Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Week 3

Today is Week 3 of Bacardi Mama's Hit Me With Your Best Shot photo challenge.  In this challenge our job is to choose and post our favorite photo from the previous week.  And I'm kind of going to do that.

I'm going to post my favorite picture as far as a difficult capture is concerned but it's certainly not a photo of my favorite subject.

Last Spring before we left on vacation the bluebirds were here in droves or maybe flocks.  And while we were gone, they disappeared never to return and we could never figure out why.  Well I'm posting a picture of why we're going to quit feeding the birds and why I think the bluebirds disappeared.

I opened the patio door curtains day before yesterday and was startled to see this creature sitting about ten feet away in our birdbath.  He immediately flew into a neighbor's tree which towers over our back yard and from about 60 feet away defied me to capture a photo of him.

All of a sudden it was crystal clear that while we were feeding the colorful little birds at our backyard bird feeders, the colorful little birds were feeding this predator.

And we'll no longer provide the bait that lures our sweet little songbirds into becoming such easy prey for this guy.

On the upside, when we quit feeding the birds, we can quit battling the squirrels.

On the downside, we know we should like all birds equally but it's painfully clear that all birds are not created equal.  Some are just plain deadly enemies of the birds we work so hard to attract.

For more Hit Me With Your Best Shot pictures, visit Bacardi Mama and for some real fun, link up and enter your favorite photo of the week.

The Birds

I wrote about the flowers heralding the onset of an early Spring. Now it's time to write about the birds.

I waited all winter for the terrible weather to save the birds by putting out the feeder. It really never came so the couple of times that we had a little snow, I put it up. And about the time the birds would get used to it being there, so would the squirrels and every time I'd look out the window there'd be one or two dangling from the feeder. So I'd take it down. You know a person should almost trap them and relocate them. Maybe I'll write a post about that later but right now it's all about the birds.

They're all back and I have pictures of a lot of them to prove it.

Of course these guys never left.

And these guys I could live without but I guess you have to take the bad with the good.

In fact a lot of these were around all winter I guess. It's just now that we're seeing so many of them. Surely it's the amazing weather.

But the ones that really fill my heart with joy? The beautiful bluebirds.

They don't visit the feeder so I have to enjoy them from a distance but that's okay. I just love bluebirds.

And I promised to include a picture of the hyacinths in my Flower Power post so here it is. Later I'll go out and take a better one but this is all I have in my file right now.

I really need to get more pink. These are right outside our door so every time you walk in the house, the air is perfumed with their scent.

And, finally, Harry and I had a little getaway last week. We had a good time visiting the money stealers - I mean casinos - in Tunica, Mississippi. The weather was lovely and we really had a good time. Here we are near Rend Lake in Southern Illinois.

That's all for now. Later on, I really will write about what it would be like if we ever did trap and relocate squirrels.