Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Steve’s Bird Of The Day #43.
Hi everyone and welcome back to our bird of the day! Today it is the “ruffed grouse”. Sometimes people mistakenly say ruffled grouse, and are often referred to as partridge, which they are not. These birds are well camouflaged as you can see. They prefer areas with some deciduous trees such as poplars, birch and alders. They eat leaves, buds and tender twigs, plus flowers and berries in summer. The chicks will eat insects at first but by late summer switch to the adult diet. Often they are first spotted when they burst into a noisy flight which can be quite startling. Lots of deep, soft snow is good for these birds because they dive into the snow to sleep at night where they are safe and warm. They breed in spring and the female lays up to 12 eggs. Mortality is high for chicks however and half of females never raise any chicks to adulthood. They have many enemies such as hawks, owls, fox, wolves, coyotes, lynx, bobcat and people. Still, they are a common forest bird and live from coast to coast in Canada and from Alaska to northern Georgia and down into Colorado. Have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Art In Nature #12.
Hello everyone! It’s a real wintry, blustery kind of day here at Steve’s Country. Yesterday’s high temp was 57F (14C) and today it’s 14F (-10C), which is a huge difference in temp from one day to the next. It’s also kind of odd for this time of year, however, up here in the north even odd isn’t odd even. Okay, my attempt at humor wasn’t very good, I admit it. I’ll blame it on the weather!
But it’s certainly a good day to have some fun looking at more art in nature from warmer days. So I picked out some of those warm day pics to share today. Nothing like warm weather to put a smile on our faces and make us happy. But really, why not have a nice smile and be happy even when the weather is miserable? Keep those smiles going every day and you’ll find that you are happier every day as well.
Remember, being happy is really a choice that we make each day. We can choose to be grumpy monsters or be happy as a chipmunk sitting in a pile of peanuts! Or be happy as a gull with a french fry! And yes, gulls do love french fries, probably more than anything else I think. We have chip trucks around town and naturally, they sell french fries. If you want to find one, just look for a flock of gulls, that’s where the chip truck is located.
I bought some french fries one day and started walking down the sidewalk and if felt like I was being watched. I turned around and there was 8 gulls walking in single file behind me. Sigh. So I tossed a french fry to each one and they flew off happy as could be. Now I’m getting hungry. Oh well, I hope you enjoy each of the pics today, have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 