Leap Year Eggs!

First Efforts
Tonight as I was making my hens snug in their coop for the night, I spotted - GASP! - an ensie little egg by the chicken netting. Such excitement: one of my Maran pullets laid her first egg.
A few minutes later, after I gave the hens their 'good night' pats, in the egg box was a 2nd Maran egg . It was slightly larger than the first, and a few shades closer to dark brown. Both of my Maran pullets laid their first egg on the same day. At long, l-o-n-g last, my widdle pullet girlies have grown up! I am so proud of mes petites brats!

These 'first effort' eggs are 'small', and the egg colors are 'off' from the dark brown their breed is noted for. New Pullet's first eggs are often small and/or off color (for the breed). Am excited to see how their eggs end up looking once their internal egg apparatus get all tuned up.

My Easter-egger Lucy laid eggs a few weeks back then stopped. Then, when I was openly distraught about the dirth of eggs, the Faverolles each, begrudgingly gave me an egg. Now the pullets have popped out an egg each. A slow start, but a start, none the less. Why the slow start? Well, the daylight hours have begun to increase, but baby it's cold outside! Fair Oak's night time temps this year frequently dipped into the mid to low 30s. I found frost on the coop just a couple of mornings ago.

Oh well! I'm happy with my Leap Year eggs. Hopefully there'll be a few more due before the next leap year in 2016.

Top row: store bought large egg, Maran mini-egg,
Bottom Row: Faverolles egg, Maran egg

Saturday Morning Birding

Swooping Redtail
Birder buddy Don was in town so we went on a nice morning birding trip in my neck o' the woods. I drove through the same area only a few days ago and the stars of that drive were Tundra Swans. I spotted a couple of their hiding places where they and some assorted other waterfowl, such as American Widgeons, Canvasback and such paddled about. It was fun getting to show off those spots to Don. This morning there was also a quite far off flock of White Pelicans - too far for any photos.

First Horned Lark of the Year
For today's stars it was all about the Raptors. Simultaneously we spotted two different raptors, of which mine was a buteo type hawk far off on a hillside. Don however spotted the first Prairie Falcon I've seen in eons! He got it in his spotting scope and I used my iPhone to digiscope it. I managed 4 quick shots before the falcon took off. Don's scope is a bit smudged, but the shot came out fairly good when I consider how far away the bird was, how small it was in the scope and what a pain it is to get the view in the iPhone. In the shot below the bird had its head turned to show off its profile. The whole shot is smudged but I'm still thrilled to have any shot of such as cool bird as a Prairie Falcon.

Prairie Falcon through my iPhone looking through Don's scope
Prettied up but still smoodgie
The second, but no less exciting bird of the day was also spotted out the car window by Don; a Ferruginous Hawk, that was hunting over the open pastures along Meiss Road. I had my binoculars on it as it swung by over head, then it occurred to me - try for a photo! By the time I got my camera up it was in the distance, but oh well - better than a sharp stick in the eye. This particular Ferruginous was very white on the entire underside. Unfortunately none of that can be seen in this photo.

This quarter-of-a-mile away shot doesn't do justice for
the white undercarriage of this Ferrugenous Hawk
The male Northern Harrier below had us pretty excited when we spotted it just off road in a pasture, eating something tasty. A female (brown) Northern Harrier flew over the male, but he just picked up his lunch and dragged it off. No sharing, get your own damn mouse!

Male Northern Harrier having his breakfast
Female Harrier flew overhead, "Oh yooo hooo!
You ain't workin' yer female whiles on me!
Git yer own danged mouse!
This young buck was hanging around Twin Cities Road a few miles from Rancho Seco. He was a pretty boy!

Who was a pretty boy? Who's pretty?
Aw shucks M'am... I ain't all that purdy!"
For the morning's birding we did pretty well. We both saw our first Lewis's Woodpeckers for the year - none of which were close enough to photograph, but the year is still young! All together we saw 44 species, that is, 44 varieties of winged marvels.

Valentines Day Birding

Suffered from a bit of premature Spring fever this morning so I headed east to Ice House Road, over in Placer County. No surprise the mountain top was composed of snow and I nearly had the place to myself - except for a nosey doe and her previous year's fawn.


'Wha... is that thing? A lumpy human?'

'Let's outta here. I know she's thinking venison steaks.'
So help me, other than a couple of flashes of grey feathering, the only bird I saw on the entire mountain was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I can see those through my living room window. So, I headed back home and stopped at a couple of American River Parks to see what was around.


Acorn Woodpeckers look, and sound like clowns

No need to go all huffy dear - you do look a bit clownish.

One of the endless supply of Yellow-rumped Warblers
After Rosmoor and El Ma-what'sit, I took a brief venture into Sailor Bar, which is just up the road from my house. I marvel I can never visit there any more without seeing dozens of Lark Sparrows. Where they around 17 years ago and I just never noticed them?


Lark Sparrow
As I left Sailor Bar, just beyond the entrance gate a long line of turkey hens crossed the road. I wasn't fast enough to photograph them on the road, but I got them after they went down the ditch and up the opposite hillside.


Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it's off to Roost we go
Too bad there were nine, as 7 would have fit better with my captioning. Hum... but maybe there was something of a fairy tale I saw over at Rossmore Bar. What the heck! It makes a nice Valentine's Day tale. Once upon a time there was a handsome, yet lonely, Common Merganser lad.


All alone on Valentines... If only there was
a hen merganser, just for me

So he looked up river and lo! There, along the misty river shore stood the magical Island of Lovlies! Eight, beautiful and vivacious redfeathered Merganser females lounged about clad only in their feathery dainties, and guarded by the powerful eunich-egret.

Magical Island of Lovlies and their Eunich-Egret guard

"Ah... on second thought, mused the Merganser lad,
"I wonder what's going on downstream"?
Oh dear... hope he feels a little more courage later when Spring arrives.