Alasandra, The Cats & Dogs

Thankful for Hummingbirds

We are thankful for Hummingbirds and thankful that they held a Hummingbird Festival near us last year. The lady holding the Hummingbird has to agree to come, as she is the only one authorized to handle the Hummingbirds in our region. You have to go through a lot of training to get authorization. This one lady is in charge of the Festival and makes sure everyone does their jobs properly and no Hummingbirds are harmed.

In addition to being banded the Hummingbirds are weighed and measured.

The approximate age and sex of the Hummingbirds are ascertained and all this info is recorded.

And this lady in the blue shirt is in charge of releasing them and talking to the public.

Here she is allowing someone to feel the Hummingbirds heart rate.

Mom sorta of messed up taking this picture so we artified it. Which art was another thing they had at the Hummingbird Festival lots and lots of art featuring Hummingbirds, there were also neat birdhouses, birdfeeders and plants.

Here is a good picture of someone releasing a Hummingbird. They carefully placed it in the palm of your hand and eventually the Hummer flew off, this one sat still long enough for Mom to get a good picture.

Mom is very thankful she had a chance to learn more about Hummingbirds. ~ATCAD

PeeS: Mom thought you might find this interesting Hummingbirds in Winter for awhile we had a Rufus Hummingbird that stuck around all year. We do not know if he is here this year, if he is he mainly hangs out at the Hummingbird Garden and it has been to cold and wet for Mom to spend much time down there.

Sunday Selfie with Fenris

Hello it's very nice to see everyone.

Since it's Sunday they said I have to do a selfie, hope you don't mind I closed my eyes.

Now these following are called can you see the Hummingbird.

OK if you look carefully you should be able to see it in this picture it's sitting in the tree. Look on the slender branch close to the roof of Mrs S's house.

This Hummer is very bossy and often comes up on the porch to clack at Mommy about filling the feeders.

I pretty much ignore them. G loves Hummers and gets all excited when he sees them. ~Fenris, reporting for ATCAD

Caturday Art

Well this is our favorite for obvious reasons. Chimera is hanging out with her alter ego.

This one was about posting a letter.

This was a progressive challenge we thought you might like seeing the steps. First your created a background. Mom went with neutrals since she didn't know what the other instructions would be.

Then you added a photograph in a mask with another mask behind it colored with a color from the picture.

Then you were told to add 3 pictures and a journal card.

Next step was to add journaling and embellishments.

The final step was to add a title, paint splats and you could add 3 more embellishments if you wanted. Even though we all followed the same instructions our pages were all unique to us and our individual scrapping styles.

This was a PYP challenge were you use colors from a photograph to make a page.

This challenge had to do with umbrellas.

And this challenge was to copy someone else's page, but make it unique by the colors and embellishments you used. ~ATCAD

Hummingbird Festival Part 2

Several of you mentioned how scared you would be of crushing the bird, the lady that handled him the most had to train to do it. And you have to be very careful.

The band she puts on the hummers leg is very small.

They check the bird for fat deposits, in the Spring they look for eggs.

They also weigh and measure it. All the data collected is recorded.

Most of the time the bird is in a small black sack to prevent injuries.

Here she is putting the band on the Hummers leg.

Measuring it.

They can also tell if the Hummer is a girl or a boy, and it's age.

When you are allowed to release it you keep your palm open at all times. They carefully place the hummer in the palm of your hand and the hummer uses it as a platform to fly away.

I don't think I took a picture of how they captured them but for those of you involved in TNR it's basically the same method they had hummingbird feeders inside of cages, when the birds flew in to eat at the feeder they sprung the trap. Then the bird was guided into the bag and the bag was carried to the woman, so the man trapping them never really touched them. They actually handle them as little as possible. ~Alasandra

Hummingbird Festival Part 1

Back in September the Mom and Dad went to a Hummingbird Festival. They were catching Hummingbirds and banding them.

Look at what long beaks they have.

They let you release the Hummingbirds. Mommy said it was very neat to hold them.

They put them in your open palm and the birds flew off, sometimes you had to give them a little nudge to get them going.

Mommy learned a lot about Hummingbirds did you know they go into torpor at night? ~ATCAD

Sunday Selfies ~ Tuiren & Chimera

Well we have made it all the way to September in our photographs. I liked it when the Sycamore still had leaves. They should be growing back soon.

It's fun to walk around on the top of the Jungle Gym.

The roof has come off in places so you have to have good balance to walk on the beams though.

Mommy thinks Daddy needs to fix it but I think it's purrfect.

Tuiren thinks it's purrfect to she enjoys eating her dinner on the bottom floor.

Daddy did make us a ramp to get down. MOL, Scylla was always getting on the roof but then insisting at the top of her lungs she couldn't get down so Daddy made the ramp.

You do have to watch out for the other cats when you are up here, especially Yang. He likes to pounce on you.

But most of the time I have the roof to myself.

Tuiren is going to bark a few words and then we are going to do selfies. ~Chimera, reporting for ATCAD

Hello everyone, This is where I usually eat my lunch unless it is raining. When it's raining I eat on the porch with Fenris. Mom says I am a messy eater so she prefers to feed me on the Jungle Gym.

Really I am not that messy I just eat like a dog and hoover my food up at the speed of light. Fenris on the other hand eats very dainty. It can take him an entire hour to eat one kibble (I may be exaggerating slightly but Mom agrees it feels that long sometimes when we are waiting for him to get through eating.)