Foovay’s Cauldron

Posts Tagged ‘bird watching’

The hubby has been busy this week getting some great photos like this one of a house finch. What I love about this is if you look, you can see how those streaky breast feathers blend right in with the brushy mess on the ground to provide the perfect camoflage.

He also got our best photo yet of that pretty pale Eurasian Ring-Necked Dove. I’ve begun to feel quite sorry for her as the rest of the flock clearly ostracizes her. Of course, she may as well have a target painted on her as be this pale color here in the desert. We have at least two hawks who pay daily visits to the ranch. I wonder how long she will last?

And our best photo yet of the buffalo. We always consider it a sign of good luck when we see them on the way to town.

Speaking of luck, in the last few weeks I have won five times in a row on the Lottery. Only a dollar each time – just enough to buy the next ticket – but I’m feeling pretty special! I’ve concluded that I probably ought to spend more time and effort playing the lottery since my chances of winning a big jackpot are somewhat better than the odds of getting a book published that actually makes any money! (No, really, look at the figures someday – it’s pretty unlikely that even a GOOD novel will make anything)

Never mind the odds of making money on the Internet. I had to laugh the other day at a comment on a money making article about “why isn’t my article making money?” and the writer said “Oh, you have to let them mature”. Yeah. I’ve got articles that have been maturing for almost 10 years and they are up to a few pennies a month now! LOL.

Yeah, playing the lottery is looking good.

But until I win “the big one” I’m working on some Squidoo lenses for the Get Cracking with Robin and Bonnie Challenge. The idea is to do a lens a day for…however long you can take it, I guess. Although their main thing seems to be giving prompts for ideas – and the last thing I need is more ideas since I have half a notebook full of them – I’m using it as a motivation to get all those Work In Progress lenses I have finished up and published. So far, so good – I’m four for four. Here’s my list of the new additions – everything from “I love my iPod shuffle” to “Dragonfly Watching”. Keep your eye on this space, folks!

Yesterday I got a nice surprise check from the sponsors of one of my adult sites. It’s even nicer when you think that I don’t even have a link up to them right now! Gotta love the adult biz – repeat customers rule. So I have put that on my todo list – really got to get a real website up there again someday! Besides, it’s fun. I guess you’d have to say it’s MATURED. *snicker*

Blessedbe

Summer

As you can tell, this young Sharp Shinned hawk has gotten quite used to me being outside working. In fact, he’s gotten so casual about my presence that he has been less than 20 feet from me twice today as I worked on the fence repairs.

But this morning he astounded me with some behaviour I have never seen from a hawk.

I was doing the morning feed when I caught a bit of movement from the corner of my eye. I was just opening the chicken pen to feed them, so I eased the gate shut and turned my head. This young hawk had landed on the ground ten feet or so from a big brush pile where we pile the mesquite we cut down for this or that. Of course, the pile is always full of rabbits and birds and that’s just alright with us.

My first thought was perhaps I had flushed him off a fresh kill but I was wrong. He stood still a few minutes, then lowered his head so his body was in a straight line and took several very slow careful steps forward. When he got just a foot or two from the pile he pounced into it! Small birds burst out the top, twittering in panic with him right in the middle of the flock trying to catch all of them at once from the looks of it. The whole group went straight up in the air and then circled around behind the barn where I couldn’t see them with him right in the middle of them. I don’t think he caught him one as I’ve been seeing him around the house and barn all day – which is how I got these photos.

I have never seen a hawk stalk prey along the ground like that, let alone purposely flushing bird from a brush pile. Next thing you know he’ll be buying himself a springer spaniel puppy to train!

I haven’t gotten a whole lot done online this week, other than some new coloring pages requested for an adult. I’ve gotten a number of really wonderful coloring page requests this week. It really reminds me of why I really do line art and share it online. Yeah, I’d love to make a living – but no amount of money can make my heart feel warm like the email I’ve got this week from; a woman whose husband is ill but loves to color and finds it calming, a young man who teaches classes about animals in an orphanage, and a beekeeper who is creating a small book to hand out to local children about the importance of bees.

Between that and our little patch of desert with all it’s wonderful denizens, I am so blessed.

Hope you are having a great week.

Summer Fey Foovay

My hubby got this fantastic photo of a juvenile Sharp Shinned Hawk who visited the barn just the other day. Isn’t he gorgeous? I was outside working on some fence, and heard all sorts of commotion in the barn. I hate to admit it – but a windstorm this year peeled back a bit of barn roof. We think of it as a skylight… the sparrows and doves think of it as a handy door to the rafters where they like to nest. This young hawk found it a handy way to get inside and hunt the smaller birds. Fish in a barrel for him, I’m sure. After much ado – he came out the front door to the barn and perched on the saw table to catch his breath. Check out those feet! Here’s a couple more photos that show all his field marks off – the white speckled back, and the striped tail. He let my hubby get within about twenty feet of him before he decided that was enough of that foolishness and took off.

I am without Internet – but definatley not without entertainment! I’m also getting some much needed ranch repairs and chores taken care of, and of course I can certainly write and draw without any Internet. I’m working on my second novel in the Hunter series for Nanowrimo. It is up to about 13000 words and with any luck will be done in the next week or so.

I have much I hope to get done today – and limited time to do it. TTYL

Summer Fey Foovay

Yeah, okay, I took a break and went outside where I lucked into a flock of mixed blackbirds in the horse pen.

Mostly they are Brewers blackbirds. Like the yellow-headed blackbird you see in this flock, we started out with just one or two visiting during migration and now have a whole flock dropping by.

This is the best photo I’ve ever gotten of one of these guys. Love those glowing yellow eyes. Very halloween!

More of the flock of Brewers blackbirds – I seemed to be ruffling some feathers with my photo taking…

Alright, alright, I’ll go pay attention to some other blogs now

Summer Fey Foovay

I went to visit I and the Bird blog carnival at Madras Ramblings this afternoon. The carnival is well worth a visit. Ambika did a beautiful job with poetry and photographs to grace the carnival.

However, one of the first blogs I chose to visit is Walk the Wilderness who was featured with some photos of the Streaked Weaver. From there it was off to see the photos of the Dholes, and then the Leopards, and then…and I’ve said “WOW” at least three or four times. I’ve bookmarked some pages to use to draw some coloring pages and clip art of the amazing animals he has captured. I’ve followed it, even though it is a blogspot blog and I don’t usually bother with them since I can’t get them into my Google reader where I can see them daily. Walk the Wilderness is one stunning nature photography blog. Very much worth your time to go visit – and give yourself some time because you’ll find one post after another that you just have to read and see the photos!

We got a mention in the carnival – thank you Amika – and don’t forget I get to host it on October 1st. That will be fun.

It started raining here yesterday evening and hasn’t stopped since. The weather report says half an inch – but they measure in town and not infrequently the weather out here on the Jornada is completely different. I’ll be we have had AT LEAST one inch. AT LEAST. Back before the road was paved we would have been rained in. Never mind getting over Ash Canyon. Now we have pavement out front and a spiffy new bridge over Ash Canyon. So everyone is at work and I have all kinds of peace and quiet – for another hour or so.

Yesterday I managed to procrastinate about putting the Bella Sara cards on eBay by putting up a new lens at Squidoo – Free Printable Halloween Coloring Pages and updating the Free Coloring Pages Blog a bit while I was at it.

Today I went to list the Bella Sara cards and my computer swore up and down that I don’t have a scanner attached. So I’m working on putting my Halloween and Samhain clip art back online, and from there will get to work on some Halloween coloring pages, and updating my other Halloween Squidoo lens, I love Halloween – Samhain.

Oh yeah, I updated Living with a deaf cat to add a couple of links to some new articles I found on the subject.

I am up to 50 Squidoo lenses again! So I’ll probably be doing a lot of updating there for the next couple of weeks. Yes, I’ve applied to be a Giant Squid again. Wish me luck!

Which means I have lots of work I really ought to be doing – along with a good bit of housework, too. We do seem to have resolved Mr. Wee Wee Mouses’ forays into the kitchen cabinet and towel cabinet – but I need to wash the towels one last time. BTW if you got that email that said that Bounce dryer sheets will repel mice – I’ve got to say that in our experience, the mouse laughed as he pooped on them, too.

Laters!

Summer

Another day of many little things that hopefully will someday add up to a real income. The menfolk here are not pushing me to get another job – if anything quite the opposite. Everyone seems to like having me home. I like it, too – but I don’t like this barely scraping along and every minor event becomes a financial disaster sort of thing. I’d be really happy to find a nice little part-time painless job, two or maybe three days a week. Leaving me plenty of time and energy to play about here

We had a Cactus Wren visit this morning. She even knocked on the window to say “hi”. Or maybe she was chasing flies that were (unfortunately) on THIS side of the window! She knocked so loud the dogs even ran and barked at her as if she were a human visitor. I have to admit I was still too dozy to go find the camera and try for a photo. Maybe she’ll drop by again tomorrow.

I think we have gotten rid of the rodent problem. Now I need to put all those pots and pans and things back in the bottom drawers and cabinets. Sigh. And rewash all the towels yet AGAIN since Mr. Wee Wee Rodent has been back in on them before we got his mess cleaned up and the spot he was getting in blocked off. At least he didn’t seem to have a nest IN the house so we hope this takes care of him.

Of course, today I discovered a can of evaporated milk had exploded on the shelf. The smell was quite indescribable. *shudder* So that was quite a clean up. And I have laundry to catch up, too. You can sure tell I was working a lot of hours away from home.

I ran onto a link to this wonderful video of Bobby McFerrin (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”) showing some brain surgeons a thing or two. What I love is how everyone, no matter their country or language – understands this.

I added a couple of new coloring pages – yet another jumping pony (I love drawing them and the kids seem to love to color them) and a couple of young eagles having a disagreement.

The eagles came from a photo on the Discovery.com website. The posturing is so obvious I just couldn’t resist. I also colored it and will enter it into the wildlife contest tomorrow over at A Singular Creation. I also added it into the Birds of Prey free clipart page. Here’s the colored version:

I also got the free clip art blog up and running so I can post updates when I add new art and get the old sections up and running again, too.

And I am really excited to announce that I will be hosting the I and the Bird Carnival October 1st edition! With one thing and another I haven’t gotten to participate in it for a long time – and it’s my favorite blog carnival! I am really looking forward to it!

Hubby just handed me a grilled cheese sandwich – YUM. I hear thunder outside, too. It is officially fall around here – turning off quite chilly and getting a lot of moisture – finally. So I’m off to have some dinner and then go feed the chickens their dinner.

Later tonight I think I’m finally going to get it together and get some of my Bella Sara cards up on eBay. I was so upset to see our local Alco has discontinued carrying them completely. Then voila’ the Walmart suddenly had a FEW, just a FEW of the Royals packs (and now I have at least some of them). All in all, looks like I’m going to be ordering my Bella Sara cards online from now on. Which sort of takes some of the fun out of it. They are my little indulgence if I am in town for some business, and have $3 left and have “been good” (got my important stuff done) then I get to have a pack or two of Bella Sara cards. I won’t do that if I’m ordering online – shipping being what it is.

Well, gotta go before my sandwich gets cold!