KIND OF A FRONT YARD BIRD DAY

Seven Golden Finches, a Downy Woodpecker, 6 Red Wing Blackbirds, 2 Mourning Doves, 1 Cardinal, about a dozen Black Capped Chickadees, a smattering of Nuthatches, a Blue Jay & about a dozen Juncos are what I am looking at right now in our front yard while sitting at the computer in our sunroom.  Rearranged & replenished the bird feeders this afternoon & we pretty much have a full house for supper tonight.  

I have a feeling I missed the highlight of the afternoon though when a black squirrel must have ended up in the frog pond.  I had hung up some bird suet in a small metal cage over top the pond because black the squirrels were totally devastating the suet pacs where I had previously had them hanging.  I used last years binder twine to hang the suet which in hindsight turned out to be a good thing.  About half an hour later hanging the suet pac I noticed the suet cage was no longer hanging on the end of the twine.  Upon further investigation I saw the suet cage was at the bottom of the frog pond.  Ahaaaa, only one conclusion here.  The pesky black squirrel whom I had noticed an hour before at the suet cage had obviously climbed up my old dead pond tree structure & made a flying leap out onto the suet cage.......... & plummeted, cage & all, right down into the frog pond when the old rotted twine had broke.   Have not seen any of the black squirrels since.  Guess word got around pretty quick about the cold Saturday night bath!!

In last night's blog I probably didn't make it clear enough about the difference between the blogs theme & the photos.  The pictures were taken here in Bayfield where we live.  Earlier in the day I had taken a drive east of Bayfield to my old home town of Tavistock about 50 miles inland.  The photos & blog theme were two different places.

Have had several comments & inquiries about the black & white photo with the yellow daffodils in Friday's blog.  Let me first say that there is no rocket science to do that & anyone can have the same results with just a few clicks of the mouse in their PICASA 3.6 PHOTO PROGRAM.   Picasa 3.6 is a free download from Google & one of the easiest photo program's you will ever use.  I think most of my fellow bloggers are using Picasa.  When you have the program open just look for the word 'Effects.'  Click that & look for the picture square that says, 'Focal B&W.  That's all there is to it.  Just click that & you will see how easy it is to do that color highlighting stuff.  Try clicking on the other squares as well & you will be well on your way to improving your already great photos.  And don't worry, you can't wreck anything because everything is redo able as you go along.  I did a post about some Picasa features last August which you can read here at,  TWO THUMBS UP FOR PICASA. 

 
And, while on the topic of photos I would just like to add again that I see a lot of good photos on other blogs that with just a little bit of TLC in Picasa's photo program, could become great photos.  Photography is a two stage process & In the old film days you only had control over half that process which was the taking of the photo.  Your film went away & magically came back as prints because somebody else did all that.  Sometimes it was done right & sometimes it was not.  Thankfully, nowadays we don't have to trust our photos to an unknown source.  We have total control over our efforts.  Sometimes pictures taken with cameras are just so-so depending on many variables.  Now, with just a few clicks here & a few clicks there you can have that so-so photo looking just as good as you actually saw it.  And, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to do that.  Just take a little time & get to know your photo program.........  All my photos are done using Picasa:))

                                                                        

GROANER'S CORNER:((  A Mother pigeon & her baby were flying a long distance back to the barn when the baby pigeon said, "I can't make it; I'll get too tired." His mother said, "Don't worry; I'll tie a piece of string to one of your legs and the other end to mine."
The baby started to cry.
"What's wrong?" said the mother.
"I don't want to be pigeon towed!"

Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL