Pine siskin

Our home was built in the 1960s as a summer lake house. It has a very high ceiling in the living room, lots of glass and apparently not much insulation. In an effort to keep the house a little warmer for the winter, we've covered our sliding glass doors with plastic - you know the kind they sell at Lowe's that you tape up, then shrink with a hair dryer until it's "crystal clear". Well, it's not crystal clear as you can tell by the cedar waxwing photos in my previous post.


For days I've been trying to take photos of the few pine siskins that hang out with the flocks of goldfinches at our feeders. For days, I've taken a lot of blurry photos through that layer of glass and plastic.


This morning I figured I was in luck. The door of our screen room had blown open and a pine siskin had flown inside and couldn't seem to find his way out. Camera! Time for some nice clear close up photos!


Hold still...





Hold still... (Click on the photo below to enlarge and you'll see he looks quite "ghostly" here with a transparent head.)





A little better...





Thank you!

What we've been missing...

Ten years ago we moved from upstate NY to North Carolina, but this is the first winter that we didn't head even farther south to Florida. We're really enjoying the winter here, and the wild birds love having us here to put out mealworms, Zick dough & sunflower seeds. Last week this little flock of cedar waxwings paid us a visit. Prior to this, I'd only seen waxwings at Cape May and my husband had never seen them.





Just 4 feet from our bubbling bird bath, they preferred to drink from a tiny puddle on our deck railing.








cedar waxwings

flames

Nothing better than a little fire on a cold night...





but it looks like somebody is in the fire - spooky!

BIGBYing 2008

Most Sundays I keep a tally of the birds that I see at our home and I enter the info in eBird. My rules for this count are that I must see or hear the birds while standing somewhere on our property (1 wooded acre & a dock on Lake Gaston).


For 2008 I'll be expanding my count territory as per the rules of BIGBY, Big Green Big Year - birding without creating carbon emissions. I first read about this on Laura Erickson's blog, then again on Delia's blog. I signed up for the self-propelled BIGBY, which allows the use of a bicycle or a canoe. I love the idea of this - so low-key - perfect for the gal who does most of her winter birding from the hot-tub on the deck. OK, maybe the hot tub is not so green, but in our defense, we keep the heat turned down in the winter & almost never run air-conditioning during our steamy North Carolina summers.

Lil Shirl - memories...

This is Lil Shirl, a baby northern flicker that we rescued from the beak of a crow a few years ago.





We had no way to get her back to her nest - a hole in a dead tree, 30 feet high. We nailed a box to the same tree and put her in it, hoping Mom & Dad would feed her. It didn't work. After a few hours of watching Mom and Dad fly in to feed her siblings, but ignore her, we brought her into our home.





I wasn't a licensed bird rehabber at the time (working on that now), but I do have a lot of experience hand feeding my own baby finches. And I do have an NC Wildlife permit to rehabilitate small mammals, so let's just pretend that she has fur instead of feathers, shall we?


She was easy to feed and grew like a weed. We cut down a couple of trees, brought them into our screen room, and she was right at home.





She would join us for dinner...





Hey, this stuff doesn't look half-bad!





A few weeks later, her siblings emerged from their nest and I decided it was time to set her free. Here she is, outside of the screen room, but not too anxious to go anywhere.





Finally she left my husband's sleeve, hopped to the ground, ate 100 ants in a matter of seconds and I knew she would be fine. We have lots of ants! She climbed a tree and flew away without a backward glance.





Oh, but she came back - again & again over the next month. She liked to hang out with us and she loved the mealworms that we fed her. She was a very sweet bird with very sharp claws!





Our screen room has a plexiglass roof. Here she is looking down through at us. Hey, where are my mealworms?








Northern flicker

Finch Friday

For the season...





society finches

A Christmas visitor

Mommy, I'm not really sure about this...maybe you should put down the camera and pick me up!

Tall hair

Savannah & Sage -





Hairstyles have sure changed since I was a teen...





Reminds me of Cindy Lou Who ...

During the non-Christmas season, we limit Pup2 to three toys at a time. So she really loves it when I bring out her sack of Christmas toys...





OK, I got it off the table...





Look at all this stuff!!!





I think there may be one more in here...





Yep...





I knew it!

Finch Friday

This is why they're called society finches - the more the merrier and the closer the better...





society finches

Passing through

Amazing that there are no collisions!









Canada geese

My petunia plant in December

The plant doesn't look very good, but there are still some pretty blossoms...

Finch Friday

If you want to take twice as long to accomplish a task, just let a pet help...














My beautiful female gouldian finch, Pippa, a few years ago. Gone now, much missed.


gouldian finches

Lake Gaston sunset

View this evening from Eaton's Ferry Bridge...





Lake Gasston

Finch Friday

We were working on a project in the aviary this afternoon & as always, my curious little finches came to investigate the "new furniture" in their room...








Hmmm, what's this thing???





Photon didn't join them - he just posed pretty for me...





gouldian finches

Osprey nesting platform

We took advantage of our guests and put up the osprey platform last Tuesday. My husband had a whole system of attached ropes to help us raise it and to keep it from going too far, but it turned out that the ropes weren't necessary. His tall & strong son-in-law was able to raise it with very little help.








Ready & waiting...

Finch Friday

Time for some finches in a Christmas setting. This photo is a few years old. Daytona, who passed away last year, was the first gouldian finch that I ever hand-fed. Taffy is on the left. He's one of my tame society finches. He's living in the aviary now & doing great.





tame finches

A happy & WARM Thanksgiving

Always fun to have the kids visit...





Extra nice when November weather is warm enough for jetskis & boats...

Diamonds and Ducks

Pretty...

Mealworms for sale

And now a word from our sponsor: my college student nephew that lives with us has expanded my mealworm colony into a business: NCMealworms.com. We now have hundreds of thousands of mealworms that are just waiting to fill the tummies of your favorite wild birds. So if you need mealworms, we would really appreciate your business. Our website accepts Mastercard, Visa, AMEX, or Paypal.





This is my nephew Patrick - he bought his first car a few months ago, a 1994 Nissan Sentra. Any mealworm business that you could pass his way would help him pay his car insurance bills.





mealworms