 and shortly after I finished taking down the signs and started putting stuff away it started raining again. Perfect timing (our prayers were answered).

There was a fine variety of nice people who showed up to visit, some of them bought stuff and some of them just took some time to visit for a while. One car drove into the driveway with a North Carolina license plate. Wow, this rummage sale had some really great advertising if people were willing to drive all the way from North Carolina!! Alas, this nice couple had really come to visit Mayo Clinic for help with the lady's medical condition. Sissy and I spent a lot of time chatting with her while Rick took the gentleman in the house to show off his hunting trophies. Turned out the man was also a deer and turkey hunter and he was amazed at how big our Minnesota whitetails were compared to the North Carolina ones.

While we were talking to the lady she mentioned that she was having some problems with getting anyone at Mayo to remove some stitches from a cut on her forehead--the result of a fall that had occurred during their trip to Minnesota. At that time, Sissy told this lady that she was an RN and would be happy to remove those stitches if the lady would agree to that. She was so happy! I grabbed a sharp little scissors from my knitting gadget bag and a tweezers and Sissy has those stitches out in about 45 seconds. They are hoping to be done at Mayo early next week and on their way back to North Carolina. We wished them the best and they were on their way to their next adventure in Minnesota. I'm sure they'll have some interesting stories to tell when they get home.

We had a nice couple also stop by from Montana. They were visiting his family in the area and taking some time to drive around on this nice Saturday and take part in the rummage sale mania.

Because it was a nice day and with breaks between customers, I had some time to watch birds a little bit. Here are some pictures of the goldfinches going through the screen guard that keeps grackles and other piggy birds from emptying my tube feeder every day. The finches especially like to pick out the sunflower hearts in this blend.

There's a female goldfinch over on the right side of the screen (partially behind the branch) getting ready to scoot through to get to the feeder.

The orioles have also discovered the mealworms in the dinnerbell feeder. I didn't get a picture of the oriole inside that feeder because just as I was focusing the camera to snap the picture, Mr. Cardinal (the self-appointed boss of the dinnerbell) chased the oriole away to the nearby oak tree. I put 50 worms in this feeder and also 50 worms in the oriole's dish with their jelly. Of course, the orioles ate all their worms right away. I think it's interesting that these bigger birds have figured out how to navigate under the cover of the dinnerbell feeder to get to the worms.

Oriole banished to the oak tree --waiting for the cardinal to leave so he can go back and eat some more worms from the dinnerbell.

That just looks like a challenging stance, doesn't it? You can almost hear him chirp, "beat it oriole, these are my worms, you can get yours from that other dish!"

Oriole's jelly and worm dish.

The cedar waxwings are gorging themselves on the remaining apple blossom petals. I didn't have the camera along when we walked out to the backyard, but we could see several up in the trees, chirping and fluttering about.

Sissy and I checked the robin nest near the garage and sure enough, 4 newly hatched babies were there. Mama Robin was very protective, so we didn't look for too long. We also checked in the bluebird nestbox and there were 6 eggs! (When I checked last Sunday night, Mrs. Bluebird wouldn't budge off the nest, so I didn't know she had laid another egg.) Wow - 6 eggs! I've never had a bluebird who laid that many. I hope all of them hatch. I should know by the middle of next week.