So I woke up this morning and the snow was gone. Literally. Gone. Like – there are remnants, but my yard is green (well, winter-green not summer-green). I guess it rained all night? And then it was 50° today. Holy cow.
Bruce made sure all of the bird feeders were cleared off yesterday. Seriously – these little guys are so much fun to watch!
If you’re wondering what that thick branch is … it’s the trunk to our Christmas Tree. It’s kind of a long story.
Pretty cardinal! There was also a female cardinal flying around today and they kept chasing each other off the feeder. The boy won – come on, girl cardinal! You can take him!
I love the shots when he has food in his mouth. I use a really fast shutter speed and put it on continuous in order to get that. Here are my settings for this shot:
ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
F/Stop: 5.6
Focal Length: 300mm (I had my long lens on)
I was shooting through the door, so that did mess with the crispness a little bit. Unfortunately, as soon as I open the door, the birds fly off so I have to keep it shut.
We’re still having this problem …
Seriously, squirrels? You guys had a lot of good suggestions for dealing with this last time I mentioned it, so we’re going to try something else …
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In other news, I did see my doctor today. I’m not going crazy, there is still fluid in my ears and it’s just taking some time to clear up. It put my mind at ease to know that there is a source to the problem (it’s easy for me to jump to the worst case scenario), but it’s just annoying that it’s taking so long to heal.
We were talking about some general health stuff and she reminded me that I really need to focus on drinking a lot of water and eating three meals a day and to have protein with each meal. I generally try for lots of protein anyway, but now that I’ve heard an MD say it I’m going to make more of an intentional effort to do so.
I think (correct me if I’m wrong) that spinach has a decent amount of protein in it (obviously not as much a meat or beans, but the dark greens are good for you, right?) so I sauteed some spinach and onions and made a red sauce for dinner (I tried to let it be spinach heavy and not sauce heavy, if that makes sense) and served it over campanelle pasta. It was good! And simple.
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I’m off … I’m watching The Help with one of our women’s groups tonight. We read it for book club last year and I cannot wait to see the movie!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Ooh, what did you think of the movie? There was one big part I was sad that they didn’t use (when Aibileen takes over Skeeter’s job at the paper), but otherwise, I thought it did such a great job of following the book’s storyline!
Love the Cardinal, as we don’t have them in Oregon. We have the Blue Jay, or as we call them the scrub Jay. They chase everyone away here. We do have some Mourning Doves and I love them. Your dinner looked yummy too. Good Job. Spinach is a great dark green vegetable. Good Iron! I didn’t read the book, but seen the movie as my daughter brought it home from the Library. It was very good, but then again sad as it was very true, and I hope we are better human beings decades later. Paula
I have a love and hate relationship with Squirrels. The Grey ones, I actually find pretty cute and love to sit and watch them for hours. The Black ones, I’ve found tend to be aggressive. I’ve been stared at, hissed at and a few of those have attempted to bite me before. Not good. Maybe you can have a bigger feeder, so when the squirrels raid it, there’s still food left over for the Cardinals?
By the way, excellent pictures. I’m saving now to get a camera and might be perusing this site on the best way to take pics. Awesome film you have there of the birds eating!
I was a little bit confused when you said that you were eating spinach for protein. I had to look it up because I was so curious! I’d never heard anybody say that before.
Apparently 3.5 oz has 2.2 grams of protein. I mean, it does have protein in it, but I definitely wouldn’t consider it a good source of protein. I don’t eat a lot of meat, so to get my protein up, I eat a lot of beans and make smoothies with protein powder.