BOID’S….& STUFF

Misplaced bird house…
Back in the day (90)’s I use to make these bird houses and attach them to a garden shovel,decorate and sell them for yard and garden…when I stopped making them, I was cleaning out my van one day and put this last one here for a temp spot until later. Well later never happened and the next spring I noticed a pair of chickadee’s and house sparrows were fighting over it…The chickadee’s won and for many years it was their nesting spot…but this year I noticed that the sparrow’s had taken over…When Liz was here she was able to get this pic of feeding time….

What was unique about this pic ….we found out when enlarged …was the comical way mama was feeding the baby…guess you could call it “spread eagle” ….pic below shows it all….we were sitting in her car on the street when she got the pic…

In all the years I would see the Mama’s & Papa’s bringing bugs and what ever to the babies…I never seen one…well as it happened to be this year…backing in my RV..put it in a perfect spot to watch feeding time and low and behold I got this pic of a baby…not sure if there was another on in there or not…it was not easy with my slow camera to get him before he ducked back in after getting his meal.

And then there is this guy….
I took this pic at the home park in FL…been meaning to post and ask what it was….I had to crop the pic to get a close up…Judy could you enlighten me on the kinda cute guy…not sure if cute is the right word lol...a face only a mama could love...

And the rest of the story….
Sitting here now waiting for my second meeting with the real estate peeps…should know more today…real estate sales are still stale here in this town…so who know how long this will take…but it is down to the nitty gritty now and I have to get rid of the rest of my belongings…I have not got much done…tail bone, life crap stuff like that…sometimes the life things happen that just suck the peace and joy right out of you…and in my observation of the senior years those are two things that you can’t afford to lose…it seems like you don’t bounce back like you once did… going this afternoon to get some Maggie food…at pet store about 15 mile away…stop and get some Grammy food supplies…that is if the wind dies down a little…
All for now thanks for looking and come back soon…blessings G&M

BIRDS IN THE HOOD

WOOD STORKS
I think these are Wood Storks. With Stork in your name you would think they would be pretty…enchanting…NOT…I think they are sort of ugly…sorry bird lovers…I love birds to but I know pretty when I see it and know when not. We have a bout a dozen or so that hang around the home park. Click on pic to see close up…if not Wood Storks please tell me what they are….
EARLY MORNING ROOST

Here is a flock of Ibis. Every morning about 6:30 am when on our walk we see these birds roosting in these bushes next to the river. They are so heavy in the body looks like they will fall of the branches! I even managed to get a few in flight. I like these birds they come right up in the yard and eat creepy crawlers. One thing I don’t like about FL.
THE ROOKERY

This is another scene we hear and see on our morning walk. These squawking and flapping Great Blue Heron.  It must be the start of nesting and mating season…they are starting to keep to the nests and make a heck of a lot of noise.
NESTING

It is so nice to have a Great Blue Heron rookery in the hood. I know of at least 6 nests. These large pine trees that they are nesting in are right next to the river.
AND THEN WE HAVE THIS BIRD

Again we have a Pelican in the spot light. This happened a few days ago at the home park, the two boys in the back were fishing off this pier, on the other side of the river from where I was. All the time here the Pelicans are present and always dive bombing the water for fish. One of the boys caught a fish was reeling it in and this  Pelican went after it and got its self hooked. The boys tried for about 20 min. trying to get him free. Finally this man that was watching the whole thing walked up and helped them out. (took him long enough ) , and it still took him a good 20 min or so to free the bird.
So there you have it…some of the birds in my hood! Thanks for looking and come back soon.
blessings G&M

TOMATO'S FOR CHRISTMAS! & A BIRD

This one is for you Judy! I will toast you at Christmas dinner with my salad lol. So nice having winter tomato's fresh off the vine. Mmmmmm good!This one's for you also Judy, if you happen to read this post. What is it? He (or she) looks like a he to me, comes to the front yard often. This was taken one day last week, Maggie was sitting on the bed looking out the window and took off in a fit, when he happened by. In PA birds in the front yard, were robins and house sparrows. She was always yapping at them to get out of "her" yard, but this guy really set her off. He sat down and stayed for awhile, just agitate her I guess lol. Any way I think he is pretty cool and I'm not sure what he is. Went to the post office about 5 times in the last two day's and there is always a line out door. I should have got the stamps when I sent out son's package on Monday. Here is a link to my daughters etsy shop check it out, I will put a link on my side bar. http://www.etsy.com/shop/mypaintinplace
Well all for now thanks for looking and come back soon.
Blessings
G&M

BIG BIRDS & RANDOM GEOCACHES

BIRDS AND NEST ON MAIN HIGHWAY : A bird nest on a large power pole along US 1 not far from home. I go by this every day. At first I thought it was an eagles nest but seeing these birds not sure. Anyone know? Judy if you still read my blog I know you will know! Funny they used some caution tape for part of the nest.

NEST WITH BIRDS

HARD TO GET GEOCACHE: This was a random geocache we found over the weekend. Was hard to get at we had to use a tool>

A CACHE: A cache in a tree.

MRS HW TELLING MR HW WHERE TO LOOK: We have Mr HW do our bush whacking, all this was not to bad as far as some of the things we get into! WEATHER IN MELBOURNE FL: Temp 80's and really bad storms. They just went thru, 74 mile an hr winds up at the Cape, about 64 here. I don't think I want to meet up with a hurricane!

My phone has been acting up (6 yr old dino) so went to Verizonwirless store yesterday. Was going to look into getting new I-phone. Well when it was all said and done I ended up with a Dorid X. It had a bigger screan and according to my Verizon guy Kris, it does more than the I phone. So far I really like it, now I know why everyone is always looking at their phones lol.

Maggie and I went out looking for a geocache with it, found it and logged about it from the phone pretty cool! Speaking of Maggie she has another hot spot :(

I went to Pearls yesterday for an art day. You can read about it on my other blog. Here is link

http://redapplejunction.blogspot.com/

Son is going to start working the bathroom this week hopes to have it done by the time I get back to PA. Then I will work on painting and getting rid of more stuff. Hope I can getit done this summer>

Thats it for now thanks for looking and come back soon.

G&Mg

HERBS, BIRDS, & A CACHE

HERB GARDEN: I planted a few more herbs now that spring is here in Florida! The bird houses are going to be hung on the old orange tree stump later. I have some black wrought iron hooks back in PA and will be bringing them back in the fall. I have been looking all over for some chives, and can not find them anywhere. They have onion chives here but not chives. I want the regular chives. So I planted some seeds yesterday, That is what you see in the bottom corner of the pic. Incubating some seeds lol! Hope they take.

BIRD BATH: Yesterday I was working in the yard, and cleaned out this old bird bath It is old, cement, and heavy. It use to be planted with some flowers, dad took them out last year, and that's as far as it got. So I cleaned it up some what,(has some nice patina to it) and filled it with water to see what would happen. Well you know from the last post that the robin migration has invaded our area and as soon as I walked away it was swamped with robins. It was amazing! All day long they were all over that bird bath, now remember there are hundreds of robins here right now. It holds about 5 gal of water and I filled it 3 times today. Unbelievable !! It was fun to watch them seems there is a pecking order and you can not go out of order to drink you had to wait your turn, mostly on the fence . I enjoyed watching them. Those white lawn chairs were covered with bird poo and I scrubbed them twice before I decided to move them. Duh!
CLOSE UP OF ROBINS: This is a close up the best I could do with my cheapo camera. You can see the blurs those are birds arriving trying to find a spot. lol! There is a cute "The End" bird pic for you Judy right in front! Saw lot of that today, was funny looking when 5 or 6 were mooning me! I tried but could not get a pic of them.

ANOTHER BUNCH!

BLACK BIRDS: Along with the robins are flocks of small black birds, I don't know what they are.

But they seem to be afraid of the robins. Today every once in awhile one would sneak in and try and get a drink with the robins and they would chase him off. Finally about 4 PM the robins started moving on and the black birds flew up to get a drink , even then the few robins still hanging around chased them off. I was able to get this one pic of the black birds. There are not near as many black birds as there are robing.

STUMPED CACHE. : I almost did not find this cache ( DNF ) I walked all over this area in yet another small park, the hint was Don't be stumped. Well I did not walk all around this group of palm trees while we were looking (me n maggie) and I could not find it. So I put maggie in the truck and thought I would do one more look around. I went around the trees and there was the stump, easy after that ! Another nice little park I would never have seen if not for geocaching, it was right along the Indian River.

THE CACHE

CACHE AGAIN ONLY A LOG INSIDE

WEATHER IN MELBOURNE FL. Sunny, windy, in the 70's Beautiful

All in all it was a great day. Nice weather just right , sunny and breezy. Did laundry, went to gym, took 30 min morning walk with maggie, watched birds, cleaned kitchen and scrubbed floor, watched more birds. Maggie was outside a lot today so she was happy.

That fire is still burning, still only 25% contained and they had I-95 closed on and off all day.

Guess that's all for now thanks for looking come back soon!

Blessings

G&M

AROUND THE YARD & A CACHE

VIEW FROM CACHE

THE CACHE

KOREAN DOGWOOD

FIRST BUTTERFLY

SECOND BUTTERFLY

LANDSCAPE DONE

FOR BIRD WATCH' IN
TEMP IN 80'S Hot and muggie with storms everyday almost

The first pic is of a Korean Dogwood tree I planted about 8 years ago. It was only about 4 foot high when I planted it. I think it is slow growing, but seems to have grown alot. In the spring and early summer it gets those white blossoms . Then in the fall it gets what I call red bead type berries on it. It really blooms 3 seasons. I think I like it more than the reg dogwood that only blooms once and for a short time. The white blooms are on the tree about 6 weeks.

Next two pic's are of the first butterflies I seen on my butterfly bushes this season. I was hanging up clothes and looked over and seen them, ran in to get camera to show you all. The bushes just started to bloom day before yesterday, they sure popped out ! The blooms on the bushes smell like honey to me, no wonder they like them, and also they attract humming birds.

We have been working for the last 2 weeks and got the garage done. I have some clean up to do in front before I post pic's, will do before and after. The before are really bad, I don't want to show them!

I have a lot more landscaping to do, but got that one little section done. I hung up the bird feeder so I could sit on my newly refinished porch and watch the birds. After reading Judy&Emma's blog http://travels-with-emma.blogspot.com/ and seen all her great pic's of birds, got me interesting in bird watching, so far I have seen just a few verities. Sparrow, blue jay, cardinal, and the robins but they don't use the feeder. Its fun to watch them, they must have a "pecking" order, they chase each other away from the feeder. Some of the sparrows get in there and bird seeds go flying everywhere, its a riot, then others go in and eat daintily no seeds flying at all.

The cache for today, I wanted the pic's to be in the middle of this post, after the text telling about the above. If any one can tell me how to do that, I would be grateful, or maybe with this template you can't do that. Well anyway this cache Maggie - the geo - hot dog and I found this one a few days ago. It is in the Shenango Dam area, and is just a short walk from parking lot. It was not to hard to find, it is sitting in the pic beside its hiding place. It's the same area where I saw the man hook a big cat fish, at least that's what it looked like from my view.

Well thats all for now

Happy Caching

G&M

PS click on the pic to make them bigger