Ice Storm, Gingerbread Rorschach, ETC.

Hello again everybody. Things have been hoppin' around here. Leading off we have the ICE....ice.....ice.....STORM...storm.....storm....

It hit on Friday the 19th and made for a wonderful day of work. I went on 5 service calls and 3 of which did not have power. Tough to work on a TV with no power. A lot of folks without power. The power company said about 80 to 90 thousand or so just in Allen County. We had a bunch of birds at the feeders the day after. Even an EASTERN BLUEBIRD.

Which is really, really odd. We never get bluebirds around here. Even when the weather is A-OK. It must have been hungry and probably cold. In fact, it was sooooooo cold (How cold was it?) My berries froze. Thank you, thank you very much. Try the veal.

In other news, Kristel and Jake made a gingerbread house. Jake basically did all of it with Kristel's help. He told her where to put the icing and he put the candy on it. But.......Hmmmm......Something looks a little odd. Don't you think?

What do you think? Leave your comments in the, well......comment section.

What else, what else? Update on the hitler kitty. We haven't seen it around for quite sometime. The last we saw it, it was limping away from the feeders. Probably not good news. Also in not good news, the snowy owl was hit by a snowy car and is no more. That is a lesson for you kids out there. Look both ways before chasing after voles across the street. In better news, we all had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to a great New Year. HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Kristel on the 31st!!!!!!!! AND Happy wonderful first year of marriage on the 5th of January to Kristel as well. Thank you for putting up with all my crappy crap.

That is all,

P Dub

Oiy with the snowy owl already....

Went out to see the SNOWY OWL again. It was a very windy, overcast day. Kristel and I found it in the field it was in the last time we saw it. A little closer to the road, but hunkered down pretty good. Still tough to get a picture. Still had to zoom all the way in (18x). Here is one of the better ones.




Also, we saw an AMERICAN KESTREL on the way back. Kristel had never seen one of these afore. Here is some blurry photographic evidence....



So all in all, it was a pretty good day. We'll try again to get a closer picture of the owl sometime soon. Also, earlier in the week, we heard a couple of GREAT HORNED OWLS calling back and forth to each other in our neighborhood. I've never seen one of those afore. Maybe I should go all Survivorman in the neighborhood and try to see it. Of course the neighbors would call the police.....again.

That is all....
P dub

SNOWY OWL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saw a SNOWY OWL today (12/07/2008) in southeastern Allen County Indiana. We had never seen one of these before. Not the one in the picture above. That is from Cornell's website. The one we saw was at a pretty good distance in the field. Thanks to Pam and Rick for showing us where it was perched and the IN List Serv for the reports. In the picture below, it was perched on the pole with the brush around it above Jake's head. Toward the top and middle of the picture.

It is kind of rare to see them this far south. We tried to get some pictures, but it was just too far out in the field. We stopped on the roads all around the field and zoomed in all the way (18x) with the camera. Here are a couple that you can tell what was there.

It was a pretty cool thing to see, even if it was
way out there. Looking at the reports, it likes to roost about 50 to 100 yards off the road. We might go back and see if we can get a better look at it and maybe some closer pictures.

Stay tuned....
P-DUB