That's what I awoke to the other morning at 6 am. Wha...?
To discover that a squirrel was harvesting pine cones from a tree - yes truly, of all the hundreds of tree's in the vicinity - right over the sheds metal roof. And he proceeded with diligence for abut an hour.
Later in the morning when we sat on our (ooh la la) upstairs porch sipping our coffee, we watched another squirrel in a tree farther out, running up into the very top branches to pick and drop pine cones. He was an industrious little fellow, and it was good entertainment to watch him scamper around that high in the tree, then head back down to collect his booty, only to take a pine cone back up into the tree to eat the nuts. It nearly wore me out watching him!
Do you know? I saw a squirrel carry a great big mushroom up a tree the other day? Didn't know squirrels ate mushrooms... unless he was using it to poison an enemy.
The other thing we had a good time watching, was our hummingbird feeder - or rather, the hummingbirds themselves.
Carolina (complete with morning hair do) watching the Hummingbird action.
You see, the Hummingbirds had just got accustomed to their sugary sweet "e how" fare, when I refilled the feeder and tried replacing the white sugar with Sucanat. Truly, I used Sucanat because I didn't want to tramp down to the basement for white sugar and the other was handy, but it did look questionable in the feeder, and my Great Guy accused me of trying to convert the poor birds to health food.
"Just give it a day..." I said, "...and I'll go back to the original recipe if they don't suck it down."
Well...
We watched.
And waited.
And finally, in the evening we spotted a couple birds brave enough to give it a try.
The first one took one sip and left. That was that.
The next brave heart took a sip, moved to the next "blossom". Then the next. And finally tried one more before leaving in disgust.
I was laughing so hard, and voicing Hummingbird-ish thoughts out loud: "What the...?! Surely she didn't fill this thing with MUD? Hmmm. It tastes like mud. Maybe somethings wrong with this flower. Let's try another. Another? Just one more try and I'm outta here! Yuck! That's terrible! What is WRONG with that flower???"
I think it's a shame they are going to miss out on all the wonderful minerals in the unrefined sweetener. I figure their mommas must have raised them on junk food, but if that's what they like to eat...
That's what they'll get. And After I cleaned the feeder out and someone was brave enough to try it again, the Hummingbird wars commenced once again.
And that's entertainment for ya!
8 comments:
ha ha ha. That blog made me smile.
Lina's hairdo actually looks kinda movie-star-is! ya know...it could catch on. lol
SO good talking to you the other night. Love ya.
Nature watching is so much fun. Too funny about the sugar. It's a wonder they did not start dive bombing you.
I am cracking up about the Sucanat. Isn't that what we all say when we start using that instead of white sugar??? ha ha I don't even have white sugar in the house, those poor hummingbirds would be outta luck! Haven't they read Nourishing Traditions? :)- Very good laugh here.
How funny!
That little 'Lina is just too adorable! Be ware of sitting beneath those pinecone gathering squirrels. I made that mistake once and discovered pinecones falling from that distance scratch hard enough to draw a fair amount of blood.
It's so fun to see how much Lina is growing!
Ha ha, trying to trick the hummingbids!
I love Lina's hair!!!
I was just researching whether or not to use sucanat in my hummingbird feeder and discovered that it is toxic to hummingbirds due to the iron in it. I guess your hummingbirds know what they should and should not drink. :)
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