Thursday’s Thoughts, With Coffee! #20

Good morning everyone! Time to grab a coffee and see what is happening around us this morning. It is very cool, cloudy and wet here today. We had quite a bit of rain overnight again and are supposed to get showers throughout the day. Quite a change from those nice summer like days we had for a while. Still, this is more normal for this time of the year I guess, just a bit cooler that it should be.

That is how it works around here though. Everything is sure growing fast out there however, plants do like all that moisture this time of the year. It should be a great growing year for the trees, and if this keeps up we should have a good crop of wild berries too. That will be good, it keeps the bears back in the forest where they should be.

Male Purple Finch.

It is actually going to get down close to frost tomorrow night. That is not so good. I want to start planting my flowers. This is actually good weather for that though. Cool and wet is easier on the plants when transplanting them to their new homes in the larger planters. I hope they do better than last year. For some reason they really struggled to stay alive last year. I am going to try a different plant food for them this year.

Female Purple Finch.

Not too many birds around this morning, although I see that Baxter, the blue jay, is here right now. And there are 2 Evening Grosbeaks, plus a handful of Purple Finches and Goldfinches. I saw a beautiful Indigo Bunting this morning, very early, and did he ever show up nicely sitting on a branch of that walnut tree out back.

Unfortunately I was unable to get a pic of him, but hopefully he will be back again. This is 2 years in a row now for seeing this bird. They are just so beautiful, and my favorite color too. Skamper, the chipmunk, is busy hauling away peanuts and so is Jasper, the red squirrel. They both use the same trail which makes things interesting at times when they meet.

Male American Goldfinch.

Skamper is running so fast I do not think he even notices Jasper, so Jasper always gets out of the way, often running fast to get out of the way. He probably does not realize it is the chipmunk coming, or he might stand his ground. He is learning again not to chase the chipmunks. Squirrels hate chipmunks and will beat them up badly if they catch one.

Female American Goldfinch.

Every time that Jasper tries to start chasing a chipmunk, I just point at him and say no. And he stops right away. He seldom will chase them now, so he is learning again. I did have him trained 2 years ago, but then he was not here much last year, so he has kind of forgotten.

The chickadees and nuthatches are obviously feeding young now, and they will still come to my hand for food when I am out there. Well, that is all for today. Muffin apologizes for not getting her daily funny posted yesterday, a new one will come out shortly though. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2023 Steve McLeod.