And the Winner is......

Thanks to everyone for participating in Caption Contest #1. It was hard to choose a winner because all the captions were so clever and funny, but my brother Phil laughed loudest at this caption from my new blog readers, D and Suz from Brandon, FL.

Way to go D and Suz! Please send me an e-mail (you'll find the address on my profile page) with your USPS address and whether you'd like to receive JERKY or JELLY as your prize.

California Birding Adventures

Greetings from California! I arrived in Sacramento late last night after an uneventful flight and my brothers picked me up at the airport. On our way back to Brother Phil's, we took a little detour down some deserted back roads in search of Barn Owls (which Phil sees frequently on his commute to and from work). We failed to spot any owls along the road, but had a fun time driving around anyway.

Today was our designated "birding and nature adventures" day and we made the most of it. My hope was to get some new life birds during the trip and I wasn't disappointed. As soon as I opened the curtains at 7:15 this morning, I managed to spot Brewer's Blackbirds (life bird!) on the power lines right outside Phil's house. Phil took me on a walk around town and I spotted two more life birds: Northern Mockingbird (singing beautifully in the backyard) and Tri-Colored Blackbird. Phil lives in a very small town in a rural, mostly agricultural area with a lot of wetlands, so there's no shortage of birds around here. We also spotted a Loggerhead Shrike (another life bird!) on a power line as we were motoring into Woodland for lunch and to pick up Nephew Charlie from school.

After lunch, we headed up to the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge where we spent probably 3 hours driving around and looking at birds. This area was almost all wetlands, so the usual birds you would expect to see in such an area were present. I got 6 more life birds here: White-Faced Ibis, Short-Billed Dowitcher, Black Phoebe, Cinnamon Teal, White-Tailed Kite, and Greater White-Fronted Goose. Here's a little video of some of the Snow Geese we saw out at Colusa NWR.

Too bad I didn't purchase an open-ended ticket for my return flight. The weather here has been fabulous--sunny and low 60's (perfect weather and conditions for birding). I hear the weather service is predicting snow for my return to Minnesota on Sunday night (sigh)

Caption Contest #1

If you're a follower of Bill of the Birds Blog, you've no doubt enjoyed the caption contests he's been hosting (click here for the most recent contest and winners). I'm amazed at all the clever and hilarious captions people have come up with for his photos, so I decided to have a little contest for my blog readers too.

Give this little squirrel a voice.

I know someone out there can come up with a great caption for this picture. The person who writes the winning caption for this picture will receive their choice of one of these fabulous prizes: 1) a half-pint of my delicious homemade wild grape jelly or 2) a dozen pieces of my tasty homemade venison jerky.

Deadline for caption entries will be midnight on Saturday, March 7th. My brothers don't know it yet, but they will be the judges for this caption contest and the winner will be announced on Sunday, March 8th.

A Sunday Afternoon Drive

So much seems to be happening on the weekends now that I'm getting days behind with pictures and stories to post in this blog. But now that I'm temporarily unemployed, I can get some blog posts done ahead of time and store them to post automatically--that's a pretty cool feature of Blogger.

Anyway, since Sunday was a beautiful and sunny late winter day, Mr. Johnson offered to take me for a birding drive in the afternoon. That's always fun for me because it means he'll stop the car whenever I see something interesting that demands a closer look with binoculars or camera. We were only a few miles from home when I spotted this:
A pair of Red-Tailed Hawks with thoughts of love and starting a new family!

Here's a close-up of the happy couple.This was the second side-by-side pair we saw over the weekend. I think it's just so neat to see something like that.

I thought this stream made a pretty picture.

A few weeks ago we had a big thaw and some rain. Many of the streams and rivers flooded and this one was no exception. Here are some of the huge ice chunks that were still left along the bank of this stream.

I'm guessing these chunks were at least 12 inches thick. Can you imagine how much force the water in this stream must have had to dump these huge chunks of ice up on the bank? Wow!

We saw lots and lots of wild turkeys on our drive too, but none close enough for pictures except for this one silly hen turkey pacing and clucking because she couldn't figure out how to get over a fence and into the woods. I guess she forgot she could fly......

Redpoll Palooza

Watch this!

I love these little common redpolls. They're definitely early birds--this video was taken around 7 AM. They flock to the feeders like this every morning until around 8:30 or so. They're scrappy little birdies and not too willing to share, but that's what makes them so much fun to watch.

Even though this winter has been cold, snowy and long, these colorful little visitors from the north have made it bearable and memorable for me and I hope for any of the rest of you who have been lucky enough to spot these redpolls--maybe even in your own backyard!

WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILLS!!

I was up and outside early before sunrise again this chilly (6 degrees) March 1st morning. I wanted to get some video of all the Common Redpolls at my feeders to share with you, but when I went around to the front of the house, I saw White-Winged Crossbills in my spruce trees!! I have been waiting and hoping to see them all winter, so the redpoll video is going to be delayed until tomorrow's post.

I have been watching my pine-cone laden spruce trees for these birds since the beginning of February (ever since I heard they were being seen in Southeastern Minnesota). I listened to their call on my birdJam, just in case I would happen to hear it when I was outside. Their song sounds similar to the Common Redpolls, so I was wondering whether I would be able to distinguish it or not.

When I went out the front door to put some more food in the dish for my crows, I heard a different bird song and looked over at the big spruce tree near the driveway where I saw a pinkish-colored bird moving around at the top near the pinecones. "Could it be???" I said to myself. I dashed back into the house for bins and camera and sure, enough, there he was...... Gosh, what a handsome bird! Look at that long pointy beak working to extract the seeds from the pinecone!

Here are some more pictures. There are 2 male crossbills in this shot (look where the white arrows are pointing)
Here's another close-up. They were so busy flitting about from pine cone to pine cone, that I felt fortunate to get these pictures in a moment of stillness. (The -17 windchill blowing into my face wasn't helping either and I was wishing I had more put some warmer pants on over my pajama bottoms!)
But the sun was just coming up and the light was perfect and I couldn't tear myself away from this spectacle. In the picture below, you can just see a female at the far right side of the picture.
Here's a better look a the golden color of the female.
Every summer when I'm mowing the lawn and get too close to these spruces with their skin-piercingly sharp needles, I curse these trees, but today I was glad for them and their abundance of pine cones that attracted these beautiful little finches of the boreal forest......a life bird for me and my backyard!

Before my camera (and the rest of me) froze, I also managed to capture this short video. Watch out for flying pinecones!

Winter hangs on

Fortunately for us, today's Winter Storm Warning turned out to be less severe than originally predicted. We had a little "thunder snow" -- it's always kind of exciting to have thunder and lightning in a snowstorm. It was snowing really hard when we got off work, but by 3:00 the snow had just about finished and our grand total of snow piled up was less than 3 inches. What a relief that we didn't receive the 4-10 inches as originally predicted.

I got all the birdfeeders cleaned off and refilled and while we were eating supper, this big hungry cottontail showed up in the backyard while it was still light out. I almost never see them during the day, but I guess hunger overcame fear.

While I was washing the dishes I noticed three possums in the ground feeder tray outside the kitchen window. I grabbed my camera and headed downstairs to try and sneak out and take a picture of them, but when I went to open the door, I saw some deer were just coming into the backyard to see what sort of feast they could find in the birdfeeders. After they had cleaned out one ground feeder tray, they headed over to the feeder where there were still two possums eating. I was curious to see what was going to happen there.....and what do you think? I was amazed to see that the possums held their ground and wouldn't let the deer eat from that ground feeder tray! The deer looked kind of alarmed, and just from watching the possums defensive pose, I'm guessing there was a whole lot of hissing and growling going on! It was pretty interesting.

After a few minutes and more deer showed up, the possums finally gave up at that feeder and these five deer got the chance to clean up the remaining birdseed. Our neighbor across the road was just getting home from work and parked at his mailbox to grab his mail before driving into the garage, so that's what these deer were looking at (except for ADD Little Sister at the far right side). Right after I took this picture they all ran away.
Don't you just love the way their ears perk up when something alarms them? You can almost tell what they're thinking just by watching their ears.

Sorry the picture quality isn't better--I still need to work on my low-light picture taking skills. (In addition to the fact that this photo was taken through the kitchen window, I'm actually pleasantly surprised the picture turned out as good as it did.)

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.

Friday, Feb. 20th

I'm really digging having Fridays off and today was no exception. It's nice to sleep until 6 AM (instead of the usual 3:45) and today it was already getting pretty light outside by 6:30--another positive sign that spring is getting closer. I filled my coffee cup, popped a movie into the DVD player, and settled down for some serious knitting time. After ripping out the neck last night, I wanted to get my Big Lena Sveater finished this morning. Here's the finished sweater (I even got it washed this afternoon).
Now that it's done, I have to admit that I'm not totally thrilled with this sweater and especially with the way the neck turned out, but I'm going to reserve the final judgement until after it dries and I try it on and find out whether washing and blocking corrected the way this neckline lays down. I'm thinking I'll probably have to rip it out and re-knit it one more time. (And if I still don't like it, watch for it in my Etsy store!)


On a happier note, there were lots of birdies in the backyard today. The first arrivals were the Common Redpolls--oodles of them! This oak tree in the backyard is a great stopover spot for them on their way to the thistle feeders on the deck.
These shots were taken before 8:00 this morning and the sun hadn't risen far enough to shine over the house, so they're not the best pictures, but I wanted to give you an idea of how many redpolls were hanging around.

It's amazing how much difference a little bit of snow makes. Last weekend, during the Great Backyard Bird Count, we had almost no snow on the ground and there were a lot less birds in the backyard than I saw this morning.

Lot of goldfinches at the feeders today too. Here's the last sunflower head from my garden last summer. I'm definitely going to be planting more sunflowers this summer. It's fun to see the birds eating seeds this way.

It's snowing right now and the weather service says we can expect anywhere from 3-5 inches before the snow is all done sometime tomorrow morning. Naturally, I'm not thrilled about more snow, but I am looking forward to seeing lots of birds at my backyard feeders for the weekend!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Can you stand any more possum stuff?

We had a little dusting of snow overnight and the temperature was just below freezing, so when I let Sophie out this morning, here's what I saw on the concrete patio:
It was still warm enough for the possums to be active overnight and this one visited the ground feeder tray I have outside the back door. I love the way its warm little feet melted through the snow on the patio to leave these perfect footprints.

I took the spotlight outside and saw their footprints all around the house, down the driveway and out into the street. Mr. Johnson confirmed that they had walked up the street because he saw the tracks when he took Sophie for their early morning walk. He said he could tell it was possums by how their long tail drag lines.

I hope the possums don't become a nuisance in the neighborhood. I know of a couple neighborhood jerks who would just love the chance to shoot these little critters--even though they're harmless.

Following a Dream

I had a meeting this morning with one of the people I support (work-wise) at IBM. He's a guy who's "in the know" about what's going on in our department and what options may be available for me and continued employment there. At this time, nothing's been finalized, so it's for sure that I need to start cleaning my desk out. As in any big business, the decision-making wheels turn pretty slow--especially when budgeting for additional personnel is being considered. He seemed fairly optimistic that he (and some others) would be able to convince the decision-makers to keep me on staff in a similar support capacity, but more than likely it will only be in a part-time situation.

On a totally unrelated note, last week I was talking to another person at IBM who I got to know through Mr. Johnson (after 30 years, Mr. Johnson knows almost everyone at the plant). Gary had seen my birding story on KTTC and wanted to talk about the birds at his place and also share with me that he was now finding great enjoyment spending time outdoors again as he's getting closer to retirement. For some reason, I happened to remember something about the Minnesota DNR's Master Naturalist Program and I sent Gary the link to those program listings this morning in an e-mail. And then the lightbulb went on over MY head! Sure enough, there's a class starting here in Rochester on March 18th. Ever since I heard about this program a couple years ago, I wanted to become part of it and now I'm going to!


My first class towards becoming a volunteer Minnesota Master Naturalist will be Big Woods, Big River.

Basing out of Rochester's Quarry Hill Nature Center and a surrounding 320 acre park- we will explore the Big Woods-Big Rivers biome here in southeast Minnesota. We will meet for eleven consecutive Wednesday evenings from 6:30 - 9 pm beginning March 18 (excluding April 1) and ending June 3, 2009. Required all day field trips on Saturdays (May 9 and May 30) will take us to regional state parks like Nerstrand Big Woods and out onto the Mississippi river. Field experiences will involve some hiking and canoeing with all basic equipment provided. Join us for some great adult comaradarie as we grow together as naturalists and inspire one another to become more involved as volunteers in support of our communities and the environment.

Sounds pretty cool, don't you think? I think I'm going to enjoy being a student again.

My other assignment for today is filling out my application to apply for part-time work in the seasonal garden center at my local Mills Fleet Farm store.

I guess the saying is true that when God closes a door, he also opens a window. I will be sad to close the door on a job I've enjoyed for over 3 years, but I'm excited about crawling through that window and following my dream.

Great Backyard Bird Count

I had too many other things going on yesterday to start my Great Backyard Bird Count, but today Mr. Johnson had to go into work for a few hours, so I made good use of that time by knitting on my Big Lena Sveater and watching birds from the dining room window. It was a beautiful morning, and I went out early and filled all the feeders with food and treats to optimize my birdwatching opportunities, and the birds didn't disappoint me! Here are some pictures from today that I hope you enjoy (don't forget, you can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them).

Mrs. Hairy Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Red-Bellied Woodpecker


Crow (with a couple chunks of bread)

"Dude......you didn't leave me any!!"

In addition to goldfinches, I also saw (and recorded) 1 Common Redpoll and 1 Pine Siskin

Dark-Eyed Junco

"Penny, wake up!! You're missing all the birdies!"

Bluejays were the first ones here this morning.

Red Rules! Cardinal and House Finch sharing the birdfeeder

Remember those giant mealworms? Chickadee loves 'em!

I took Sophie out for a walk to the far end of the yard, hoping to spot some other birds or maybe a Red-Tailed Hawk. Instead Sophie found this feral cat that's been hanging around the backyard. I let Sophie terrorize this cat for a few minutes and it finally took off running to the nether regions of the "back 40." I hope this cat learned a lesson and thinks twice about coming back!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm.......Tasty!!

I stopped at my local Wild Birds Unlimited store last Saturday to get some mealworms for my chickadees and wouldn't you know it, they had just sold the last worms on Friday. Crap! I finally have the chickadees coming back to the window feeder and I was almost to the end of the 100 worms my sissy had borrowed me a couple weeks ago. One of the store owners told me they were still having trouble getting mealworms--especially the large ones. I thought that problem from last summer was all over with, but apparently the mealworm shortages continue.

So anyway, after I got home, I headed to my favorite on-line mealworm store: New York Worms and decided to bite the bullet and purchase 1000 of these GIANT mealworms for my birdies. The package was waiting on the front step when we got home from work today and fortunately it was just warm enough that the worms hadn't frozen.

When I worked at WBU, I was the Goddess of Mealworms. We used to get our shipments in bulk and it was up to me to count out and weigh the 500's and 100's, feed them, and give them clean bedding. Believe it or not, I'm really not much of a "crawly bug" person, however mealworms aren't slimy like earthworms and once I got over the initial "oh yuck, I can't stand to touch worms" stage, I and the mealworms got along just fine. (Five years ago, this would NOT have been my hand holding this big gob of worms!)

My chickadees are going to be so happy when they see these big fat mealworms in their dish!

Don't Forget -- the Great Backyard Bird Count starts tomorrow!!

Evening Cardinals

It felt like spring here today with a high of 47 degrees--not a record, but we still enjoyed it. The winds finally died down later in the afternoon and it was quite lovely outside. Nice enough that picking up about 25 lbs of dog poop didn't even seem like much of a chore!

As I was setting the table for supper, I happened to glance out the dining room window and noticed that my evening contingent of cardinals had arrived. Isn't this fantastic? There are only 10 cardinals in this picture, but a couple on the feeder hanging up above this area and several more at the ground feeder to the left.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing cardinals in my yard!

Fixes for My Fiber Addiction

One good thing about our cold Minnesota winters is that I can wear sweaters for at least 6 months. I haven't started or finished a sweater for myself in quite a while, so a couple weeks ago I rewarded myself by starting a new sweater (since I managed to finish 8 projects in January). This is called the Big Sven Sveater, but since it's for me, I'm calling it the "Big Lena Sveater!"

The nice thing about being an experienced knitter is that you can make revisions to the pattern. This sweater has a circular patterned yoke, but I decided to add an element of the yoke pattern at the bottom of the sleeves and body of the sweater also. As you probably know already, I really like doing two-colored knitting and the thought of all those rows of just one color till I got to the yoke was just more than I could bear. I really like this yarn--a nice heavy worsted weight wool from Canada. It's a little rough when you're knitting with it and sometimes I even come across a small piece of grass the sheep picked up out in the pasture. I used this yarn in a hat a while back and found that once I washed it, the yarn softens up really nicely. I'm making pretty fast progress on this sweater and hope to get it finished by the end of February, so stay tuned!

I completed a few more items for my Etsy store and hope to get them added to the inventory after supper tonight. Here are some wool half-mitts in a nice variegated colorway called "Rosewood."

How about this groovy granny square ensemble? Fortunately, I didn't throw all my old patterns away and when I went through the pattern box downstairs I found this awesome pattern that my mom bought for me when I first started crocheting. Remember years ago when Simplicity sold crochet and craft patterns? I checked the date on the envelope and it was from 1971 and the cost of the pattern was 85 cents! We picked out the pattern because it featured a granny square poncho and I recall making several of those for myself and friends. I really love this hat and probably will make several more (including one for myself!)

In case you're wondering......my model's name is Larissa.

Friday Fun

I've got to use up my 4 days of PTO before my job is done at the end of February, so I'm slowly easing my way into unemployment by taking every Friday off, with yesterday being my first day off. Wow, what a fun day I had. It's great to be home with just me and the pets, doing whatever we want. I knitted and watched a movie (Transsiberian) in the morning with Sophie and Penny sitting next to me on the couch. I washed a bunch of clothes and hung them out on the line to dry.

I had a visit from my friendly neighborhood possum. Here, the possum tried out the mineral block that the deer have never touched.

Then Sophie saw the possum in the backyard and got pretty upset, so I let her out, knowing exactly what would happen. It's funny to see her reaction when the critter immediately "dies" and she doesn't have anything to chase.
I finally dragged Sophie back in the house and went back out to be sure the possum was OK. I think because it was a little chilly and windy, the possum took a bit longer to "wake up, " but within 5 minutes it was showing signs of life and it finally resurrected completely and scuttled away to the safety of the brush pile.
This poor little half-bald squirrel also showed up in the backyard yesterday. Does anyone know what might make them lose their hair like that? Can they even stay warm enough to survive the winter with only half their hair? I felt kinda sorry for this squirrel.
Here's something that I almost never see--2 male cardinals this close together. In a few more weeks, territory skirmishes will begin and I'm sure one of these males will be banished to a more distant part of the backyard.
I was happy to see this pretty little male Common Redpoll heading down to the nyjer feeder on my deck.
Later on in the afternoon, I happened to look out the kitchen window because I noticed some bird activity on the ground next to the "treestump" feeder I have out here. (I've been putting seed on top of the treestump all winter, but lots of it has blown off and the ground around the stump is covered with seed.) A closer look with the binoculars revealed lots of Common Redpolls! Check it out! They blend in really well with all the seed on the ground. This is what I saw on one side of the stump......
.....and here's what I saw on the other side (I added colored arrows to make it easier to spot them). I was amazed to see I had so many of these cute little birdies in my yard!
Now, I'm on the lookout for White-Winged Crossbills. They've been spotted in counties east and west of us, so I'm hoping some will be stopping by one of the pine-cone laden evergreens in the backyard soon.