I love nothing more than my local adventures to take photos of gardens, picturesque landscapes and birds and other wildlife in their native habitats.  I drive to Second Marsh, Whitby Harbour, Thickson’s Woods, and Hall’s Road as well as other favourite spots to take many of my pictures even though I live on a rural farming property.

The past few days my goal was to spend more time at home weeding and planting my many garden beds. It’s a task that I both love and dislike…..the weeding part, of course! I also had to do some work near the stream nearby and other than getting a mild case of poison ivy, I had an opportunity to see a beaver in the pond!  Now that was a surprise.

I was aware that there are lots of birds in the tall trees in our yard but because I have two “killer cats” that spend a lot of time outside, I have never put out bird feeders to lure those helpless little creatures to a possible unfortunate end!  This year, however, I chose to put up 2 hummingbird feeders as well as an oriole feeder.  I felt that since they are high in the air, the birds would be safe. I had never seen a Baltimore Oriole, except in a photograph but thought I might just get lucky and see this elusive bird.  My efforts were rewarded!

I am including a few of the pictures that I took; a brown thrasher with an unbelievable repertoire of songs, a beaver and one of his/her dams, a yellow-bellied sap sucker, a  downy woodpecker, a chipmunk, and a Baltimore Oriole at the hummingbird feeder.   If you double-click on one of the photos, you will get some very large pictures.  That’s all I have time for today!