Birding

Matt has had it in his mind to get a suet feeder since we've moved in.  I don't like the thought of having to take care of any other creatures besides my two little monsters, including house plants, but I'm sure glad he followed through on this idea!  We made our own suet over the cold winter with bird seed and leftover bacon grease.  It attracted a few birds but nothing like this spring!  We had to switch over to the no-melt store bought suet and our one little feeder and big oak tree is just a flurry with birds!  I get so excited when we spot new ones.  We call Papa and tell him all about it and give him bird-envy.  He has close to twenty feeders and we see almost all of the same birds with just one!  I want to buy two more feeders to attract finches, buntings and hummingbirds.  Oh, and we have lots of bluebirds in the neighborhood but I think we will need to build a house to get them in our yard.  The colors are amazing!  I could sit for hours watching outside our deck window.  Here are some of the regulars:

Male Scarlet Tanager

Female Scarlet Tanager

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Male Downy Woodpecker

Female Downy Woodpecker

Mama Robin

Marek peeking at the three baby robins in the robin's nest under the deck.  We spotted them as eggs and watched them every day until they flew the coop!

Chickadee

Oriole

Pileated Woodpecker!

We have really been enjoying the wildlife around here this summer.  The Pileated has been quite elusive.  I knew he was around and finally one morning, Marek spotted him on our feeder!  It took me a few days to snap his picture and now he visits all the time.  We are having to replenish the suet almost every day because of this big guy!  We've spotted a number of turtles crossing our lawn on their way to the pond and everyday we find tree frogs on our windows.  We even have one little guy that lives in our newspaper slot :)  There is a pocket gopher (or some such creature) living in our back yard and we are fairly certain that the little foxes den is in the big brush pile that we haven't yet cleared out from the previous owners.  Of course there are lots of deer and we never get sick of spotting them on our walks.  So big, so majestic.  Marek has caught all sorts of big bugs to put in his bug box. Right now he has a grasshopper, beetle, moth, dragonfly and big spider.  When they die, the giant spider can be seen sucking their blood.  I'm so glad he's a bug man, unlike his Daddy ;)

I can't wait to post some pictures of updates we are making around here!  We have an absolutely beautiful garden and are in the process of making a sandbox for the kids.  Slowly, (well, actually pretty quickly!) our dreams for our home are coming true!  Always thanks to my amazing husband!