Lake Gaston muskrat

Here are some photos of a muskrat eating his salad, otherwise known as our (crappy) lawn.

A walk around the neighborhood

Blue & Brown

A view from Eaton's Ferry Brige - we don't remember ever seeing the lake this muddy...

Hooded mergansers

I only see hooded mergansers a few times each winter & this is the first time that they've been close enough for a photo on a sunny day.

Valentines Post Office

We made the short drive up to Valentines Virginia so our cards could be among the 20,000 cards that get mailed from there with the cool Valentine post mark. The post office/general store is very cute!











Check out the WRAL news story about the post office.

Small town sights

Driving through Littleton a couple of weeks ago, I asked my husband to stop the car so I could take a photo of the horse coming down the road.








The horse was not one bit camera shy. He came right up to the car window for a close up. I'm glad I hadn't opened the window.

The snow

probably won't last too long with sunny 50 degree days...

Pileated woodpecker

A neighbor sent these photos of a Pileated woodpecker working for his meal...

The gulls of Lizard Creek

For a week or so, hundreds (or maybe thousands) of gulls chose our cove for their roosting spot. I took these photos early one very cold morning as they "came to life"...

Gouldian finch collage

Just playing with some free collage software - fun!

When the weather turns chilly...

we don't see much of our pups, literally.

Red-bellied woodpeckers eating mealworms

Our resident pair of red-bellied woodpeckers are feeding babies & it doesn't take them long to go through a couple hundred mealworms...

They left a few for the bluebirds -

Lake Gaston snowman

I wanted to do this when we had a couple of inches of snow in January, but the snow wasn't sticky enough. Today there was much better "snowman making" snow.

Red fox on a gray day

When I first saw this red fox this morning he was standing on our dock in the drizzling rain. By the time I found my camera, snapped one useless photo (through glass, plastic & screen), then changed the dead battery, I was lucky to get any photos at all. But he didn't seem to have use of his right front leg and his left back leg, so he didn't move very quickly and he rested frequently. Of the 30 photos that I took, here are the best ...

The Ultimate Bike Lock

Mealworms - not just for birds...

I keep my mealworm colony in the attic over our garage. But it's not just mealworms living there. There are also a few of these 5-lined skinks keeping them company. I think of them as my clean up crew. They can't get into the trays, but they will gladly take care of any that drop on the floor.





Her name is "Liz", the same name we have for all of the lizards. The day I took these photos, I was trying to teach her to fetch. I don't think she understood the rules. I would toss her worms, but she never brought them back.

One of these things is not like the others...

tree swallows

I took this photo the evening that our tree swallow babies fledged. I think this is one of the parents trying to coax the last baby out of the nest.