The Pennington Wildlife Refuge

Just outside our kitchen and bedroom windows sits some wildlife feeders and some water. Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to document what came by for a visit.

Before I even made it outside there was some discontent at the bird feeder. Yes little chipmunk this is a bird feeder and you are not a bird! The picture is not very good as it was taken through the window. Right after I took the picture....there was a scuffle and the top of the bird feeder came flying off!



The quail are probably our favorite birds. There are two pair that are nesting nearby. They have begun to stop by the feeder 3 or 4 times a day. They call loudly to one another (Lorelei especially enjoys that first thing in the morning....NOT)



The Stellar Jays are pretty, but boy are they obnoxious! They can eat 8 or 10 pcs of dog food and then fly up to the feeder and start eating there also. They bully the other birds (except the cowbirds) and make a lot of racket. They have quite a vocabulary of sounds.



The Spotted Towhee is a regular. They are one of the few birds that have red eyes.



Below are one of my favorites. This is a male and female Black Headed Grosbeak. There are at least three pairs nesting nearby and there is almost always at least one at the feeder.


Below is one of the many chipmunks eating out of the correct feeder!



I was playing around trying to get one of these guys in mid air. I changed some camera settings around to get a faster shutter speed and got the shot below.
Geronimo!!


We have a couple of local squirrels also that have been raiding the chicken food in the chicken coop and eating the strawberries. It was nice to see this guy show up. Hopefully he ate his fill and will leave the other stuff alone.



Last but not least the scruffy looking guy below showed up to gnaw on my fruit trees. It looks like a yearling that has been kicked out because his mom probably has a new baby.


Well all of the above happened within an hour. This is just a sample of what happens by every day. We also have a pair of house wrens nesting outside the window. We also see white capped chickadees, cowbirds, swallows and sparrows. We had a beautiful Evening Grosbeak stop by once but we haven't seen him since.

Glynn Jr.