Birds of a Feather...

I haven't been hiking lately, either because the weather was nasty and/or I was just too lazy and not motivated enough to get up and get going!  However, I have been doing some decluttering of the house, so that's one good excuse...but it's the ONLY good one I have.

I did go hiking yesterday and the day before yesterday.  I went without Finn because I just didn't want to have to try and catch him first.  He likes to hike, but for some reason, he makes me run around the house after him to get him ready.  Then I have to get his seat ready in the car.  My car is fairly new, so Finn sits on an old blanket along with his seatbelt.  He also wears a harness and sometimes a sweater.  Then I have to make sure I have his Kroger "poop" bag in my pocket.  I just didn't feel like dealing with all that, so I went alone.

I find myself walking faster now that I have a new knee and without having to stop and pick up poop, or wait for Finn to sniff everything, I can cover pretty much ground in almost an hour of walking.  Today was really, really cold, and I had laundry to do, so I skipped hiking.

This past Sunday and Monday, I did my bird counts and took lots of bird pictures.  I will have to split them up into at least two, maybe three entries.  When I count birds, I can only count the most I see at one time.  I know there are a lot of birds that come to the feeder, but how many times do I see the same individual bird?  This past Sunday I saw 25 cardinals all at once.  I managed to get 3 pictures, before they all flew off.  There were also many cardinals in the tree that I didn't a picture quickly enough.

Here are 5 Cardinals sitting under one of the feeders.

Here are 5 more Cardinals under one of the pole systems I have.  Those two gray birds are Dark Eyed Juncos.

Six more Cardinals and more Dark Eyed Juncos

Though I like to take pictures of individual birds because I like to  look at them closely, I've been trying to take some pictures of groups of birds, to show how many different kinds come to my feeders.

This next pictures includes, cardinals, mourning dove, house sparrows, two female brown headed cowbirds (they are the larger gray birds).  The male cowbirds actually have brown heads.  Herb always teases me saying he just saw some elephant birds....bad joke.