Ragtag Daily Prompt: Out My Backdoor
I look out my backdoor a lot. It’s a small deck leading to a rather small lawned area that when we were younger and more socially active, was the scene of many summertime barbecues, the building of a tepee, and just handing out. The tepee is gone. The idea of feeding a hoard of people — assuming we knew enough people to create a hoard — is exhausting. Nonetheless, our deck is a big piece of the territory to which we pay most attention.
The birds and squirrels believe it belongs to them and resent our presence, so we tread gently when we are out there.
A winter Goldfinch at the finch feeder
Junco keeping company with our stone Toad
The three birdfeeders which have replaced the hanging fuchsia that used to grace the hooks have greatly changed the deck from a human place to a wildlife feeding station. I believe it’s far more socially useful feeding squirrels, the occasional chipmunk, and wild birds than it was as a place for morning coffee.
Cardinal on board
Times change. Since the arrival of mosquitoes carrying diseases previously unknown in this region, it’s hard to get really thrilled about being that close to where they breed.
One of our most frequent visitors, a Tufted Titmouse
Two feeders on a very cold morning
Even though the woods have been sprayed, the spraying reduces the mosquito population. It doesn’t remove it. I’m pretty sure it also killed a few hundred birds and other small critters too. Whenever humans decide to fix something, some creature pays the price.
Mist in a January woods
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Categories: #Birds, #Birds, #Photography, Daily Prompt, Marilyn Armstrong, Wildlife, Word Prompt
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Handsome feathered friends you have there, Marilyn. 🙂
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They have a very high entertainment value. And they always warn me of an upcoming storm, no matter what they say on the news 🙂
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I adore that little frog, and the forest. Exquisite!
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Frog has taken quite a bruising lately. Good he’s made of stone. The birds keep knocking him off the railing. I fear for his little stony life.
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Awe. Hope he stands the test of time! He’s cute!
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I have had him a long time and so far, so good. But he has taken a lot of recent falls.
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Reminds me of somebody I know lmao. All I can say is, be safe little fellow, be safe!
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Quite an uplifting view from the backdoor Marilyn 🙂 Having birds visit is quite a special treat.
I hope they tell you when they are spraying poisonous chemicals so close to your house. Yes more than a few mossies were killed. Poisoned insect get eaten by birds, lizards and small animals condemning them as well
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And there are many missing birds. At least the survivors are fat.
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It’s good there are still some around
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Yes, but there are fewer than last year. Fewer species, fewer of each species. I think it was the poison. It may not have directly killed the birds, but when it poisoned all the insects, it effectively poisoned their food supply.
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That is the thing about spraying for insects, the birds and amphibians loose a food supply or as you say, their food is poisonous 😥
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And the spraying didn’t necessarily even kill the mosquitoes. It made a mess and poisoned most of the woods in the state, but no guarantee they were successful in any way.
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I read this with a smile and a heavy heart. You are so right, when humans try to do something good, they kill something else…. And yet, if we may be protected from ‘evil’, we ‘must do it’…. Or many diseases would continuously kill where we now can say, they were overcome with the new medications.
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I’m pretty sure they could have found a less-lethal spray, but they went with the cheapest because that’s the way we do it. Vaccinations and medical research doesn’t kill wild animals. And if the climate weren’t changing, those mosquitoes would not have been here at all.
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I love the mist in a January woods.
Leslie
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It’s so pretty watching it lift as the sun gets higher in the sky.
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How do you feed the squirrels. Do they just climb on your bird feeder? We use whole peanuts. Cardinals are rarely seen on South Florida. How nice.
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They climb on the big feeder, but not on the other two. We also just put food out for them, so we have far fewer squirrels on the feeder and more of them eating the food on the ground. Squirrels get hungry too, after all.
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I love this and wish I had a tufted titmouse and a cardinal to watch in the morning. Beautiful a great response to the prompt. I hope you are wrong about the spraying … it made my eyes leak.
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It stained all the vinyl siding on our house too, so I can only imagine what it did to the birds and other animals and their food supply. That’s why I put up the feeders so early. I figure most of the food in the woods had been poisoned.
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That is sad, especially when ecology safe products are out there. 😢
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They cost more. And we all know that little towns like ours will NEVER pay a few pennies more Actually, this was a state project and they won’t even fix the broken roads and only sprayed when people and horses started to die.
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🤔🙄
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