Broccoli for Breakfast

Seems like these days all the cooking revolves around using up what’s left from the garden! We had our first frost over this past weekend and all the remaining vegetables in the garden needed to be plucked and brought in. I have two brow bags with green tomatoes ripening on top of the kitchen cabinet. There are about 2 dozen butter gourds waiting to be roasted on the counter, along with some bell peppers, chilies and hyacinth beans. The last of the broccoli has been waiting to be used up and this morning I decided I can’t let them go to waste. So I did a quick stir fry of them with some garlic, ginger, almonds and coconut - breakfast is ready!

Spooking the Sparrows

I love all my backyard birds - even the house sparrows that flock in dozens & empty the feeder I refill in about 20 minutes flat, even when they kind of yell at me when the feeder is empty. recently I bought a bird feeding station kit where I can hang about 4 different feeders, it includes a suet cage and a tray and also a small bird bath. I also got a woodpecker feeder for adding peanuts and sunflower seeds. 

The problem was some of the sparrows decided they liked this feed better than their regular mix. It was fine for the most part, but they were aggressive towards the woodpeckers and the nuthatches. The poor downy woodpecker below, tried and tried, but couldn't get a morsel when the sparrows were there. 

After a lot of research into sparrow spookers, I settled to make a Magic Halo! Most of the commercially available ones are for keeping away all birds and this is the only thing I found that helps to keep sparrows away from feeders. I used a plastic bowl, drilled a few holes in it and dangled 6 jewelry wires from it. And it really worked like a magic! It's been a few days since I have put this up and the sparrows are sticking to their feeding station. Almost all the other birds - woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and a few red-winged black birds and grackles have been visiting the woodpecker feeder without having to fight with the sparrows! Every once in a while there is an errant sparrow on this feeder, but they hardly stay on. 

A blurry photo from inside the kitchen doors to show the sparrows sticking to their station & the ground :) Now I am tempted to get one of these stations for the front yard too!

Frontyard

Today the suet feeder in the backyard was empty - with so many birds at the feeders, it seems like a daunting task to keep all of them filled all the time! The White Breasted Nuthatch was having a tough time competing with the other birds on the regular feeder and managed to discover the feeder in the front yard. He even managed to bring a friend along today & this is the first time I have seen 2 of them at the same time. 

The doves also love the front yard more! Sometimes its useful to have the red-winged black birds (female in the picture below) come around to splash some seeds on the ground for the doves.

Downy Day

Among all the visitors to the backyard, my favorite is the Downy Woodpecker - the smallest of all the North American Woodpeckers, he is elusive and I have to sit still for a while before he will land on one of the pear trees. Last week he found his favorite suet in the feeder & gave me a chance to get some nice shots...

...till one of the blue jays chased him away for a bit! He came back & hung out for a while and I only accumulated about 5 dozen pictures of him :)

Fur, fur, Baby!

The sparrows have learnt to expect a hoard of soft fur when the dogs get shed in the backyard. They wait for me to finish shedding and as soon as the dogs run away, they swoop down to fetch their treasure. Eyes on the prize, they completely ignore me & the camera...

Backyard Birds

Recently I have taken to having my DSLR camera with me when I sit out in the backyard with the dogs. We have set up a few bird feeders and a couple of bird houses. It's been wonderful to see so many different birds come to the yard and there's also quite a few of them nesting! Here are some clicks from a couple of weeks back...I am hoping to keep this blog alive with at least posting a few pictures now & then :)

Hitting the road

We left Owen around 1 pm on the 22nd, made a quick lunch stop at the Pizza Hut in Abbotsford (Home of the Christmas Parade) and hit the road. The cold front for one of the big snow storms was moving in and we were anxious to get a head start. Though we were initially glad we escaped the snow, it got pretty foggy and visibility was really bad. At times we had to go like 45 mph on a 65 speed limit.

We stopped at Rockford for an early dinner, but the Thai restaurant we went to, was a big flop. The tofu was not fresh and for vegetable fried rice, they gave us steamed veggies with boiled rice, with not even salt in it :(, giving us no choice than to leave.

As we crossed into Illinois, it also started raining and we decided to spend the night in Bloomington. We stopped at an Indian restaurant (Puran) and finally got some good food for the day! We had gotten a Magellan GPS during Thanksgiving and today was the first time we used it extensively - to find restaurants and our motel and not get lost the very first day of the trip.