We found this morel mushroom today when Steve was mowing the lawn. It was growing right along the driveway. Hopefully the weather holds out and we find a few more to go with it!
White Breasted Nuthatch & Woodpeckers
April 17, 2010 By
We were in the yard playing with dogs and I was able to snap a couple of nice photos of woodpeckers and Steve’s favorite bird, the white breasted nuthatch.
New Home for this Blog
April 11, 2010 By
So, I’ve finally finished moving this site to a new platform. I still need to go through and fix some broken links, so please bear with me. I am no longer using the subdomain, blog.backyardwildlifejournal.com. I was maintaining this site through GoDaddy’s Website Tonight and Quick Blogcast products. Those tools are somewhat cumbersome and really limiting. The site is now on a self-hosted WordPress platform and is powered by the StudioPress Genesis Theme Framework. I’m going to work on making the site “prettier” shortly. I looked at the different Child Themes to go with the Genesis Theme Framework, but I couldn’t decide what to do. The most important aspect was to get all of my content moved over.
Now that I have simpler tools for updating and maintaining my content, I hope to actually update this blog more regularly. Of course, I also need to get off of this computer and get outside to watch my birds and dogs. That is a different challenge. 
Features that I hope readers and subscribers will enjoy:
Threaded commenting (so get out there and post your comments)!
Built in search feature
Simpler navigation, more continuity between the site and blog
If you have any suggestions for me, or tips on customizing this Studiopress theme, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I’m just getting started on the customization part of it, and I may add a child theme still so I didn’t want to do too much until I had the content fixed. For anyone else transitioning from GoDaddy, I can offer a lot of help in that process. I made just about every mistake possible. Post a comment with the part of the transition you are having issues with and I’ll try to help.
A storm of ducks
February 25, 2010 By
We had a winter storm here on Monday night. Tuesday morning I was leaving for work, and 4 ducks were in the end of the driveway. We are about a mile from the river and other sources of water. We see waterfowl flying throughout the year, but rarely in winter. Most of the water close to the house freezes over in the winter, so it was odd to see the ducks.
They came up by the house and walked all around. Steve’s friend had snowplowed these trails through the deep snow and they just walked all around the trails. Steve was home and took a bunch of pictures of them.
What a lot of changes for one week?! A new dog and now four ducks!
It was hard to keep the dogs away from the them. Quincy did chase after them and caught up to them once. She seemed curious about the and smelled them. That’s how we learned their wings were clipped. They couldn’t fly away from here. She just sniffed them though and went into her play stance like she was going to play with the ducks!
They came just a few feet from the back door!
We did give in and feed them some corn eventually. They seem to be staying here, th
ey’ve been here for a week now.
We are trying to find a home for them. They are just camped out in the front of our house by the road. We have a stand of trees near the ditch and they are somewhat protected against the wind. I don’t know how long they are going to stay, but so far they seem to be doing okay. You can see them here marching right past our feeder area.
Steve took the picture to the right. I really think it turned out nice!
A New Basset Hound
February 13, 2010 By
So, Shadow wasn’t quite the right dog for us. She really needs a more active household and is much happier where she is now. However, we decided that a 2nd dog might be a good idea. We started looking around at other breeds, but decided that the basset hound is a dog well suited for our lifestyle and we also know that he will be a good fit for Quincy.
Steve wanted a male dog and preferably one who would be a little more likely to bark when folks come into the house and yard. After a search, we found a breeder in Sterling, MI that we felt confident in. Up North Bassets hand raise the puppies and let their hounds live in the house with them. Jody seemed very knowledgeable and easy to talk to. They had a litter of pups on December 8th. They had 5 boy puppies born. A tragedy lost all of the girl puppies and cost the mother any chances of future reproduction, but 5 beautiful healthy boy puppies were available. We settled on one and picked him up on February 13th. What a great Valentine’s Day present!
Here are some pictures of him and a few of he and Quincy. His name is Chip. The breeder used it at home, so he already knows his name. That made things easier! They’ve become fast friends. Quincy is teaching him all about the rules of this house and his training is going pretty well. He needs a lot more work on housebreaking and all of his commands, but hopefully he’ll be a quick learner.
My First Hawk Picture
January 16, 2010 By
This photo is taken through the window, so it’s not the best. This hawk sat in a tree right behind the red shed for quite a while. I didn’t have the camera handy though, so by the time I was ready, I only had time for one shot! You can very clearly see the markings on the chest and the talons, though, so I’m not too disappointed.
Long time no blog
January 4, 2010 By
It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. For New Year’s I thought I should write some kind of blog and get back on track with this.
Update on Shadow (my found Plott Hound): We ended up not keeping Shadow. No one ever contacted me from the Michigan CoonHound Rescue despite my repeated emails, phone calls, facebook requests and Tweets trying to get their attention. I wasn’t really impressed by that. I honestly needed some help with that dog and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. I think she was mostly a Plott Hound. My Dad used to breed Walker Hounds and one of his buddies is still really into hounds of all kinds. He ended up taking her. He was all set up to have the hounds. He had 3 in his pack already. He hunts Bear, Raccoons and Cats with them. She turned out not to be into Bear or Cat hunting, but he is going to keep her around for the raccoons. At least she is well fed, cared for and safe. I never could have kept her from running in our unfenced yard.
Update on Quincy (My beautiful Basset Hound): Quincy has been doing really great. She is completely housebroken and spends all of her at home days now free of the crate. We ended up taking the crate out of the house and she hasn’t seemed to mind. She still gets some crate time at Doggie Day Care. Steve and I are considering getting her a new basset hound friend in the spring from the same breeder (if at all possible).
Update on the House: Steve and one of his friends covered the crawlspace in a 6 mil plastic. They used spray on adhesive to adhere it to the walls of the foundation and allow any moisture to run off and prevent it from getting stuck under the plastic. This completely solved our moisture problem in the house. It is now almost too dry!
Update on The Backyard: We’ve been keeping up with the feeders, but I haven’t had time in my schedule to participate in Feeder Watch (no 2 days in a row to be able to watch). We are seeing the usual suspects. Also, we were observing at least one bat every night until pretty late in the fall, so I am pleased to report that our local bat population seems not to have changed. Steve and a couple of his friends saw a mole in the backyard above ground this fall. That was our one notable sighting. Squirrel numbers are down from last year (only about 4 – 6 per day instead of 10 – 18). I have still been seeing pheasant and turkeys, but not in the backyard, just in the neighborhood.
Update on Steve & I: I am going to rededicate myself to this blog and some outdoor photography. I’ve been admiring a lot of other people’s nature photos on Facebook and resolve to take more of my own. We also are going on a New Year’s diet and hopefully going to get a little more active, hopefully that will include spending more time in the backyard.
So, how have your new year’s been? Any new interesting winter bird sightings? More posts to come (with pictures!).
Merry Christmas from our Backyard
December 25, 2009 By
Merry Christmas to you and your family from all of us!
Rain & Quincy
Found a Dog in the Backyard
October 1, 2009 By
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Steve and I do not want to keep this dog. If you know of anyone looking for it, please let me know! |
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Dog Information |
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Name |
?? |
Sex |
Female (probably not fixed) |
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Breed |
Coon Dog Mix |
Color |
Black with brindle coloring |
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Age |
4 – 5 years |
Hair |
short |
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Markings/ Distinguishing Characteristics |
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Black with dark brown brindle colors. Friendly. |
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Contact Information |
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Name |
Elizabeth Gross |
Phone |
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Address |
Bridgeport, MI 48722 |
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Where Found |
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Location |
On my back step – Roedel Rd between Reimer and Portsmouth |
Date |
Wednesday, September 30th @ 10:30pm |
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Story |
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The dog was not wearing any collar and showed up on my doorstep. I took the dog into Bavarian Veterinary to see if it had a microchip, but none was found. She seems friendly and well cared for. If you know who owns this dog, please let me know! |
Northern Flicker in the Yard
July 2, 2009 By
We saw a Northern Flicker in the yard exhibiting some weird behavior. It was eating ants, it hung out for over an hour. However, sometimes it would lay its wings flat across an ant hill or something that it had found in the yard. Here’s some photos.
In the picture to the left, you can see the flicker spreading its wings.
You can see the red patch on the head in the picture to the right.
Here he is digging into the ant hill.
Above you can see a little better image of the Northern flicker. It is eating at ant hills.
We also saw this rabbit in the same area, it eventually scared off the flicker.
The Northern Flicker was in the yard for over a half hour. It was very neat to watch. It was really focused on getting the ant hills. I was glad to be able to watch it for so long. We’ve usually only seen them fleetingly. It seemed like it had yellow underneath the feathers, but I really wasn’t sure if it was the Yellow Shafted or Red shafted variety.