Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Buddy's backyard has been quiet because of the cold, but we did have some of our old spring/fall visitors come through. Our European Starlings. Where they been I'm not sure but they came back.

We have had our usual critters, and the raccoons been in hibernation since early November.

Ever wonder what would be some perfect birding gifts?

This year, I've receive and given gifts that is perfect for our backyard birding.
1. Is the 365 day calendar
2. I receive an "rite in the rain" which is an journal that is rain proof and a pen that is rain proof with a little zipup.
3. I've gotten dad a bird puzzle that features the Cardinals, Nuthatch, Chickadee, an Eastern Bluebird, and a goldfinch. <-- this by far is the best gift I could give to dad
4. Part of an Hallmark ornament series "The Beauty of the Birds" this year was the Pine Grosbeak, they did have a female limited edition but that was completely sold out on the first release day.
5. Next I gave my dad two new feeders because our squirrels have been destroying our small feeders.
6. I got my dad a stuff animal plush Squirrel which only until later tonight, I realized that the plush little squirrel is a replica of one of our squirrels named Sweater.
7. You know that commercial with the Raccoons?

Here's the video

I've found this little figurines that features three raccoons and it's honestly the perfect thing I could get dad.

Winter is coming!!!!

I know it's been extremely quiet on this blog, I swear once I'm on school break I'll start posting some photos of Buddy's Backyard creatures.

We finally have gotten cold temperatures and I think that all of our raccoons has taken shelter, there's no snow on the ground yet but I think this cold front we got will tell them to go hibernate (although they don't really hibernate).

The Moles that lives underground has really done a number on our neighbor yard, they are just tunneling all over and creating big unearthed holes. You could probably dig about less than a foot before you seen an actual hole that lead deep underground.

Other backyard titbits, our crows DO eat Peanuts!!!!! I've read somewhere that Crows eat Peanuts but we always throw peanuts out for the squirrels that we never seen them take an interest in until one day a crow must have watch me put peanuts in an unusual spot and sneakily took them but we witness it.

Here's some Winter Tips for your backyard creatures,

Heated bird bath, that's has to be one of the best thing we have for all our of birds and deers to have water access.

IF you feed Feral cats, start building those shelters now or start bringing them out if you already have made those. If you never made these shelter before here's a video on building them

Keep food available, we may go the extra mile to make sure that everyone has food. There's not much we can do for warmth for squirrels (If I could and if it would work I would totally buy an heated shed and have little houses fit for squirrels and birds)

How many can you see?

Who on the spotlight of Buddy's Backyard today?

It's no secret that Buddy's Backyard is filled with critters, one of our biggest group of visitors are raccoons. YEP Raccoons and NO they don't go digging in the garbage > sometimes the recycling but don't ask me why the Kits are a curious bunch.

These Kits are not camera shy, they don't care for the hose, they love grapes and now Marshmallows. According to dad we have always had raccoons, and he had always feed them but then he kind of stop feeding them until a few years ago. Clearly one of the biggest complaints people have about Raccoon is them getting into their garbage.

We started feeding them to keep them out of other people garbage, that way they didn't have to go out to find food but instead come to Buddy's Backyard and always have food there waiting for them. So we been into our routine feeding for awhile but then we took notice of raccoons showing up much later at night looking for food, so we decided to start making a second batch of food for them.

Well as you know Kits have been born and mama raccoon teaches her kits where to go for food. We believe we have two sets of family and a couple adults from prior family. So one night while taking photo I couldn't believe how many I was seeing!

So take a guess by this photo on how many there are!!!

Sorry that this photo is a little dark, but this is taken at night

Think you got the right number???? Check again!

If you wonder if raccoon cleans their food? Yes they do! Not all the kits are doing that yet but most of them are.

Hope you enjoy today tidbits on Buddy's Backyard and remember be kind to nature.

A doe & her fawn

I know Buddy's backyard has full of critters and wildlife. One of the biggest things we get are deers, while it's been a long while since we been able to take pictures because the deers show up at night. Truth be told, we're not even sure how many deers we get.

Today one of our Does, who clearly has been here before while we been outside at the same time. Brought her fawn today. Her fawn still has spots but those spots will soon fade, we hadn't put out all the food yet but we were able to put some of the raccoon food out.

Enjoy!

Meet Gretchen

Hey everyone!!!

So guess what new visitor been coming around Buddy's backyard . . .

She's been coming around since mid-June, what descriptions can we say to hint on what Gretchen is.

She's large . . .

Has Feathers

Eats plants, bugs, insects . . .

Leaves one sets of tracks.

Have you figure it out yet????

GRETCHEN IS . . . . . 

A WILD TURKEY!

Copyrights: Buddy's Backyard

Copyrights: Buddy's Backyard

Copyrights: Buddy's Backyard

Gretchen has become a routine visitor nowadays, typically it's an morning and early evening routine. She'll come in the morning and depending on if anyone up, we see her but sometimes she come really early but we're always able to see her early evening.

There are some days she does come maybe three times, typically it's two but it could/and can be three to four times a day. There's almost never a day where we don't see her or know that she has come.

She loves to dig in what we call our leaf pile between our two large trees, and scowers for bugs that lives underneath all that mulch. That's usually how we can tell that she had been here in the morning when the leaf pile looks very disturb.

She did bring a friend at one point that we call Zelda, but she makes a very rare appearance.

If Gretchen continue to come when the weather and seasons start changing, we'll have to find a way to provide food for her during the cold season.

Where Am I?

I apologize for not doing any picture sharing lately, things been a little crazy with having a job and just trying to take fun photos of everyone in Buddy's backyard.

I can still say that we're still having a lot of activities just as well with pictures, but I've been working hard trying to submit photos to the Nature Conservatory photo contest and finding the right pictures that will blow the judges sock off.

On another note, I will be traveling in July to Oshkosh where there happens to be an Audubon's Birds of America exhibit. So I can't wait to see that!!! 

On birds related news, our orioles are starting to bring the babies to the feeders and just yesturday our Eastern Bluebird showed up again, it appears that he comes when there's lot of activity going on with the birdbath because that's how it been with the last few times of him and the female showing up.

Granted we haven't seen either of them since our big storm earlier this month but to see him again yesterday tells me that they have to be in the area somewhere and knows our backyard.

The Grackles are interfering with the Orioles feeders, they or just one of them likes to go up on the feeder and disrupt the orioles.

We've gotten pictures of downy feeding her baby so if I can find the pictures I'll share some as well other pictures.

Wild rabbits!!!! We are seeing so many!!! We got to have at least a dozen and babies too!

Well until I can get more things organize about how to run this blog better, we're keeping in tune with the backyard.

Orioles Behavior

Today, May 31st was the first that we seen our orioles do something right before our eyes. So we get crows in our backyard all the time, but this one crow that clearly came for food got an very unwelcome greetings from our male Baltimore Orioles.

They kept swooping down at the crow, and the crow wasn't really willing to leave but the males were persistent in making the crow leave. So the crow moves around from spot to spot in our backyard to the fence across the alley. But the orioles were not satisfied until it left the premises, so the crow decide to take off and the orioles came swooping down at it then chase it to where our lilacs and woodpile is.

After watching that whole thing happen, I quickly went to search up reasons why the orioles would do that because this is the first that we've seen them do it. From a couple things that I've read, the reason behind this attack is to protect their territory, their nest.

Now we just realizes that the boy from last year nesting, along with his mate had to have built their nest in one of our trees in our yard. We say this because we would always constantly hear them in those trees, so maybe they felt that the crow was invading their territory as well being a threat to their nest.

Rare Sighting!

So a few days ago, Buddy's Backyard had a very very rare sighting of a Eastern Bluebird. The humans of my household have live up in this area since 85' so this is a VERY VERY rare sighting.

Here's why mainly Eastern Bluebirds are not common where we live, Eastern Bluebirds tends to live in areas such as meadows and openings surrounded by trees that offer suitable nest holes. With the proliferation of nest boxes and bluebird trails, bluebirds are now a common sight along roads, field edges, golf courses, and other open areas.

Where I live is in the suburbs, while yes we have "some" small open fields with tall trees and a pond. It's not an area where Eastern Bluebird typically come to, for some reason this Male Eastern Bluebird stumbles across my very diverse backyard.

He drank some water and took a short bath and spent a little time in our backyard and then went on it way because we never saw it after that one sighting. BUT that doesn't mean it couldn't happen again! We'll just have to keep our eyes out and timing is everything, I'd just happen to have been taking some pictures of a Starling taking a bath and then sudden the Eastern Bluebird flew down to the birdbath.

I hope somewhere down the road that I'll venture out to take photos of Eastern Bluebird in their natural habitat as well other birds that Buddy's Backyard doesn't get. There's so many different variety of birds that I wished they all visited Buddy's Backyard (that's not inviting the hawk or other predators that would eat my birds and critters) 

Until next time my Blue friend, thank you for visiting my backyard.

Critters Spolight

 

Wild Rabbits

For Buddy, it's no secret that he has wild rabbits running around in his backyard. He would often keep watched from his porch and sometimes when we're out on his tiny walk.  

Little Baby Bunny

A great camouflage!

This is the bunny that happens to came out to eat clovers while talking with the neighbor

 Another interesting this about this rabbit, was that dad was talking to the neighbor and this rabbit decided that he was going to have his clovers while we were talking. That shows that this rabbit was comfortable enough to do what it wanted to do, while dad and our neighbor talked.

Look at those ears!

How many do you see?

This was another thing that was discussed, should we assume that these rabbits are from the same family? How does that dynamics work, when you think about it that most of these rabbits that lives in Buddy's Backyard are probably from the same parents or kits.

Is this a good pose?

 As a estimare of how many Rabbits Buddy's Backyard has, I would guess roughly around 5 or 6. Since we know there's one baby and there's at least four adults. 

There will be another Wild Rabbit Spotlight, I discovered just yesterday that one of our Wild Rabbit only uses three leg or only have a full set of three legs. It's tricky to really capture the bummed leg but it's in the front, but on the left side which is typically facing away from me.

Also for that second Wild Rabbit spotlight, I will talk a little bit more on rabbits, their life, habits, plus more. As far as attracting these animals, you'll most likely already have these in your yards. However the one thing I won't explain (for any critters) is how to eliminate them, our yard is a part of their home.

Busy Backyard

Today was a busy day in Buddy's backyard, with the return of our Baltimore Orioles and our Rose Breasted Grosbeaks. Our routine visitors, the Red Bellied Woodpecker was not only on one of our suet it was on the ground and on the tree.

This is one of our male Baltimore Orioles, I believe that the parents had three males and one female. 

Usually when the Red bellied takes off from the suet, it goes somewhere else but not today!

This is the Male Red-Bellied Woodpecker.

Our robins (I can't even begin to count how many I saw today), one was taking a much needed bath and others were looking for bugs and nesting stuff.  

This is the Male Robin, you can tell that he is enjoying his bath.

 And lastly, our Rose-breasted Grosbeak . . . one of our returning visitors from the south.

I know what you're thinking! Don't worry! This is our Female Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

I haven't debated on how often I want to do a Spotlight on the birds, because we get so many but it would also be too much to do on a daily Spotlight on every single bird. But the main goal with this idea, is to tell you all about the breed, its life, how to tell the difference between Male verse Female and how to attract these birds to your backyard.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Buddy's Backyard,

What you will find in Buddy's Backyard are a variety of wildlife photos taken in Buddy's own backyard.

We're in the midst of having some of our birds that migrate to the south for the winter return to Buddy's backyard. We're excited to see them all again and document about them, this is part of the purpose for this blog, so you can learn about our birds and learn about birds overall.

I've been photographing wildlife for almost five years now? Either way I love taking photos of our birds and critters, it's amazing that you can interact with some of these birds and critters just by being there. They don't need much from me, except for some food and clean water-baths, but otherwise as long I stay within my distance and theirs, we're all in harmony.

Almost every single bird and critters knows Buddy, since his routine involves taking a walk outside with me and explore. Not one bird or critter ever sounded the alarm when Buddy is out, only when there's a hawk or another cat that doesn't belong in Buddy's backyard.

I also ask that you do not copy any of my photos and claim it as your own, I will have a copyright label on all of my photos.

I will be letting you know about when and where you could purchase a photo.