Good morning to all of you! It’s a windy morning, cloudy, but a bit milder with a temp of 34F (1C). Okay, it’s not much different than yesterday, but it’s above freezing instead of below freezing. That frost was so thick yesterday that it looked like snow, especially in places. Like my deck. Where I went sliding and slipping and landing on some of my plastic boxes. Which was not a lot of fun. There hasn’t been any bears or raccoons around for a few nights now, which is nice. But I bring my feeders in at night anyway, just in case. I don’t want any more broken feeders.

Last night, however, I forgot to bring them inside until it was very dark. So, I decided to take a chance and leave them out there, rather than take a chance to go out and get them after dark and perhaps meet the bear. I really don’t want to meet a bear at night. It’s bad enough meeting one during the day, but at night? No thanks. Just after I got up this morning Muffin suddenly looks toward the window, then runs up to look outside. It was still dark. Sigh. I turned on the light and looked. It was that huge raccoon again, going after the feeders. I let him have the seeds in the one, not much there anyway, and that was my funny looking home made jug feeder.

So I don’t really care about that one, it always stays outside. Then I chased him away. At least the raccoons are easy to chase away. The birds have come for their breakfast, so I have been a bit busy making sure they can each get their chance at the feeders. I have to watch the rock doves (pigeons) most of all since they scare everyone by their size and numbers. There are at least 23 of them, they are big and they eat a lot. They eat too much. It would cost a fortune to feed those birds, and I wouldn’t have anything else, except maybe the chickadees and nuthatches. Jasmine was here this morning already, odd for her to come so early.

And she went straight for the birds main feeder. So I had to go out and have a talk with her about that. She didn’t enjoy being told she can’t be on that feeder, so she left. Jasper went for that feeder yesterday and I told him not to use that one, there is another one he can use which has sunflower seeds and peanuts. He looked. Then looked at me. I pointed to the other feeder. He looked again. Then at me again. But he went to the other feeder, filled up with sunflower seeds, then took a peanut and left. Hopefully he will remember now. Hmm, no time for continuing our hiking story this morning so I will do a separate post for that in just a little while, I know that many of you are enjoying that one. Have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.