BUSY WEEK

This past week has been a busy one for us. Being that we are both retired, our days are usually not all that eventful. However, we did have to go out of town for a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, which threw our entire schedule off. Thus the reason why this week’s blog is a day late.

There are a lot of beautiful snapdragons blooming in our yard right now. The fuchsia-colored one in the picture above is right out by the street. We have never planted any snapdragons but a nearby house has a lot of them, so these are probably offspring of those plants. Always nice to get free plants in your yard! We never know where they are going to show up, either, but most of them are in our front yard. Here are some more of the colors that are blooming right now. I think these are the prettiest ones we have ever had!

I think the last one, the pink one, is my favorite because I like the way the background is blurred out. It is nice to have flowers blooming this time of year, when everything else is starting to go dormant in preparation for winter. Of course, we know winter is right around the corner because I saw our first Oregon Junco of the season a couple of days ago. I wasn’t able to get a picture because he flew away and I haven’t seen him since. But when you see one, you know more are on the way and that is our harbinger of Winter.

Since we are now on the subject of birds, we have had a couple of uncommon visitors to our yard this past week. The first one I saw on Sunday. I was sitting in my chair in the living room and out of the corner of my eye I saw this big bird land on our bird feeder hook. I looked up expecting to see a Eurasian Collared Dove, but instead I saw this…

A very large Cooper’s Hawk was just sitting there, looking around. Fortunately for the sparrows, they spotted him before he landed and they flew to safety. Poor Coop didn’t get any lunch that day!

We weren’t the only ones busy this week. The little hummers have been zipping about, going to the feeder on the regular. There are still at least two hummers visiting because they are constantly chasing each other away.

I can’t really tell one from the other except that one of them seems to be a bit fatter than the other one. I have named that one Chunky Monkey. Here’s a picture of the little rascal, just look at that belly!

CHUNKY MONKEY WITH SWEET FEET

It rained here (well, sprinkled, actually) all day this past Monday. You can see the raindrops falling on the videos. The rain doesn’t seem to slow the hummers down one bit, though.

One of the things I like most about these little guys is their tiny feet. They just have the sweetest little feeties on them. Hummers do not walk, so they don’t need long legs and big feet. They can only shuffle sideways on a perch, but you will never see one actually walking because their legs aren’t made for that.

YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?

One of them in the video below kept visiting the feeder and then leaving, coming back, and then leaving again, like he couldn’t decide what to do. He even perched on the bird feeder hook at one point. This little fellow has some colorful neck feathers that you can get a glimpse of every now and then.

I received my heated hummingbird feeder the other day and I’m quite excited about getting to have them visit me all winter. Be prepared for hummingbird videos for the next several months!

The same day I was videoing all the hummers (Monday), I also spotted a bright yellow bird up in the plum tree. I managed to get a short video of him before he disappeared. It’s the little Wilson’s Warbler, a migrant that we have seen before this time of year.

WILSON’S WARBLER

PARTING SHOT

I was out in the garden one day and Summer Girl followed me out there, as usual. She has been enjoying her time lounging around in the straw because she knows it isn’t going to last much longer. She also likes to roll around in the dirt, mainly because she is part pig.

Join me every Wednesday (barring any unforeseen circumstances) for more from the Southerner in the Northwest.