Giant Dawg Vs Cattle Dog Vs Lil' Black Dog

Buddy, Blue and Lois Lane enjoying a Saturday morning romp in the living room.

Finchy - 7/52

The finch feeders are a big hit at the new place.  We have two of them and have to fill them up daily.  These guys eat us out of house and home.  They occasionally share with the chickadees and the tit-mouses, but most often it's overrun by the finches - gold and brown and red.

It Was a Hoppin' Weekend! - 6/52

First up - this week's animal photo - one of the many frogs that live in the pond:

We had an extremely busy holiday weekend.  Jami & Larry were down from Indy from Friday to Sunday.  We had a huge Labor Day bash to break in the new homestead on Saturday, which yielded a turnout of about 40 people.  Lots of food was consumed, jello shots were popular and the fishing was good.  It was a great time and I can't wait to do it again!  Unfortunately I was too busy to even think about taking photos and didn't get a single one.

With the holiday weekend I took off my half day Friday to get the house cleaned up.  I have today off for the holiday and I have tomorrow off for working the fair last week - not a bad deal!  So today we're running some errands, cleaning up around the house, and hopefully relaxing and enjoying the beautiful weather this week has brought!

And for duck updates - we lost three of the original four to what we thought was a snapper in the pond.  So we got three more to put the number back up at four and got bigger ones.  This time the larger one went missing.  After thinking about it we have come to the conclusion that the coyotes are getting them.  So we put up an electric fence around the tree they roost under and haven't had any come up missing since.  They are getting big and right now I'm calling them my Tweens.  ;)  As you can see, their color is starting to come in.

Ruby Throated Hummingbird - 5/52

Another Ruby Throated Hummingbird - the finches and chickadees weren't cooperating!

Hummingbirds - 4/52

When we first moved into the new house we noticed a little hummingbird occasionally coming by to sample the flowers in the front flower bed.  Jason promptly made his tasty vanilla flavored hummingbird food and now we're up to six hummingbirds all fighting for the feeder, all day, every day.  Earlier this week I was out on the front porch and decided to see if I could get some decent photos of them.  Being hand held they didn't turn out too bad, though next time I want to tripod the camera and use off camera flash, rather than the speedlight in the hotshoe.

These photos were taken with a Nikon D80; 18 - 200mm VR Nikon lens; SB600 speedlight on the camera hotshoe.

Scavenger - 3/52

I noticed this turkey vulture sitting on the fence the other day while I was eating my lunch.  He, apparently, was looking for lunch, too.  We have a fly trap in one of the trees near where he was sitting that stinks to high heaven of rotting flesh ( to attract the flies ) and we're betting he smelled that thinking he hit the jackpot on a yummy meal.

Behbeh Duckies! - 2/52

Friday we brought home four of the cutest baby ducklings!  We have set up a temporary enclosed area in the pond where they can be on land, in the dog igloo that is their shelter, or in the water, until they learn where their new feeding spot and shelter is.  We should be able to let them out of the pen in a few more days.  They are so cute and fuzzy and soft!  They have tiny little wings that they flap around as much as they can.  They are Muscovy ducks, but we don't yet know what the female to male ratio is.

More photos: