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just strum

just strum

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Northern Ohio - Near Cleveland - Home of the Rock
Looked out the back window about 45 minutes ago and there stood two Blue Herring by the pond looking for small fish and frogs. Just might take the plow off the tractor this weekend.

It's a nice feeling after what seemed to be an extra long winter.
 
Hey, its going to 60 degrees tomorrow here in Pittsburgh. I am waiting for the hummingbirds to arrive in late April. Anybody else engage in bird watching?
 
Not so much to go out and seek them, but we do get a number of different ones in the yard and flying overhead. We have the blue herring, humming bird, and a number I don't know. Then we have a variety of ducks and geese (mainly those d---- Canada Geese). Then seen mostly over head, hawks and buzzards. On rare occasions we see bald eagles (we have three nests in the State Park behind our house)
 
Tim said:
Hey, its going to 60 degrees tomorrow here in Pittsburgh. I am waiting for the hummingbirds to arrive in late April. Anybody else engage in bird watching?
Click to expand...


i adore birds. shiner has set up an aviary in the backyard for me; i have a window feeder and a feeder out farther in the backyard, with nesting boxes all along the fenceline. i'm totally stoked, in that i'm feeding them everything they will eat right now, they all have babies nesting. pretty soon, i will have baby blackthroated chickadees, cassion sparrows, whitewing doves, cardinals, bluejays, mockingbirds, and woodpeckers.

my two favorite species are the cardinals and the cassion sparrows... that nest in my backyard. i also adore purple martins, but we don't seem to have any here in the city. did when i lived in a suburb of waco... in a past life.

cardinals are so respectful... the husband and wife stay so close, the husband allows his wife to eat first, and they play in the sprinklers. they make me happy.

the cassions are just so darned cheeky, they crack me up.

the martins sound like dolphins, with their sonar chirping, and they can be darned cheeky too. they get very familiar with people. in my past life/marriage, i had some that would sit on the shop door and talk to you while you were in the backyard working. not scared a bit.

[geez... sorry... that was almost like my husband going on about star trek, or karen, wasn't it... i'll hush now]
 
A pair of Hummingbirds 'adopted' us 2 years ago. They came back a couple of weeks ago for this year.

Along with quail, coots, roadrunners, hawks and ravens - BMF'in' ravens.
 
I set up 2 hummingbird feeders every year and its fun to watch them bicker over the feeders. I also have a large platform feeder and numerous tube feeders that are stocked year 'round. Deer reach over the fence to eat from the platform feeder.

I love spring where I'm at.................................:D
 
just strum said:
Looked out the back window about 45 minutes ago and there stood two Blue Herring by the pond looking for small fish and frogs.
Click to expand...

Y'all yankees have fish that can stand up?

Herring:

Herringadultkils.jpg


:D

Am guessing you meant heron?

250px-Great_Blue_Heron_On_Rock1.jpg
 
Brian Krashpad said:
Y'all yankees have fish that can stand up?


Am guessing you meant heron?
Click to expand...

LOL!!! I thought the same thing. Great Blue Herons frequent the beach in front of my parent's puget sound house, and we get other varieties out here in Idaho. But I googled, and found that the blue herring is a subspecies of the great blue heron.

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1474169892079312373YBBazq

We are casual bird watchers here, and get lots of hummingbirds on the decks later in summer. We have watched and identified more formally for cubs, but mostly, I just like to casually look and see who is around. The red wing blackbirds have shown up a couple weeks ago, and the first robins just appeared. Magpies never leave it seems. My favorite around here probably is the Western Meadowlark. I love their call! You have to get a ways out a side road to hear one usually now. When we first moved here, before a subdivision went in, you would see them and hear them right out on our own fence posts. :)
 
Things are getting pretty crazy around my yard. A pair of Doves had nested on my garage window sill for the last 3 years, and are back. We have also had a Robin's nest for the last two years behind our garage light fixture.
They seem to nest when we go on vacation. My brother who lives further north, came home to find a flock of Turkeys had taken residence on his rear deck. Now that can get messy! The last I heard he was looking up Wild Turkey recipes.
We have a woodlot behind our property and one year we had 25 Turkey vultures land in the trees. There was a freak late April snow storm that cut off their migration. We have a feeder and of course our Audubon field guide and binoculars. It is amazing how many species that actually fly through here.
I have gold fish in my pond but no blue herrings!
 
sunvalleylaw said:
LOL!!! I thought the same thing. Great Blue Herons frequent the beach in front of my parent's puget sound house, and we get other varieties out here in Idaho. But I googled, and found that the blue herring is a subspecies of the great blue heron.

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1474169892079312373YBBazq
Click to expand...

Wait, there really is a heron called a herring?

This is terribly confusing to me.

On the upside I learned that a heron nesting area is called a heronry.
 
ZMAN said:
My brother who lives further north, came home to find a flock of Turkeys had taken residence on his rear deck. Now that can get messy! The last I heard he was looking up Wild Turkey recipes.
Click to expand...

Thanks to webtender I found a whole bunch of recipes for you.:D :beer:
 
Tim said:
Anybody else engage in bird watching?
Click to expand...

My wife and I do - but from our back yard. I have a book on North American birds and I write notes in it for first sightings. Spring and fall are great times to see birds that are "just passing through".

I have quite a few feeders in operation and I never tire watching the birds.
 
Ahhhhh, gets better with each passing day. Today it's almost 60 and the windows are open and getting some fresh air in the house.

The grass is starting to green-up and I'll probably give it one more week before I remove the plow from the tractor and install the cutting deck.

The dogs and the cat are all sun bathing by the south facing windows. They seem to enjoy the idea that the cold is gradually disappearing.
 
Just washed the SUV. Such a pleasure now that I only have one. Down sized from two and loving it.
Spent a couple hours with my wife, and 10 bags later we have the Garden cleaned up, and already there are some little green sprouts poking through.
In Gardeners terminology we are inZone 6b which is quite southerly for Canada. I actually have an Acuba that is growing like crazy. The only other place I have seen one is North Carolina.
 
In about another hour I will cooking my first BBQ of the new year. I love pork chops on the BBQ A few beers will help eliminate waitng for the porkers to finsih cooking.
 
Nice! We had a BBQ last night (but we had to eat indoors)...
Pork chops, haloumi cheese and grilled veggies + tsatziki. Oh my :)
 
The birds are starting to come as I mentioned earlier, and the driveway is melted off so that I could bike around with the kids yesterday, but the temp was only about 34 F, and there is still 6 inches to two feet of snow over much of the yard. More where is was plowed up or drifted in over the winter. Our back patio, with the seating and fireplace, is definitely still buried. Few more weeks yet to wait here.
 
The cook out was great, but it did chill down real quick after the sun started to set.

I have 2 Bluebird boxes set up way back in the backyard. Carolina Chickadees are taking resident in one box. About 4 weeks ago I put up 2 feeders in the backyard. So far I have had Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees, American Goldfinches, Redheaded Woodpeckers, and Dark-Eyed Juncos at my feeder in the last week. Things are beginning to pick up at the feeder.

Maybe some of the Southern Fretters could send some warm weather up North to eliminate the left over snow and help spring new buds on tress and bushes.
 

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