Good morning everyone on this beautiful Tuesday! The gulls were here early, but only Sir George and Ricky showed up today. The chickadee family were out here for a short while too. And the chipmunks have been busy. Good thing those chipmunks are around or it would be kind of dull here these days. Sure makes a difference not feeding the birds during the summer. Usually it is so active with different species of birds during the summer months. I still have to check with my new landlord and see if I can keep feeding the birds this winter. That will be a very dull winter if he says no to that.

I finally have a good picture of Choco to share this morning. And another one of Scooter. Now you can see just how cute these two little chipmunks are. Summers are so short it seems. August is here already and that’s our last month of summer, and sometimes there is a big difference in temperature that happens around mid August, which means that fall has begun. But I’m hoping that will not be the case this year. I’m actually hoping for another mild winter like this past winter. That would be very nice indeed. We have had 2 nice winters in a row before. But it doesn’t happen too often, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Sir Henry just showed up for his breakfast. It is just beautiful sitting on the deck this morning. It’s warm, there’s no wind, the sun is somewhat shining through the smoke, a white-throated sparrow is singing across the street, the only bird I can hear right now. I saw Slim yesterday, looks like he has moved across the street. He’s carrying his stock of peanuts across the street now. Maybe he found himself a girlfriend over there and he wants to be closer to her. He better watch those cars or he’ll end up being raven food.

The number of fires is going down, but that is not all good news. Some smaller fires have been put out, but other fires have merged together creating larger fires. So instead of 2 or 3 smaller fires, they merge together to make one fire, so it looks like there are less fires, but things are indeed worse. The largest fire is now 465,141 acres, the next largest is 397,000 acres. That makes over 800,000 acres with just 2 fires. There are now 110 fires burning, 90 are not under control, 7 are being held, 13 are under control. And smoke is everywhere. But it’s still a beautiful summer morning, a red-eyed vireo is now singing, and it’s calm. Have a wonderful day everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.