Bird Friends

Hello people of the internet world! This is Evey Lindsey reporting to you, yes you, from the Lindsey blog spot.
Lately, we have been taking pics of The birds that have visited or live in our back yard,So we thought we would share them and some random facts with you!

Red-Winged Blackbird:Male
These are very common in our yard.

American Goldfinch:Female in Fall and winter

Eurasian Collared Dove: Male and female look alike
These are year round birds at our house.

Yellow-Headed Blackbird:Male
Super common and ANNOYING!!!!!!! They come in huge flocks and scare away all other birds. : (

Brown-Headed Cowbird:Male

House Finch:Male
This bird is lighter in the spring and summer(Red breast)

House Sparrow: Female
Super cute and fuzzy!

House Sparrow: Male
What's funny about this "sparrow", Its not related at all to sparrows! Its what we call a weaverbird or weaverfinch!

Black-Headed Grosbeak: Male
One of the prettiest birds we have ever seen!

American Goldfinch:Male in spring and summer
Their song is a long warbling sound lasting 30 seconds or more.

Yellow-headed blackbird:Female
They usually stay by their nests.

Brown-headed Cowbird: Female

Lazuli Bunting: Male
This is the latest edition to our bird flock. This is also my personal favorite.


Birds not captured on pics: Evening Grosbeak and Morning Dove.

Nest

We heard little birdie noises right outside the front door,
and lookie what we found in the tree seriously a foot and
a half from the door!!
We are a little sad we didn't notice before when they were little eggys,
so we could picture document their lives. But oh well!
We think there were about 6 in there, and they grew sooo
fast! Less that a week after this picture, they were out of the nest and
on their own.

Animals

Metamorphosis

Or butterflies have emerged! We didn't get to see it happen. The first two were out one day, and we tried to see the others but, they didn't cooperate very well.  Aren't their eyes weird?!

This ones wings didn't fully open all the way and he had a hard time moving.

We never actually got to see them eat, but they were so pretty sitting on the flower.

And this ones wings didn't really form at all.

Love this pic!

Two flew right away, but this one was so nice to stick around so I could snap a few pictures.

Here are the two with the messed up wings, they ended up dying on the day we set them free. We had a little butterfly funeral. It was so fun to watch this whole process.  Paris loved every part of the whole change. 

WING

Looky what we got! Yay how fun! I love snow, unlike many people in this area. I heard so many complaints from our 3-4 inches, and the 9 that some other parts of Utah got. But thats nothin' compared to what Woodland Park, the little CO town I grew up in, got! The whole town shut down for the 3+ FEET they got in the first day! Count your blessings, Utah people, count your blessings!

The birdies didn't seem to mind too much.

Our poor flowers, but oh so pretty!

We have a huge flock of yellow-headed black birds, that have been visiting our feeders lately. They have gotten bolder and are actually getting up on the feeders now. They used to just stay down, and eat what the smaller birds dropped. But, they're pretty nice to the little birds, they don't bully them or scare them away.

They are quite timid though and any little movement scares them all off, which is a site to see. Straight out of Hitchcock!

I love the contrast of the white to the colors of the tulips!

The snow was very wet and heavy. Our poor pine tree thing was pretty deformed.

And this trees branches were all the way to the ground. But it all melted super quick, and left a olympic size swimming pool under the tramp. Looks like we need to fix the drainage situation in the backyard. Muddy dog feet make me angry, you won't like me when I'm angry!

Life cycle

For her birthday Paris got a butterfly habitat and a voucher to send out for some butterfly larve. So we send out for it a few weeks ago. They say to not let the larve be in extreme hot or cold. So we forgot to check the mail on one of the coldest days and didn't realize that we had gotten the larve. OOOps! We were pretty worried about them. 

Okay so we got them on 3/26. I forgot to take a picture on the first day. We did notice after thawing for an hour or two they started moving around a bit. All 5 seemed to be alright. 

So this first pic is on 3/31 and they had already grown at least 50% from when we got them.

4/3


4/5

Holy caterpillar they grow fast!!!

4/6

We got a hanger!

4/7

The cocoon thing happened in the blink of an eye. Once the first one (Toppy) was hanging, we kept checking to see how and when the cocoon would happen. Then we left for an hour and came back and he was fully in the cocoon. Oh and the others names are Sandy, Squirmy, Poopy, and oh I can't remember, Paris comes up with these names all by herself. She's so funny.

4/8

The last one is now in his cocoon! We tried so hard to see it happen, but it was like one minute it was just a caterpillar, then the next it was safe and warm inside, and it's head was on the ground!!! What! No one warned us about this!!  Our pet's heads are fallin' off!

Look you can see this last ones head, kind of stuck on the out side of his cocoon. A little bit gross. But the whole process has been so fascinating!

We have now moved them to their new habitat, after Jon kicked a ball and hit their cup and it fell and all but one cocoon fell off the top! Arrrrgh! So, hatched butterfly pictures will be up soon, ... if I can keep this dumb blog updated!