Did I mention lately these are my favorite birds?  Oh?  I said that about pelicans, hummingbirds, night herons, and a multitude of other birds as well?  I guess my real favorite is whatever happens to be out my window, and today it was the hungry Cedar Waxwings.   

  I just love how “punk” these guys looked with their spiky “hair” and wrap-around sunglasses, don’t they look too cool for school?

 They came in a flock of eight or ten and took over the crab apple tree out my kitchen window.  They only ate off our tree, not the neighbor’s tree you can sometimes see in the background.  Go figure. 

Our tree is now picked clean, but I sure enjoyed their visit!

–Sue

We have a lot of robins around here, and in the fall they start to feast on the crab apples out my window.  Sometimes I get several in the tree at one time, and they are pretty quick getting in, grabbing a couple of apples, and getting back out.

I had a couple of birds, however, seemed to have nowhere else they had to be.  They didn’t seem to be after the apples too much but mostly looked around, especially when this guy caught a glimse of my camera’s focusing beam, then he would stare right at me:

Here you can see how the birds have really been cleaning the apples off the tree:

This guy had been eating apples, judging by the evidence left on his beak:

I hope they come back.  They were a lot of fun to photograph.

–Sue

This morning, as I was having my coffee and chatting on the phone with a friend, I was wandering around the house looking out the windows.  (Do you do that?  I know I should be DOING something, but I wander through the house and look out all the windows.)  This time someone was looking back — a red-tailed hawk!  Well, the friend and I had a good discussion going and I didn’t want to say, STOP, THERE’S A HAWK IN MY TREE!!!  Let me go get my camera!  Fortunately, my camera is always within handy reach, and I was able to grab some one-handed shots of this guy.  He could see my focusing  beam and would stare at me, but apparently I didn’t look like a threat because he sat out in this tree for about ten minutes.

The challenge was getting the camera to focus on the bird, not the tree branches, and I didn’t think it would work to holler out, Hey, You, would you mind stepping out from behind the branches, fluff your feathers, and turn a little to the left?  He already looked a little pissy.  (And I know this isn’t a great shot — I’m WAY past the 12x optical zoom and well into the digital zoom, probably up to the full 48x.  That results in the grainy look.) 

I had the same problem in Texas with this tri-colored heron.  You would have thought he was avoiding the paparazzi!  Or maybe he was just shy.  And by the way, did you know paparazzi is plural and paparazzo is singular?  The useless things you learn when you check your spelling!

You can see by the sharpness of the photo that I was much closer to this bird and didn’t have to go into the digital zoom.

So when you get a picture where you can see the camera chose the wrong object on which to focus, just try again and again, if necessary.  You can usually land a shot on the desired subject.

–Sue

No, not me, I just go to the cupboard and graze.

This little guy had to work for this tasty tidbit, though.  This robin got a crab apple off the tree, over to the sidewalk, and was having a tough time picking it up to eat it. 

Sorry for the poor quality.  There was rain on the window, and I think the camera was trying to focus on the water on the glass instead of on the bird.  (Duh, it just occurred to me that I could have switched the focus to “manual”.)

I can’t blame this robin for going after the crab apples, though.  I bet it’s a lot tastier than a worm!

–Sue

Ahhh, fall!  I should be outdoors, feet rustling through the leaves, camera slung around my neck, taking wonderful autumn photos, right?  Nooo, I get a sinus headache just thinking of all the dust, molds & mildew, and whatever else is lurking out there.  Here are a couple of Out My Window pictures from this morning.  I thought I should post some real fall pictures, since the last outside pictures I posted had snow in them!  And yes, that was this year!  This morning’s view of the pond:

Here’s a snowy peek back to the photo from a week ago today.  We have to enjoy the sunshine while we can; rain is on its way.

The crab apple tree out my kitchen window has been providing apple snacks for the robins.  They will come back and eat the withered left-overs in the spring.  No robin in this picture, just apples:

Remember my crayon challenge I had on my “design floor” yesterday for our guild meeting last night?  I was a month early — it’s not due until the November meeting!!!  The good news is, I’m done a month early.  Here a photo of the little candle mat quilted:

  And it’s really true — it isn’t a quilt until it’s quilted!

–Sue

ps:  I’m off to my 3rd (of three) applique classes this afternoon.  I have my applique pieces all stitched down except for five of the berries — I saved those so I would have something to sew during class today.  Then I will have to decide how to quilt it — machine or by hand???

This was our view out the back yesterday (Monday) morning, and it was still snowing:

A close-up view of some sumac bushes:

But my favorite sight was of the hummingbird feeder…

I guess I should take it down; I don’t think they’re coming back any time soon!

On the news last night, they said this is only the 4th time we’ve had a second snow this early in October.  We don’t need to be making these kinds of entries in the record books!

And to add insult to injury, it’s COLD.  It was 28 degrees when I got up this morning.  11:00 am, we are all the way up to 34!

–Sue

First off, it’s Judy Laquidara’s Stash-Busting Sunday.  I didn’t report last week, so this is two weeks’ worth of reporting.  Nothing bought (well, I bought four kits at the fair, but they were all for gifts, and they are all given away).  4.75 yards left my stash in my what-did-Sue-eat-at-the-State-Fair give-away.  I’ve been sewing sashing strips and borders together (how boring is that???), which is great progress on the UFO front, but I’m not using any additional fabric out of stash.

And speaking of my give-away, one of the winners, Barbara, was inspired to start a blog!!!  Stop by to welcome her to blogland, and please say “hi”.  It’s always nice to know somebody visited you. 

This leads me to something else I’ve been thinking about mentioning on my blog, it’s a couple of great ways to increase your visitor count, and that is to sign up for some of the quilt blog lists that are out there.  Some to check out:

• www.quilterblogs.com
• www.craftblips.com/quilting
• http://quiltinggallery.com/quilting-bloggers/search.asp

They are a great resource if you’re looking for quilt blogs to visit, but they are also helpful ways to increase the exposure of your blog to other quilters.  On the Quilting Gallery site, you are able to search for quilt blogs by state (as well as search other ways), which is fun if you are specifically looking for blogs in your part of the world.

And lastly, this has been a great bird-watching week so I will include some bird photos that made me smile.  We seem to be having three different hummingbirds favoring us with feeder visits.  One is a male:

And this is the same guy perched on their favorite branch.  He looks chunkier in the tree.  His mama must have taught him to sit up straight at the “table”.

This is one of the females.  (We know there are two, because one has even spots on her throat, “No-Spot”, and the other one has one bigger splotch that stands out, “Spot”.)  This one has really gotten bossy, and now sits in the tree and chases off any other hummingbird that tries to steal a sip of syrup.  This is definitely No-Spot’s tree.

And this bird made me scramble for the bird book.  I thought it was some sort of horned bird.  Turns out the juvenile house finches can have these tufts, and the morning sun was really highlighting them.  Pretty cool looking.

 –Sue

Not really — I love Tuesdays as much as any other day of the week.  I’ve decided to pretty much just post bird pictures once a week, and (big surprise!) that day is Tuesday!  Fortunately we had a lot of action at the finch feeder this morning.  First Mr. Goldfinch came to dine:

I got a little too much glare from the blinds on the window, but I still love the color and beauty of these birds.  The feeder is getting a little low, so if they sit at a higher perch, they can’t reach the seeds as well.  Once in a while he would look down at the seed like he couldn’t figure out how to get at it.  I wanted to holler, move to a lower perch!

Mr. Goldfinch left, and then here comes Mrs. Goldfinch.  We had pulled up the blinds so we could get a better view of the birds right before she stopped by, which resulted in better pictures.

And I love it when I get “the look” — and didn’t her Mama tell her not to squawk with her mouth full?  Guess not. . .

And it must be Couples Day in our neighborhood.  Jim spotted a House Finch that bypassed the feeder and went up to sit on the garage gutter.  Doesn’t he look skinny?

Mrs. House Finch joined him, and she’s carrying some nesting material.  Glad they didn’t decided to make their home in the gutter!  That’s no place to raise children.

I thought both the House Finches looked a little raggedy, but then I remembered how exhausting it is to be looking for a place to build your home — and here she is carrying the building material around with her!  What a woman.

Also, check out the photo site on Flickr on our Photo Friday shots.  We’ve had some new pictures uploaded, and they are fantastic!

–Sue

We had a couple of visitors this evening.  I love it when guests stop by at dinnertime, and then they feed themselves!

First there was a black-capped chickadee:

Then a sparrow came and chased the chickadee away, although I suspect the chickadee already had his fill:

And it looks like he had some choice words for me too!  I’m thinking this is an immature chipping sparrow, rather than a song sparrow, but I’m absolutely, positively not sure. 

Any day I get to see the birds up close and personal is a good day.  Can you see the crab apples coming along?  They were just blossoms a very short time ago. 

(I keep finding my photos on other photo sites, so bear with me as I experiment, trying to figure out how I want to “label” my pictures.  I know they will still pop up on other sites anyway.)

Sue

I’ve hardly taken a bird picture lately, so you know I must be busy!  I’ve been literally working night and day getting my challenge quilt done.  Another day of work left to do on it.  It’s been a challenge, all right, with thread breakage as well as batting/tension/design issues, all of which are my own doing, so this is definitely a learning experience.  I will share my “lessons” with you next week when I can share a picture of the quilt.

This colorful little house finch was feasting at our bird feeder this afternoon.  I think he saw the focusing beam, and had this questioning look about him.  I took this picture about dinner time, and late in the day the sun finally sneaks around the corner of the house and hits this tree.  Makes for some of my favorite bird pics when I can get the golden late-day sun. 

Isn’t he pretty?

Sue