Backyard Critter Closeups

This gallery contains 4 images. Someone in the bird community must have put out the word that the best place for free seeds, free suet, and fresh water was our backyard. The last day and a half  has seen every regular feathered creature visit — and then some, in spades. Today alone we had a couple of Spotted Towhees (three of these solitary foragers were foraging yesterday in tandem), three Varied Thrushes, eight Dark-Eyed Juncos, two Red-Shafted Northern Flickers, one common Starling, five Black-Capped Chickadees, and ten Grey Bushtits do a stopover (of which six tried to feed from the suet feeder at the same time) come back every few minutes.

Squirrel (probably male)

Black-Eyed Junco (female)

Daily Prompt: Style Icon

The Boys photo credit: BohemianDolls via flickr CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

My style has evolved dramatically over the years. In senior high, I was grunge before grunge was popular as a music genre. 🙂 No greasy hair, earrings, body piercings, or tattoos, but I preferred the almost unisex buttoned-down shirts (but not of the lumberjack or argyle patterns) that I promptly rolled up to the forearms.

I even wore track suits (at a public school, we were even allowed to wear these outside of Phys Ed–at least, I never got cited for inappropriate apparel, and no, I had no aspirations to become a rapper), and eschewed

A Princess Parrot Named Monty

This gallery contains 3 images. I am a bit amused when fauna is given ‘genderizing’ names like ‘ladybug’, ‘black widow’, and ‘Lady Gouldian Finch’ (the ‘lady’ part was later dropped), and the Princess Parrot is no exception (even if it has blueblood connotations). The Bloedel Conservatory has one such diva … I mean, star: Monty, the Princess Parrot (a name which did not come about because of the pink “lipstick” on his beak, and the rising pink blush on his throat).