Bird Watching

We take our bird watching pretty seriously up here.  In fact, we not only watch our own birds, we keep an eye on others', too.  My friend Cam had business that would take her over to Reno yesterday.  The timing of her trip was such that she could care for Shadow, Cricket (donkeys) and the chickens and cats, but knew the hummingbird bottles would go dry before their evening feeding.  The little guys slurp "juice" all day, but are most active at sunup and sundown and she didn't want them to go hungry through the night, so asked me to be her bird-sitter.  There are many, many hummers in our area.  A winery up the road is named Colibri Ridge; colibri is a variety of hummingbird.  Accordingly, I went down to Camille's and refilled her feeders in the afternoon, hummers buzzing around my head all the while.  My hummers are drinking two quarts of juice a day, sometimes more.  Once these flying jewels come under our custody, we take the job seriously.  The pleasure of watching these birds is worth the time and trouble.

I continue to try to stem the tide of ants in the kitchen.  Single scouts are squooshed on the spot and the spray can is kept handy for the rivers of tiny black ants.  With the cats and Bessie Anne, the spray must be used judiciously so only the ants are killed.

In addition to the home invasion above, there was a break-in of another sort yesterday.  When Patrick unloaded a delivery of alfalfa the day before, he had not rechained the hog-panel gates to the feed section.  Those same deer I'd called delightful got another "D" word yesterday when I discovered they'd torn one panel off the hinges and helped themselves.  I guess I'd rather be Lady Bountiful voluntarily dispensing largesse than be ripped off by vagrants, even though the end result is the same.

The sun is just cresting the hill.  I'd better go get breakfast for the hummingbirds before they start banging on the windows.