Perky Pippin, the Garden, and Birds, Birds, Birds

 Pippin has been freed from the pen!  Wahoo!

He has returned to his normal perky self, and has been able to go on short walks.

I'm delighted at his recovery, though still extremely careful about preventing him from jumping.  

Here he is in the backyard, overseeing my work on the garden:

Speaking of which, I managed to finish off the right half of the "Back 38" by clearing off the rocks, bringing in better soil, planting perennials, and topping it all off with bark mulch.

I've decided to leave the other half until this Fall or next Spring, as it's getting rather hot here now.

The Hounds approve of the new garden!

And now for some birds -- I actually managed to get out and look at birds.  It's been a while.

But before I left the house to go birding, I had to admire this Western Wood-Pewee who perched for hours one afternoon in the trees just on the other side of my back fence.

The next morning I headed off for the McNary National Wildlife Refuge near Burbank.  I could have shown you all 122 photos that I took that day, but took pity upon my readers by winnowing that down considerably.  There were a LOT of birds out there!

Here is a mere sampling of what I saw.

Barn Swallows on the headquarters roof:

Spotted Sandpiper:

Blue-winged Teal:

Ruddy Duck -- there were dozens of them:

And there were dozens of Yellow-headed Blackbirds:

And lots of Black-necked Stilts, who were having loud altercations with each other:

They kept dive-bombing each other, and sometimes they harassed the nearby Avocets as well:

This one came in for a landing quite near where I was standing -- it looks like a juvenile, but who knows:

What I didn't show you:  Mallards, coots, a Cinnamon Teal, gulls, robins, sparrows and finches, quail, doves, Killdeer, Red-winged Blackbirds, cormorants, a Great Blue Heron, crows, Western Kingbirds, a Virginia Rail, and a pair of Osprey on a nest -- mostly because my photos of them didn't turn out quite as nicely.  

There were also quite a few turtles sunning on logs, and one muskrat paddling about.  Lovely day all round.

That was definitely the highlight of my week.  

Yes, there was also some art practice -- one failed effort at painting Stonehenge, and one successful effort at painting these chalky islands that sort of looked like molars to me:

I'm especially pleased at how the water ripples turned out.  

This coming week I hope to get cracking on several watercolor technique books from the library, which have oodles of intriguing demonstrations and step-by-step tutorials.  Since it will be too hot to do much in the way outdoors, I shouldn't have any trouble finding the time for it, right?

Well, that's the theory...we shall just have to wait and see how it works out in practice!

Have a lovely week out there!