Brother Lloyd and I started with the first of the trees coming down on May 22. The building took about 6 weeks with days off and since I was in no hurry, I didn't hurry. I had lots of help and really appreciate that. The kids will too. It was certainly a labour of love and is now in good enough shape I can leave it alone for a bit while I get some other stuff done. The end result looks better in person than on any drawings I made up to try and make sure it all went together well. There are no major issues with the construction, although I did have a few days that questioned my sanity when things didn't go as smoothly as I had predicted or wanted.

 Here's the latest of the treehouse pictures. This is from the deck.  

 The steps aren't perfect - these were done in a hurry quite early on and I needed to get them together so I could save time. But they work OK for now. I may need a little more challenge for the kids to crawl or climb up to the house. 

Here's what you see from the walkway coming over from the garage.

WaxWings and Turtles

Our neighbour Beagle Ken was telling me about these birds he hadn't seen in about 5 years and they were at his place eating his holly bush berries. So I told him to call when they reappeared. He called and I ran down, but only managed one sequence of one bird - there were about 10 about but most were under cover. The berries are almost gone. I was happy just to get any. This was on Wednesday April 20.

On Friday My brother Paul and I headed for the Valley for a fishing trip on a very warm spring day. On lake one we were fairly unsuccessful fish-wise - but very successful fun-wise. We then switched over to lake number two and before we loaded the boat we checked the local turtle log to see if any were out and about. There were six on the log originally, but they disappeared rather quickly when the alarm goes up. Three reappeared after things settled down. Here's Turtle One and Turtle Two telling Turtle Three to come on up to practice the synchronised sunning routine they were working on ...

The little guy was swimming around the log and finally said "I'm coming on up ... I'm just getting my energy up for the big climb."

OK, so here we go - ahhh made it .. that sure is a long way to pull up a heavy shell like mine...

OK, so synchronized practice over - then what do we do ? How about some balancing practice.

Look guys, no hands or feet !!!

 We got the turtles, we got a deer, two pairs of ruffed grouse, some red-tailed hawks, two beavers, and then a mystery bird that must be a lightened up eagle - further research required. Oh, and by the way we did take enough trout home for a great breakfast for three on Saturday morning. Great day on the water with lots of heat and interesting things going on... No bugs, and no sunscreen - forgot that. Summer can't be that close !!! Some of the stories are for another time... 

The Paw Patrol Easter Egg Rescue

"Hi I'm Ryder(Grammie), I just got a call from the Easter Bunny saying the wagon I borrowed from Grammie to deliver Easter Eggs has turned over and needs to be rescued. We need two teams to set out and try and find the wagon with the spilled eggs... Skye (AJ) and Marshall(Holden) will be PawPals 1, Everest (Norah) and Rocky (Eloise) will be PawPals2.
"PAW Patrol, to the Lookout." …  " All paws on deck"...

Everyone get your badges and baskets to gather the missing eggs and instructions from Ryder.

Here they are at Clue #1 - the big yellow mountain. Marshall just wanted to slide: "I'm fired up! Pups Away"..

Off to clue #2: Where the fairies live near the Fairy Door: ROCKY: "Green means go!!".

Clue # 3: Off to the Dragon Cave where the dragons live... Skye:"Let's take to the sky!"

Clue # 4: Off to Nikita's Garden. Everest: "Ice or Snow I'm ready to go!" .

Final Clue: Near the Big Boat and the Wood Pile:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: YOU HAVE LOCATED THE TURNED OVER WAGON!!! PUT ALL THE EGGS IN YOUR BASKETS …

Perrfect Paw Patrol Participation... Now PUPS - go find your rewards in the house: all is set up in Grammie and Grampie's Room...

Eloise was happy to get a carrot, but she also got a three wheel scooter (below).

Norah got just what she always wanted - a skate board !!! Here she is showing Daddy ...

The girls put together the scooter for Adeline (Grampie's AJ) ... 

...and Holden came away with mitfull of trucks - a dump truck with even a plow on it !!!

Here are the scooters - Holden also has a blue one like Eloise's... all awaiting patiently for the Paws to go have some fun on the driveway - with helmets of course...

Hope everyone had a beautiful Easter. We then headed off for a marvelous turkey dinner with home made apple and blueberry pie and ice cream ... 

The Yellow Chat, Cardinal and White Tails...

At the end of January Paul was helping care for a summer layover Yellow Chat that was having difficulty with the winter cold. He was the "Jellyman" to help the chat get fed with grape jelly, and hopefully, survive the winter. These were taken at a cemetery in Lower Sackville.

Although he stayed mostly in the rose brambles, he also was quite friendly and cooperative to visitors for some quite striking yellow breasted photos.  

Along with the yellow chat came the cardinals, waxwings robins etc. The waxwings and robins were not as cooperative as the cardinals and the chat - the star of the show.

Here are a few of the male cardinal, the female was about, quite often at the same time - just not on this day ...

While unsuccessfully pursuing the robins and waxwings we scared up a few tails on the lower road. Just as we were leaving, we were very surprised to find these guys munching on a birdfeeder in the front yard while a neighbour worked on his car right across the street !! Obviously, town deer used to traffic and people.

Seems like Momma didn't like the snapping of pictures - or maybe it was the strange "truck slowing down to take  a look at her"... In the Spring and summer I'm sure they keep the neighbourhood clear of any roses and tulips or other such fine dinery ...

Although about a month out of sequence, I felt these pictures needed to be in the blog as wonderful nature encounters and beautiful natural pictures and stories...

Back In the Saddle

Sat Feb 27, 2016 - It's been about a year since my last post so it's time to get back into the game. It was a very nice and mild +5C with the sun shining bright so I decided to take Allie our wonderful dog for a little scout. These Common Goldeneyes were down at the south end of Porters Lake, diving for food. So on one of their dives, I snuck out of the truck, crossed the road and got ready to shoot.

There were a pair of males and they immediately became suspicious of "what changed"... So they nervously headed for more open water. The lake de-iced everywhere yesterday - there wasn't much ice on the lake this winter at all... It is now all open, right up to Duckhead.

Anyway, this pair decided enough had changed to warrant a scoot. It doesn't take long for these guys to plane it up and become airborne. They didn't go far - just up around the bend to Rocky Run.
 

So we adventured on and did a quick trip into Fisherman's Reserve where most of the birds were quietly sipping on low-tide marmalade or hunkered down on the rocks just melting in the warm sunshine. This Ring-billed Gull shows just how blue the sky reflection was today...

The Shore Road had some Canada Geese resting and chowing down - but everyone of the 100-300 had their heads down, munching - no pics this time, but we'll watch and see who else shows up in Chezzetcook Harbour. I had to scoot myself over to the grocery store to fetch some ice-cream and ginger-ale (another story). We'll see how this post looks after being away for so long...

Our Owl Hunt

 Here we are setting out on our "owl hunt" that Norah had been planning ... We had the backpack with treats, binoculars and even Grammie's tablet with the newly loaded Sibley's bird calls just in case we needed to resort to calling the owls.

Holden had some fun and kept his mittens on until he decided to run away from Grammie and fell down... He was still giggling when Grammie picked him up ...

 So we looked and we looked and we looked ... 

But, alas - even after trying to call - we ended up with some Blue Jays and this chickadee who was kind enough to come over and see what the ruckus was all about...

So we had to retreat to the couch and have something to snack on while reading about Great Uncle Paul's visit with his 18 snowy owls on the weekend in Alberta... We may try and locate the snowy that we have seen out at the Golf Course in Eastern Passage...   but we had some fun ...

Eagle Watch 2015

Well, we were headed to the Valley for AJ's third birthday on Sunday, Terr had gone to Annapolis to visit with her Mother on Thursday, so Allie and I headed up to Mom's on Saturday. Saturday night it did the snow drop thing and dropped 15 cms of snow. It was predicted to stop around 8 AM Sunday - with sunny periods to follow. So I felt there may be a chance. However - 9AM and it was still snowing hard and really blowing. Margie called and said the storm was over up the mountain and the sun was shining... 9:15 - got nothing to lose - better head on over... Got my gear together and headed out for the 8 km drive over to Middle Dyke Road - all the way sweating that I had missed it... Pulled up and there were only about a dozen cars there. Oh great - thought I missed the feeding ... I snapped open the hand warmers and shoved them into my gloves. Holy  crap it was cold -15C with a drifting wind - and the wind chill was -30C. No eagles in the trees - no wonder... Got over to the field and met a guy from Boston and we started a chat. He had never been here before so I asked if the chicken truck had been here yet, and he said no... Great - and within 5 minutes up drives the chicken truck - up onto the field - the only people allowed out on the field. Out jumps four guys and they start chucking the chickens off the back of the truck. I said to my new-found friend - "Get ready buddy - won't be long, now !!! You're in for a treat!!" I was still really only hoping. 

...and then along comes one, then 2 then 5, then 10... and more. The only sound on the field is the constant clicking of hundreds of shutters flapping... and flapping ... and flapping. And then the eerie knocking and calling the eagles do as some watch from the trees. 

After 10-15 minutes all Buddy could say was "Wow, I've never seen anything like this before... This is amazing... I've gotta come back next year!!!" and he probably won't be coming alone ... which is great for him and great for the economy... tourism dollars - renewable...

The show was spectacular ... and everyone was riveted to the gathering, and the shutters continued as the only sound - besides the howling wind - but we didn't mind one bit... 

Even with the warmers - I still froze my fingers and could feel the cold... My auto focus on my zoom was slowing to the point where I almost couldn't shoot inflight !!!

and then as quickly as it started, it finished ... and it was over... It's amazing how quickly they arrived ... and then departed. I'm sure it was the cold weather. There has always been several who stuck around for many photo ops but these birds headed for cover I believe... and so did I -for some heat... and around 700 pics ...

I've put a slideshow together with some music and will try and have that put up somewhere for folks to enjoy... In the meantime please enjoy these ...