Although we would love to have an indoor pet, my allergy problems will not allow that at this time. But we have lots of outside pets that come everyday and play with us. These are just a few of them.
We really enjoy all our birds and love to watch them feeding in the morning while we are enjoying our coffee on our front porch. It's fun watching them play in the bird bath too.
Today we got a new visitor to our bird feeders...a blue bird. I don't know what it's real name is but I call it our Blue Bird of Happiness! Wish I could have taken a sharper picture of this bird but he was on the furtherest feeder from our porch and this was the best I could do with out scaring him or her away.
One of our squirrels was really playful today too. Stealing the sunflowers seeds and acting like he or she owned the Feeder. There are a pair of squirrels that come most of the time and eat the unshelled peanuts we throw on the ground for them.
What a lovely wild pet haven you have! I have a little backyard and we feed them when we have some left over rice or breads that the birds enjoy immensely! I started to give them a signal when I feed them...it's to whistle 3 short blast of whistles that food is waiting for them in my back yard. The birds check daily though for their tasty morsels we put out for them. There is one little zebra dove that found the little water container I have for the birds. One day it was bone dry and I was out in my little back yard enjoying the day...he flew to the water container, stopped and looked straight at me putting his feet to the container letting me know with his feet clinging to the small container and tipped it towards me and showing me it's empty. He flew a little away to the top of the brick fence and watched me as I filled the water container and flew back to drink. It's fun when the little wild animals and birds do this sort of thing to me because they are wild and they love coming to your yard for their treats and water!
I agree it is fun and we enjoy our outdoor pets very much. We think that the same Cardinal couple has been coming to nest near us for the past 3 years. The first year one of their babies fell out of the nest and the moma and daddy were really upset they couldn't get it back in...but they were guarding their baby so nothing else would get it. My husband picked the baby bird up gently and put it back in the nest and every year since then the parents seem to come and build their new nests by us...and then come visit us to let us know this. This was the baby we saved for them. I never knew birds could act so human towards their babies until we started our bird feeding and observation of them. We enjoy the squirrels antics too. A lot of times my husband can get those squirrels to almost eat the peanuts out of his hands.
Aren't they so wonderful to observe in their natural habitat. We give them a little help and they seem to know it and come to trust and depend on us human helping hands! So good to see and live through!!!
I feed birds and squirrels on our second-floor fire escape. I started out feeding birds, then the gray squirrels came and I liked them too. I wish they'd eat the peanuts that I give them rather than digging holes in my lawn and burying them, but otherwise they are pretty okay. They do some landscaping for us from time to time, as they move bulbs from one place to another, and we wonder what that new plant is, coming up in some place that we know we didn't plant anything. That's always exciting. How else would I know that tulips would do better when planted in among my onions in the back than in the front-yard flower garden? Well, my feeder ran out of food. I wasn't in a hurry to get any because it's been raining so often that so much of it has been washed away, anyhow. However, as we were playing cards in the upstairs living room, one of our resident gray squirrels noted that the food bowl was empty, and started banging on the window. He had all four legs up against the window a few times. He was pounding on the window and chewing me out for not putting any peanuts out this morning, and for letting the food bowl run out of squirrel food, both at the same time. Of course, I had to drive to the Tractor Supply Company store and get some squirrel food and a couple of cakes of suet, and to the grocery store for unsalted peanuts, because my cat might have shown them how to call the ASPCA. I leave the suet in these cages that are supposed to keep the squirrels from getting at it because they like the challenge, and are more than up to it. We have a woodpecker that comes around for some suet sometimes but he has to hurry because the squirrels get to it pretty quickly.
Squirrels are a nuisance! Besides rats they too will go in your roof if there is a hole like there was in my vents. Can cause lots of damage. They were here today and even though there were traps with bait for both squirrels and mice, nothing was caught. There's also no poop or tracks or dead animal smell, so the noise I still hear are birds on my tile roof. Still have traps set though.... This ordeal has cost $500 so far. Plus I increased Alfonso's monthly wage by $25 so that he makes sure that no tree branches are near my roof.
Wow, @Babs Hunt, you've got a lot of nature there. Thanks for sharing with us the pictures of those birds and animals that inhabit your garden. Living in your place is a treat for a nature lover. But I would love to be there just to see not the nature but that cute little girl. We also have lots of birds here, a variety of maybe 10 kinds but they are mostly wild and too difficult to take their pictures.