Friday...........

The feeder is busy this time of the year.  It snowed earlier last week and now the extreme cold means the birds need to eat to keep warm.  If the feeder looks like it is crooked, it is.  I think that the slant of the patio adds to the slanting look. The sparrows fly in in flocks and attack it and then all fly away again quickly.  Me standing in the window making any motion makes them be scared and they all fly away.

Shiny Brites always look good in the jar.  There are three sources from which these could have been originally owned and used.  My mom had some red, silver and gold ones. My brother was in college in the late sixties and bought ornaments for a tree and he brought those all home later. I remember them being many different colors.  That is probably where the greens and violet ones had been added to all this. I did buy some for my self in 1973.  They were probably all red as it was a theme thing to have all the same colors of Christmas balls. I guess there could have been gold ones too. We have a scant few of them on the big tree and the rest are in jars.

I am trying to photograph the different cardinals that come to the feeder.  We have this one male cardinal for sure that we can identify.  We have another smaller one that has a large amount of brown on it with red.  We think it is a female but it could be a young male that hasn't full change to red.  The third one is a female as she is all tan colored brown.  She looks like a smaller young one as she looks small next to the big guy in the photo.  I have not been able to photograph her even though she sits on the patio chairs to rest while waiting to take a turn at the feeder.

 

The raccoon hangs on to the branch as he looks out at people passing by the tree.  I bought my wife a soft brown dog this year for her tree that has textured ears like a spaniel.  We have time to enjoy the decorated trees now that it is past Christmas.  We actually were wrapping presents on Thursday to take to the Chicago kids.  We just waited until all the other things were out of the way and we had fun wrapping them without stress.  We have a new little guy to buy Christmas gifts for this year.  We are anxious to see him.  Thanks again for stopping by today. I hope all is well with you and your family.