New Year's Day Birding

Have I ever told you how wonderful my husband is?  :)  Even though he's not really into birding, he went birdwatching with me on New Year's Day! :)  Here's some of the photos.

A few photos from the yard birds...

These first two photos are of a House Finch.  However, it's a first fo rme, because it's orange!  I didn't know that they came in red and orange... so this is my first orange House Finch.  Kind of neat, uh?

 A common red House Finch

 Here's a Blue Jay.  I don't often see them in the yard, but this one stayed around long enough for a photo .. even if it isn't a great one!

 DH and I headed up to Sheboygan to see what we could see at the Marina there.  There were some ducks .. Mallards, of course, they are always there ... but also a bunch of Common Goldeneye ... Those are a new bird for me too .. In this first photo - it may be a Merganser on the left .. not sure though .. If you know .. please let me know! :)

I think there's a couple of Buffleheads in this photo .. see the white heads?

 Back home here is an American Tree Sparrow.

And a Black Capped Chickadee.

I saw a total of 17 birds on New Year's Day.  I figured that's pretty good since my year total was 27 for 2012 ... I'm not THAT avid of a birdwatcher .. But perhaps I'll see more birds in 2013 .. Here's Hoping!

Morning Update

Well, it's been a weekend! lol .. I wanted to say eventful, but there was only a couple of events..

On Saturday morning we made an offer on a house, and fully expected it to be countered, but by Saturday evening, we got a call saying the sellers had accepted the offer.  So, we will move into our new WI house by the end of June.  We got a heck of a deal :) so we are happy with that, although now we are praying that the IA house will sell quickly. 

The new house has lots of plantings, and a small but nice back patio where we will be able to watch birds and other wildlife that happen by.

Also - we went on a bike ride on Sunday.  They have here a InterUrban Trail that goes from the northern suburbs of milwaukee all the way up to Belgium and further north as well .. and so we did a small portion of that.  We parked at the Aquatic Center here in Grafton, and biked up about 2.75 miles and then back. We have to estimate because we forgot to bring our bike odometers.  It was a nice ride, and since I was sleeveless, I got a little bit of red on my shoulders, but not bad.  It was very windy and so not too hot even though it was in the upper 70's supposedly.  After the bike ride, dh treated us to McDonald's,and I was able to get another Frozen Strawberry Lemonade ..boy are those good!  I prefer that to ice cream now.  The boys and dh had ice cream.. but I loved my lemonade.  http://www.mcdonalds.com/

For today I have a bunch of video work to do first thing, and then try to clean up the apartment and finish capturing my sister's vhs tapes.  Then before Thursday I will need to grab the parts of her videos that I want to keep for myself before I return her hard drive to her this weekend.

Port Washington, WI

We were in Port Washington, Wisconsin this past weekend .. I took this picture there ... I think it turned out quite well! :)