A backyard visitor

This visiting opposum was enjoying the 40 degree temperatures at Grandma and Grandpa's house this past weekend.
Our little stalker will be really, really surprised it that opposum jumps back out of that bush!

A New Sighting

I have decided that a need a new recurring blog title. "A New Sighting" as a title will mean that Mom is very excited because we have spotted something new.

It means that the kids think Mom is a little nuts taking picture after picture of the new wildlife.
It means that we will be studying all about this new wildlife (usually a bird) over the next several days.

It also means we will be revisiting the sight of the "spotting" at least 3 more times in the next 4 days.

(O.K.- maybe I am a little nuts!)

Today, on the way home from Grandma and Grandpa's Memorial Day picnic (pictures to come) Daddy spotted this Green Heron. Way to go Dad! And I also have to thank Dad for taking me to my favorite bird spotting location even though I know he wanted to really get home.

This is a photo I googled to make an identification.

"The Sight of Our Life"

I was driving Mark to religion class this afternoon and had the three younger kids along for the ride. Usually we pass the time driving around looking for wildlife. Today we got a big surprise when Grandma and Grandpa called me on the cell phone and told me to hurry and we would "see the sight of our lives!" We weren't disappointed. On a local pond, there had to be a thousand Snow Geese!

We have been on the look-out for Snow Geese. We see thousands and thousands of Canadian Geese almost year round. But not Snow Geese, they are only occasional visitors to this neck of the woods.
They were quite an amazing site.
And Grandma was true to her word, it was a "sight of our lives!"

Mixed in with the white Snow Geese were some Blue-Morph Geese. These geese travel along with the white Snow geese and interbreed. The offspring are either all white or of the blue-morph variety.

We also spotted in the same pond this pair of Mallard ducks
and American Black Ducks.
In another pond I was lucky to catch this beaver in my camera lens.
What a nice nature ride we had today.

A Lovely Easter

I spent 4 hours in church this morning and both masses turned out lovely. I played the organ at the 9am mass and the choir sang and I played for the 11am mass-another nerve racking Holy Week is over.

After returning from church, we got everyone ready and headed to Grandma C's house for a delicious Easter dinner. We had lots of good food and lots of great company, many aunts, uncles, and cousins.

The Easter bunny had made a visit to Grandma's house and all the kids enjoyed a bunny full of candy.

Luke looks a little suspicious. I think I told him to stop eating "stuff".

Becky made a cake so that we could celebrate Matt's birthday with everyone.

"Get ready! Make a wish!

On the way home we saw a whole flock of Hooded Mergansers in Leeland's pond near Hamilton. It is amazing, I had never seen this type of duck until a week ago, and now I have seen a flock of them.

It certainly was a yummy, yummy day!

The turkeys

are getting closer.
Maybe we should open the back door and invite them in!

Photo credit: Daddy

We Have Visitors

The turkey's are in the backyard this morning, and as Mark said, "The boys are really trying to impress the girls today!"

A Road Trip

Today, Becky, Pat and I took a three and a half hour road trip to visit Paul Smith's College in the high peaks of the Adirondack mountains. This is Becky's first choice in a college specializing in the culinery arts.

This photo is taken from the college student center. It shows the ice covered Lower Saint Regis lake in the foreground and Saint Regis Mountain in the background.

This college is also the state's enviromental conservation/forestry college, so it offers a lot of enviromentally friendly, fun outdoorsy activities to enjoy in your spare time. (We will all love visiting.)

On the drive home we saw about ten white-tail deer in a group along the side of the road. We stopped, and they posed for me so I could get these pictures, another bonus attraction in the mountains.