Birds

I just walked to the mailbox practicing my next weekend talk, out loud - both to work my voice (we have three church services) and my body. The mailbox is a mile away. Coming back, with a lot of it hill, I looked for the current wildflowers in bloom and took pictures with my little Canon Elph. I've been taking pictures of stages of flowers in my gardens. I'll try posting pictures on my photoblog.

I told Dawson I wanted pictures of the two birds building a nest in a little bird house hanging on our porch. My camera didn't do it justice, and if I was outside close, the birds wouldn't 'work'. I hung this cute birdhouse for it's cuteness, not thinking birds would actually use it!

From the kitchen sink we've been watching them bring these LONG sticks and trying to aim for the hole. It's made us laugh! They're done now. The other day Rocky jumped off the porch steps, going out of his electric boundary and got shocked, and caught a bird in his mouth. Monte and me were so scared it was one of these birds, but it wasn't. They are still a 'couple' and must be laying eggs now. But we moved Rocky's boundary back a bit!

Last night elk were tromping through a new flower bed I'm creating. Monte needs to move the electric fence further. They kept messing with a tarp and waking Monte all night long. But it looks like they knocked over another bird house. It's post must have been rotting and they kept butting it. Elk are a pest. They'll soon move to the higher mountains till late August. We've not seen a bear yet this year. The electric fence went up last summer when a bear consistently raided the bird feeders.

We have a new bird that's not been in Evergreen before. Last year was the first I'd seen it here. I saw it before in Prescott, Arizona, when Monte was doing geology there. But the last few evenings this Western Tanager has been visiting the bird feeding area. The other evening him and a baby downy woodpecker, with his red capped head, were taking turns on the hanging suet feeder. His bright yellow body and orange-red head were so beautiful in the flowering crab apple tree!

A bird guy told me that with more feeders going up the mountains, birds will start migrating further into the mountains. The one I'm anxiously awaiting is the bright red cardinal!