My neighbor's farm

As many of you know, we have a peacock who comes over to visit us regularly. I sometimes worry that he comes over because he isn't being fed enough over there. Of course, he could just be greedy, I guess. He looks healthy to me (like I'm a peacock expert), but when I fed him today (birdseed) he ate every single seed out there. I also feel bad for him being out in the cold (we have snow flurries this morning). The farmer is quite elderly, but I think he has children that live nearby and help out sometimes. There are quite a few sheep out in the pasture, but there used to be some donkeys, too- they looked a bit neglected (hooves overgrown) and I heard that's why they were sold. There is another peacock over there who doesn't come over here, so he must be eating something. There used to be a few peahens, but I haven't seen any of them in a while. I don't know if they were sold or got eaten by the fox I sometimes see out in the pasture. We really enjoy having that farm next to us- our back yard feels huge, because the pasture is just on the other side of our fence. It's fun to watch the sheep out there and have the peafowl visit. I know it won't be there forever- I just hope it doesn't become houses eventually. Considering how limited our housing market is here in Small College Town, I can't see much of a market for MORE houses, but you never know.

It's been a crazy week

I'll do a longer post soon, but in the meantime enjoy the peafowl visiting us in the snow!

More at Flickr...

Throwing sheep

jo(e) said that she wanted to find real sheep to throw at her Facebook friends, so I thought I would join in too. I took this picture in spring 2006. It's not as scenic as jo(e)'s, but still a good one:

Here you go, Facebook friends- straight from my back yard!

My feathered friends

This morning they were on the front porch staying out of the rain. I came home from helping in D's class to find them:

They moved to the deck in the afternoon when the rain stopped:

I was playing around with the settings on my camera for this one
(aperture priority with manual focus -it was taken through a window)

Weekend Bird Blogging

Yep- peahens can open up their tails, too!

Monday Bird Blogging

I give up- I'm going to walk on the treadmill. But first, here is what I saw when I went downstairs:

Sunday Bird Blogging

The peafowl have been visiting quite regularly. We were treated to a show this morning:

They're baaaa-aaaack!

(Taken through the window screen) See more on my Flickr page...

Thursday Bird Blogging

In honor of a new visitor we had this morning! He was a bit more shy than his friends who have already visited us on many occasions. I never got them all in one photo, but we had four peafowl visiting this morning- the usual blue peacock and two peahens, plus their pale friend. We'd seen him over on the farm from a long distance (with his tail open, too!), but he had never paid us a visit before.

According to wikipedia, they are not albino...

He reminds me a lot of a BIG chicken.

tags: peafowl photo birdfeeder

Disturbing turn of events...

We had a strange incident here this evening. Right around dusk, I was upstairs folding laundry when I hear a loud 'BANG'! "What was that?" I yelled and ran into our office (another upstairs bedroom). H and I looked outside to see a police officer running into our backyard, shooting at a deer. Another man ran after him and when they started to pick it up, it moved, so the non-police officer kicked it in the head. I quickly turned away from the window, and H told me that they carried back to the front. The two men walked up the street to get into a vehicle and drove it over to our house to retrieve the deer. I went outside to ask what was going on. The police officer told me that the deer had been hit by a car and had three broken legs. When he arrived to 'put it down' it had taken off running and he finally caught it in our yard. I know that the deer would not have survived and it was best to end its suffering, but the whole thing was very upsetting to me and I would have preferred that it hadn't happened in my yard!

Saturday Bird Blogging

When we got our bird feeder last May, this isn't exactly what we had in mind!