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Post by cinnabar on Dec 22, 2016 10:59:32 GMT -5
This guy blew in with the winds, and hung out for a while in the back yard.
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Post by Chuckie on Dec 22, 2016 11:57:53 GMT -5
View AttachmentThis guy blew in with the winds, and hung out for a while in the back yard. Didja holler out and tell him he was in the "wrong tree"? Pretty cool! CHEERS! Chuckie
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Post by pooka on Dec 22, 2016 13:31:52 GMT -5
Does that count as half a Christmas miracle.
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Post by cinnabar on Dec 22, 2016 15:01:26 GMT -5
The marking on these birds is stunning. Wish I had better light than the snowy morning. When I opened the shade he was munching on the burning bush berries next to the deck. By the time I grabbed the camera he was motoring around the yard, nibbling the lilac shoots, snoozing and ended up on the grape arbor. Watched him/her for an hour until the pointer dog had to go out and off he flew. We see a lot of different birds here, but this is the first for the Ruffed Grouse. The marsh and woods are less than a mile away so he was back home in no time. He did not sit in my plum, cherry or apple trees that I saw, must really be partial to pears.
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Post by nana on Dec 23, 2016 18:21:25 GMT -5
Maybe his wife caught him with the three french hens and kicked him to the curb!! Wish I could take credit for that, but it was from a comic in the paper today, Mother Goose and Grimm.
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Post by pooka on Dec 24, 2016 4:46:48 GMT -5
That is pretty good even for Mother Goose and Grimm. I've read that grouse were abundant at one time here long ago. But I fear not for a century or two. William Henry Harrison house built in 1805 in Vincennes he named Grouseland, in reference to the birds on the property.
I see a little wildlife because Pigeon Creek bends around my neighborhood on two sides just a few blocks away. They've cleaned it up a lot from the dumping ground it had been. There's a trail down it now that runs all the way down to the Ohio river, & there's sometime herons & other assorted small critters to be seen. I see more & more red tailed hawks & owls in recent years. We have a lot of resident Canadian geese to that fly from pound to pound, as there are many small lakes all over. We may be a good size city, but we are a city of trees almost everywhere. I've seen deer not far from my house, because there are enough patches of woods for them to filter in from the country.
I couldn't live in a place that was too built up. I need a little space & green about me. Too much pavement & concrete is suffocating. The original main north south road is just a few blocks away, but is now a local road. My neighborhood can be busy or quiet, depending on time of day. Being cut off on two sided means no through traffic, but my road is the beginning of a route strait to down town, so it's has it's rushes. The state highway is just a few blocks south of me. Far enough so as not to be too loud, but close enough to be convenient.
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Post by nana on Dec 24, 2016 15:08:02 GMT -5
I live way out in the boonies, but in a small hamlet, so there are houses right next door to me, and across the street, but we are surrounded by woods and fields. Just today I saw deer tracks in my yard for the first time. We see them in the field behind the house all the time, but they've never come over the fence into the yard before. My kale was buried under the snow from the driveway, and they dug into the snow and ate it all up, and my daughter's kale which was next door in her garden completely exposed, that they left alone. I hit a deer with my car the other day, just came around a bend and they they were in the road. I slammed on the brakes and just tapped it--it flew through the air and rolled over a couple times, then jumped up and ran. That doesn't always mean anything. Sometimes they are just going on adrenaline and drop dead 50 yards into the woods. But my husband said they were looking for me to get revenge. I had fur stuck in my license plate, and a dent on the hood like someone punched it with a fist, not too visible unless you look at it just right. I guess you could say I got off easy. I felt awful all day though...
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Post by chipperhiker on Jan 4, 2017 19:02:13 GMT -5
Sorry that happened to you, nana. I've hit two in my life, and it was awful each time.
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Post by nana on Jan 5, 2017 17:48:24 GMT -5
I have no idea how hit and run drivers can actually hit a human being and not stop. If hitting an animal can make you feel so awful, how much worse must it be to hit a person? I don't even want to think about it.
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