Popping In

Thank you Eva for the reminder that I haven't blogged in some time.  It has been in the back of my mind to do one but the reasons are many.  It has been a brutally long hot humid summer.  So many days it was in the 40's with the humidex at my work.  Having to spend so much time in that building 5 days a week really kicked my ass.  It made me not want to do much of anything else when work was done besides relax and keep cool.  I regularly post to Facebook and Instagram so I sometimes think "why bother blogging?"

A family of raccoons living under our shed this summer has kept me happy and quite distracted.  That's a good thing I suppose.  Well for us anyway.  So many dislike these animals but I always try to promote that we can coexist with them.  They stay out of our garbage and off our roof.  That's all I really care about.  Plus with them living here, they aren't making a bathroom (latrine) of our backyard.  Hooray!  I'll have to do a blog about this family.  There is something very unique to this tale but you'll have to wait for another blog to read about it.

As you may recall, I am a volunteer with the Toronto Wildlife Centre.  I recently celebrated my 800th bird release.  And then a few weeks after that I celebrated my 10th anniversary as being an official volunteer.  Here is my 800th bird release, a ruby-throated hummingbird.  I was sitting quite a distance away waiting for it to go.

I can't help but wonder if I will ever see my 1,000th bird release.  It may be a few years before I hit that number.  Spring releases don't happen any more as the birds are usually released right in Rouge Park at the TWC east location.  Summer releases are few.  Same with winter.  So it is all about the fall, because the birds need to go west of Toronto and I am happy to take them if the opportunity presents itself.  Please note that I am not the only one to have this gig.

I'm now going on a countdown to 1,000 instead of continuing going up.  As of today, 199 to go.  I recently released a pigeon in a neighbourhood not far from home.  This bird was hesitant to leave the box and after many minutes of waiting, I had to give him a little help.  I tilted the box slowly and enough that finally gravity took over and out he came.  This photo was obtained by a screen shot of the video I was taking of his release.

Our girls Merry and Molly are doing great.  They're going to be 10 next year.  Wow!  Time flies.  Kinda freaks me out.  An older shot of them for Halloween.  I'm going to have to break out their costumes for another photo session soon.  Merry loves the attention.  Molly hates the hats and any clothes.

Our rescue budgie Frankie just had his second "got'cha day" anniversary with us.  He's a happy little boy who loves his castle of a home and has absolutely zero desire to leave it.  As long as he is happy, that is all that matters.  He's got 3 food sources, 2 water dishes, a cuttle bone, a mineral block, lots of toys and perches, plus a couple of mirrors which are his girlfriends.  Who knows where he came from?  I suspect maybe from the same place that our other backyard rescues came from, a bird breeder in the area.  There was 5 budgies flying around over a span of about 8 weeks, Frankie was the fifth, and I was able to catch him.  Here is a shot of the day and how I caught him, plus an insert of him from a couple of weeks ago.  We have no idea how old he is.

Angie and I are also doing well.  It's hard to believe that we've been together for twenty years now.  Angie has gotten back into blogging after quite a break, feel free to pop over and see what she's got to say about this or that; animals, foodie blogs, or just random life stuff.  Angieinto

Okay, see you all again soon.  Thanks for stopping in and not giving up on me and this blog.