Two squirrels, ahem. Two cardinals as well. The mating game is on and the cats are watching.
Were you watching two males? Or - way more fun - a male courting a female?
The latter is adorable BTW. He’ll pick out the biggest sunflower seed from the mix, and hop over to her … lay it down in front of her with this hopeful expression.
The rest, dear readers, is up to your imagination.
… A couple of robins fighting.
Today, on the drive back from an abortive trip to see what was supposed to be the biggest Severn Bore of the year, we were passing the time by counting red kites. We saw 18, and notably we quite often saw them in pairs. Spring’s a-coming.
j
Note 1: In some areas you commonly see red kites seeking out roadkill along motorways.
Note 2: If there has been too much rain and the river is too full, the Severn Bore will simply breach the river banks, spill out into the flood plain and dissipate. Harrumpf!
Not this place, but our last place’s bedroom window looked out into a tree. A male cardinal figured out that if he sat in the tree next to the glass, he could use it to amplify his song. The goddamned thing would start his BEEP BEEP CHIRPCHIRPCHIRP at the crack of dawn. It sounded like a car alarm going off out there for days on end. Adorable my ass!
Currently I’m looking out the window at a flock of lesser goldfinches at the feeders. They make the house wrens look huge and have the cutest little cheep.
This. Yes, it is a courtly display of trying to win her heart.
What a bummer, I enjoy watching the Severn Bore. While some might be bored by it, I think it quite impressive, especially knowing how the ships of yore would straighten up and refloat before leaving port.
Heh. It was a much bigger bummer than just that. We parked up in the local nature reserve car park and walked through the reserve to get to the viewing point at Over Bridge. Did it last time we were there, worked well. However… that nature reserve is the river flood plain, and there had been a sizeable bore the previous night. There was no time to turn back and look for another route, so we ended up walking through ankle deep water. (It only dawned on us later that we had been walking through last night’s damp squib of a bore).
At Over Bridge, with the temperature just around 40F, I took my shoes and socks off and wrung my socks out, put everything back on and then - because there is a 1 hour window in which the bore can arrive - we stood around for that hour until we realized/accepted what was happening and gave up; by which time the water was waist deep the way we had come. We had to walk back along the road, not knowing if the car was also under water (it wasn’t).
Back at the hotel I washed my feet in the shower and then had to use the hairdrier on them before I felt human again. The things we do to track down nature in the raw, eh?
j
ETA - on a brighter note, eating lunch today we watched a magpie tearing clumps of moss out of the lawn and flying off with them. Nest building time.
Saw a Robin. Heard the neighborhood owls, and woodpeckers. The chickadees and nuthatches have been scouting out the oaks and white pines. The overgrown wildflower patch that is my yard is often visited by finches for seed heads.
I have 3 cats who assume it’s their right to go outside anytime. #1 goal is to break that habit.
Noticed a goldfinch in a tree by our living room window that wasn’t behaving normally. On closer inspection, its eyes were sealed shut with dried conjunctivitis discharge.
I caught the bird in an aviary net and we took it to a wildlife shelter for care.
If you have feeders, you might want to give them a good cleaning with a mild bleach solution.
Yep, the wildlife center gave us handouts about this.
Good man!
Yeah, I’d say that counts as a good day’s work. Get yourself a beer.
j
That was a gift. Yeah, an adventure you laugh at, but only after your body has warmed up again.
Saw this cuddly little feller the other day, getting a suntan on top of a culvert.
Yesterday I saw an albino squirrel. Being slow, by the time I remembered my phone had a camera it had disappeared.
I’m always disappointed when a bird has red in it’s name and it’s not a bright red rather than a rusty orange color. 
I see black squirrels fairly often, but I’ve never seen an albino. Lucky you!
Still in the dead of winter here, so nothing really new. I did have a pair of Ravens in my backyard for two days, which is unusual because it was in town rather than out in the boonies.
I really like having Redpolls and Pine Siskins here when they come south when food is too scarce in Canada during cold winters. Damn, they are expensive to feed. All they eat is nyjer thistle or sunflower hearts, the two most expensive bird foods. I’m spending almost $60 a week feeding them.
Spring is coming! We had a thunderstorm on Saturday night. Then there was a break, then snow. Sigh. Still winter. But now I have hope.
And fingers crossed. I always tell myself “It’s March, at least it won’t be -20F anymore, no matter how much snow we get.”