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Recent Photos and Project intentions

Are you tired of coming here and finding I have not posted?  Me too.  I'm not sure why, guess I needed a break.  I have completely torn my kitchen apart so I can finally tile my back splash.  I have cardboard down and tile saws set up so next week I should get some tiling done.  There has been a tiling workbench sitting on my landing for well over a year now...........I am tired of it being there so the only way to get rid of it and the stacks of slate tile is to finish the project so I am highly motivated.

Our gate arrived Thursday for the driveway and we have two more rolls of fence to get up so this weekend will be fence weekend.

Here are a few of my latest photos in the meantime.

Common Merganser in breeding plumage.

Black-headed Grosbeak Male.  This is one of the feeders that has to go.

I'm afraid rats have discovered the feeders and are competing with the chickens for the seed that gets dropped.  I am taking down all but one feeder and I'll be building a large catch tray for the one that I'll leave up.

Excuse me?  The squirrel feeder has to go too. 

Pip.  I had to move the thistle feeder away from the fence too.

Unfinished Projects

As my house building and remodeling friends know, sometimes you can get overwhelmed with the details of projects.  Especially when you are working hard to get an occupancy permit, you always mean to get back to it and finish up but other projects get in the way and you forget.

This is how we left the hose connection on our deck.

As you can see, it needs a collar there to stabilize it and block off the opening.

Why is this a bad thing?  It is an open door to all sorts of critters.

Here is the other side under my kitchen sink.

There is a nice little opening there as well that gets them right into the cabinets and since the baseboard is not under the cabinets yet, into the kitchen.

This is my silverware drawer, busy little buggers.

They moved all that in one night. 

So, now this project gets moved to the top of the list whether there is time for it or not.  It's time for a trip to the hardware store for some supplies. 

The cabinets will have to all be cleaned as it seems they have been in every one.  I have taken all the stuff out of them and left the doors open so the cat can let everyone know it's time to find other living quarters.  I have a few live traps too so I can help them in their relocation. 

Bird ID Toolbar

As you know by the pictures I post I am into bird watching just about as much as I am into house building. 

Here is a little Spotted Towhee (formerly know as Rufous sided).  The great thing about the zoom on this camera is you can capture the bird without them even knowing you are looking at them.  They are more relaxed and doing ordinary bird things rather than being concerened about you. 

Since I am at my computer most of the time I can't tell you how excited I am about a new tool-bar that ID's birds.  You can find the link here .  It is based on the whatbird website and is just awesome to have right on the tool-bar for easy reference when I see a new bird out my window.

Back to my camera. I love the way my camera makes the water look when I take pics of ducks and geese. Here is a pair of Gadwall that I spotted on Greenlake.

American Wigeon

This camera also has an awesome macro lens.

This little mushroom is only about 1/4" tall. 

This is frost on some seaweed at Ruby Beach.  The best part is that it is all automatic.

The lens was about 2" from this bird nest.

Camera Review Part I

I love the Panasonice Lumix line of cameras.  My newest one is the Lumix DMC-FZ18 and has many of the features of the last one but with an 18x zoom rather than the 12x zoom of the last one.  And this one is smaller and easier to carry around.  While there are a lot of things I like about this camera the two best feaures are the zoom and the burst mode.

It is an 8.1-megapixel camera with a 28mm wide-angle lens, and has the Intelligent Auto Mode, which includes Face Detection, Intelligent Scene Selector, and Continuous Autofocus functions.  If you set the picture quality from 8 mp to lower like 5 or 3 you can zoom in even closer, up to 28 times, they call that an extended zoom, not digital.

All the pictures that I take of my feeders and the river mostly are taking through my livingroom windows.

Here is a normal distance picture of the thistle feeder.

Here is the same photo zoomed in 28 times.

Here is the same bird cropped in.

Here are some deer that Dave took.  They were about 75' to 100' away.  They are zoomed in 18 times.

Here is the same image cropped.

Zoomed 18x

Cropped

The burst mode is really great for wild life photography.  Since wild life is always moving it's hard to focus on them but with the burst mode you can keep shooting and that will get you some nice clear shots.

Here is a burst of the deer hightailing it to the island.

Burst 2

Burst 3

Here is a crop of the second burst.

I'll work on some more examples of picture quality and different zooms and crops.

Spring Projects

It's already May and not much has been done.  We are about 75% done with the fence.  We sill need to run two more 100' lengths of fence and put up a gate but rest of the fence will be put on T stakes.  We put the first 200' on pressure treated posts that are between our neighbors and the front of the house.  The rest faces the wilderness and is on a slope so we didn't want to sink 4" x 4" posts in concrete for those length.

This is the gate we are planning to install. It's just the frame and hardware that will allow us to be creative on the face of it. 

The chickens are nearly moved, I still have to move some cross fencing before that can happen but maybe this weekend.  I love T-stake fencing.  It's so easy to move around when you need to.  They will be happy to get to some new space as I see them with their head through the fence all the time eating on the other side, which is apparently always greener.

We got some major cleaning done in the garage and you can even park one car in there.  This is a big day for us as we have never been able to park in any garage we have had.  The dream is to be able to park two cars in there one day.

Meanwhile, the landscape and wild life continue to delight me.

This is the first time we have had Evening Grosbeaks here.  There were about 50 of them in the trees, taking turns at the sunflower seeds.

The Goldfinches returned the same day.

They were about two weeks later than last year, guess they got the snow report and postponed their trip.

This Bald Eagle was hanging around Saturday morning.  His (or her, hard to tell) head is not 100% white so I am thinking he is about three.

The hummers are enjoying the feeders and the new fuchsia that I got from my friend Denise, she has a new website about to launch called Garden Girl

 

It's a nice addition to the deck.  As soon as we have a few dry days in a row we will pressure wash the deck and deck roof and get a coat of sealer on it.  It's raning again today though so I guess it's a good day for inside projects.