the Heron, the duckfight and Bob.

Yesterday evening I was restless, and unable to fall asleep and nap before work last night. I'm in the habit, obviously, of looking out the windows. So often I'm rewarded!  This time it was the blue heron, it's visits getting more frequent. The sun was going down and all I saw was his slate colored back, he was in the stream, facing the corner, looking down for his next snack.

There's nothing wrong with their hearing though and he heard me crack open the back door in hopes of getting a photo.  Not enough light with my point and shoot but I got one photo of him standing looking to see where the (ever so slight) noise came from and one of him taking off.  Just like this morning when I got home. I  didn't realize he was there until he took off as soon as I started to open the car door.

I walked across the yard, trying to sneak up on him again, since he'd only walked down the stream. But the ground was rather crunchy and he heard me, taking off. So I looked around while I was there, wanting to see if anything else was budding, or being gnawed on.  My burning bush is being ravished! Something is stripping the bark off the wood and systematically eating the buds too.

Then while I was in the house a duck fight broke out.  Blue Eyes and another male mallard were going at it hard.  Though I've seen seeing the ducks going beak to beak lately, it usually only lasts less then a minute. This fight had a whole different seriousness to it and went on for some minutes. Blue Eyes has the large white ring around his neck.  And do you want to guess what they appeared to be fighting over?  She's on the left of the first photo...

Here the other duck can be seen yanking some feathers out of Blue Eyes.  But if you look at that ducks brown bib, there's  several tell tale white scuffs, where feathers have been ripped from his chest.

 

The fight moved into the water.  At one point Blue Eyes actually had the other duck beneath the waters surface. Once the other duck broke free BE chased him across the stream and the duck escaped to the top of the bank.  But that wasn't the end of it yet. The other duck, foolishly, decided to come back to the water once again to take on BE once more. That was short lived and BE was able to chase him away.  The female duck sidled up along side BE and they swam around together for awhile.  Can you imagine what she could have been saying to him!  "oh you big strong drake you!" (you should know by now I'm easily entertained)

Speaking of being entertained, I've been watching the chipmunk a lot the past two days. I've named him Bob. When I was putting bird feed out this morning, I stood near the opening to his burrow and called to him. "Bob!?  It's time to get up!"   I figure in a week he'll realize I'm talking to him when I say "Bob".

Bob likes the big pile rocks. I probably mentioned that already.  But let me show you.

Here is Bob on the rocks

Here is Bob on the rocks, surveying his kingdom.

 Here's Bob in the rocks. Watching in safety when I opened to door to throw out some peanuts. 

I assume that he feels very safe there, as he goes there often.  Some times just sitting on top grooming himself in the sun. At any disturbance he goes skittering over and through the rocks, slipping into the crevices. His own little play land.

Once again the sun is out. I want to go out and do stuff but it's still a bit chilly this morning, and the wind has also started to blow again.  It even made the downy woodpecker a little nervous as she was at the upside down suet.  She'd jump up and look up from the roof, I swear looking at the chain and tree branch to see if it was going to hold. 

A little blustery wind for us is probably like hurricane force winds to some of those smaller birds!