Good morning and Happy Friday everyone! We are so glad that you have joined us today! The coffee is ready so please, help yourself to a cup and relax with us for a few minutes. Very heavy clouds here this morning so it’s necessary to have the lights on today. And it’s very dull outside, meaning, rather dark when it should be bright light. But the little chickadees were here even when it was almost impossible to see them out there. The snow is still frozen to the trees and it is calm. So very still, except for the movement of the little birds. It looks beautiful with the snow on the branches like that. It’s hard to really capture it in a photo when it’s so dark out there, a sunny day is needed. The peanuts are out, but, where is everyone? The blue jays are not here yet.

Jasper and Jenny are not here yet. What’s this? I see Baxter and Betty just showed up. So the peanuts will be disappearing quickly now. With so few blue jays around these days I’m certainly not using up as many peanuts. However, I miss all those blue jays. At the start of winter I had 14 blue jays coming each morning, now we’re down to 6. That is very strange indeed. Those blue jays protect my little birds from the dangers of predators, especially that nasty shrike that comes around every winter. I realize that predators play a part in the natural order of things, but they can go play that part somewhere else please. I don’t have many birds this year, certainly can’t afford to lose many of them. Interesting how things work sometimes though. Last year there was a lot of birds around, but most were birds that didn’t normally stay the winter. They made up about 150 of my birds. The regulars made up about another 60-70 birds.

At the moment I have around 30 birds. Mind you, there would have been more but the rock doves chased the rest away. Oh well. It’s going to be a tough winter for pictures though. Yesterday I thought there were only 4 blue jays, but I figured I probably just missed a couple. This morning I have been watching very carefully and there are only 4 blue jays. Lost 2 more. I hope it’s because they have found another feeder closer to where they live. We’ll see what happens when the cold weather hits. Jasper and Jenny are still not here yet. I notice she comes from across the street, not a good thing, she might not last long. Well, it’s that time again to say good bye until tomorrow morning, but we’ll be back later with another chapter of our mystery story! I hope you enjoyed your coffee this morning, have a fantastic Friday and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2020 Steve McLeod.