I am in the process of moving this blog to Wordpress.  You can view the wordpress blog/site here:

backyardwildlife.wordpress.com

Once the migration is complete I’ll redirect these URL’s to the new site, but for the time being I’ll try to keep both current.

The advantage to the Wordpress blog is that I have more control over the appearance and that it is free. The downside is that I cannot monetize the blog at all (no affiliate links or adsense links). I’ll look at options for that at a later date.  For now, I’ll be glad to be on a better platform with no fees associated.

We had a winter storm here on Monday night.  Tuesday morning I was leaving for work, and 4 ducks were in the end of the driveway. We are about a mile from the river and other sources of water. We see waterfowl flying throughout the year, but rarely in winter.  Most of the water close to the house freezes over in the winter, so it was odd to see the ducks.

They came up by the house and walked all around. Steve’s friend had snowplowed these trails through the deep snow and they just walked all around the trails.  Steve was home and took a bunch of pictures of them.

What a lot of changes for one week?!  A new dog and now four ducks! 

It was hard to keep the dogs away from the them. Quincy did chase after them and caught up to them once.  She seemed curious about the and smelled them. That’s how we learned their wings were clipped. They couldn’t fly away from here.  She just sniffed them though and went into her play stance like she was going to play with the ducks!

They came just a few feet from the back door!    

We did give in and feed them some corn eventually.  They seem to be staying here, they’ve been here for a week now. 

We are trying to find a home for them.  They are just camped out in the front of our house by the road. We have a stand of trees near the ditch and they are somewhat protected against the wind.  I don’t know how long they are going to stay, but so far they seem to be doing okay. You can see them here marching right past our feeder area.

Steve took the picture to the right. I really think it turned out nice!

So, Shadow wasn’t quite the right dog for us. She really needs a more active household and is much happier where she is now.  However, we decided that a 2nd dog might be a good idea. We started looking around at other breeds, but decided that the basset hound is a dog well suited for our lifestyle and we also know that he will be a good fit for Quincy.

Steve wanted a male dog and preferably one who would be a little more likely to bark when folks come into the house and yard.  After a search, we found a breeder in Sterling, MI that we felt confident in.  Up North Bassets hand raise the puppies and let their hounds live in the house with them.  Jody seemed very knowledgeable and easy to talk to.  They had a litter of pups on December 8th.  They had 5 boy puppies born. A tragedy lost all of the girl puppies and cost the mother any chances of future reproduction, but 5 beautiful healthy boy puppies were available.  We settled on one and picked him up on February 13th.  What a great Valentine’s Day present!

Here are some pictures of him and a few of he and Quincy.  His name is Chip. The breeder used it at home, so he already knows his name.  That made things easier!  They’ve become fast friends. Quincy is teaching him all about the rules of this house and his training is going pretty well. He needs a lot more work on housebreaking and all of his commands, but hopefully he’ll be a quick learner.

This photo is taken through the window, so it’s not the best. This hawk sat in a tree right behind the red shed for quite a while.  I didn’t have the camera handy though, so by the time I was ready, I only had time for one shot!  You can very clearly see the markings on the chest and the talons, though, so I’m not too disappointed.

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged.  For New Year’s I thought I should write some kind of blog and get back on track with this. 

Update on Shadow (my found Plott Hound):  We ended up not keeping Shadow. No one ever contacted me from the Michigan CoonHound Rescue despite my repeated emails, phone calls, facebook requests and Tweets trying to get their attention.  I wasn’t really impressed by that. I honestly needed some help with that dog and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. I think she was mostly a Plott Hound.  My Dad used to breed Walker Hounds and one of his buddies is still really into hounds of all kinds.  He ended up taking her.  He was all set up to have the hounds. He had 3 in his pack already.  He hunts Bear, Raccoons and Cats with them.  She turned out not to be into Bear or Cat hunting, but he is going to keep her around for the raccoons.  At least she is well fed, cared for and safe.  I never could have kept her from running in our unfenced yard.

Update on Quincy (My beautiful Basset Hound):  Quincy has been doing really great. She is completely housebroken and spends all of her at home days now free of the crate.  We ended up taking the crate out of the house and she hasn’t seemed to mind. She still gets some crate time at Doggie Day Care.  Steve and I are considering getting her a new basset hound friend in the spring from the same breeder (if at all possible). 

Update on the House:  Steve and one of his friends covered the crawlspace in a 6 mil plastic.  They used spray on adhesive to adhere it to the walls of the foundation and allow any moisture to run off and prevent it from getting stuck under the plastic. This completely solved our moisture problem in the house. It is now almost too dry!

Update on The Backyard: We’ve been keeping up with the feeders, but I haven’t had time in my schedule to participate in Feeder Watch (no 2 days in a row to be able to watch).  We are seeing the usual suspects.  Also, we were observing at least one bat every night until pretty late in the fall, so I am pleased to report that our local bat population seems not to have changed.  Steve and a couple of his friends saw a mole in the backyard above ground this fall.  That was our one notable sighting.  Squirrel numbers are down from last year (only about 4 – 6 per day instead of 10 – 18).  I have still been seeing pheasant and turkeys, but not in the backyard, just in the neighborhood.

Update on Steve & I:  I am going to rededicate myself to this blog and some outdoor photography.  I’ve been admiring a lot of other people’s nature photos on Facebook and resolve to take more of my own.  We also are going on a New Year’s diet and hopefully going to get a little more active, hopefully that will include spending more time in the backyard.

So, how have your new year’s been?  Any new interesting winter bird sightings?  More posts to come (with pictures!).

Merry Christmas to you and your family from all of us!

Rain & Quincy

We saw a Northern Flicker in the yard exhibiting some weird behavior. It was eating ants, it hung out for over an hour.  However, sometimes it would lay its wings flat across an ant hill or something that it had found in the yard.  Here’s some photos.

In the picture to the left, you can see the flicker spreading its wings. 

You can see the red patch on the head in the picture to the right.

  Here he is digging into the ant hill.

Above you can see a little better image of the Northern flicker.  It is eating at ant hills. 

We also saw this rabbig in the same area, it eventually scared off the flicker.

The Northern Flicker was in the yard for over a half hour.  It was very neat to watch.  It was really focused on getting the ant hills. I was glad to be able to watch it for so long.  We’ve usually only seen them fleetingly. It seemed like it had yellow underneath the feathers, but I really wasn’t sure if it was the Yellow Shafted or Red shafted variety. 

I thought I’d ask around about what types of seed other birders have success with.  Here is what we feed in our backyard and where:

We have a pole that has a few different feeders on it:

A 12 Seater Medium Sized Bird Feeder – Filled with Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

A 4 seater Cottage Style Bird Feeder – Filled with Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

A Wire Mesh Peanut Feeder – Shelled Peanuts

A small Platform Feeder – We mix this one up.  Right now it has a mixture of Black Oil Sunflower Seeds and Shelled Peanuts

A Single Suet Cake Feeder – I typically keep all season High Energy suet in this feeder

We have a large Hopper Feeder on a 4 x 4 Post – This gets a mixture of at least Black Oil Sunflower Seeds and Peanuts and sometimes Whole Kernel Corn, Safflower Seeds or a Mixed Seed

We also have a platform and a flat stump that we feed shelled peanuts, Black Oil Sunflower, sometims Corn, Safflower or whole peanuts.

Steve puts out 4 – 6 Cobs of corn in various places in the yard for the Squirrels

We have a double suet feeder that normally contains a flavored suet and a Birdola Seed Cake.

We also have an 8 seater Thistle feeder with a rain shield. We currently have this filled with a high energy finch mix containing Nyjer seed, sunflower hearts and one other type of seed I think.  The finches do not seem to care as long as it is very fresh. 

The above are in place all year.

For the summer, we additionally have one hummingbird nectar feeder, one oriole nectar feeder (4 seater), and a hanging tray with grape jelly.

I just bought a lot of seed and I am going to monitor how much we are going through.  With this tough economy, I wonder how many backyard birders have been unable to fill their feeders?  I’ve found a few ways to save money.  Last summer I bought the prepackaged nectar for both orioles and hummingbirds. This year, we’ve been making our own nectar.  The birds seem to prefer the homemade nectar.  That has been a real money saver. I probably spend the most per day on the seed cakes and all season suet cakes. I really enjoy watching the woodpeckers and nuthatches, so I always keep these on hand.  I wish that I could find a place that would sell them to me at wholesale.  I have a couple of stores that will offer a pretty good price if I purchase a case. I try to buy the high energy suet from Meijer by the case when it is on sale.  My mom told me that I should consider making my own seed cakes, but it is so time consuming.  The Birdola ones attract a variety of birds and are very convenient. 

I also tend to view the peanuts as a splurge.  However, we seem to have a much better variety of birds around when we feed peanuts. 

So, sound off in the comments!  What are you feeding and how much? Any ideas on how birders can shave expenses?

We recently did some work on the entrance to our crawl space.  We haven’t yet finished and put a cover on it, so it is a bit of a toad trap.  When we let the dog out, we try and check the trap and make sure that no toads or frogs have accidentally jumped in the hole.  Well, last night the dog wouldn’t stop staring the hole and Steve checked and sure enough a Wood Frog had gotten himself stuck.  We tried rescuing him and at first, he just wanted to jump right back in there!  We ended up releasing him on the other side of the shed in the woods. 

Here are a few pictures: