Opulent Cottage

Some Special Eagles

It's been awhile since I have shared a critter post with you all, hasn't it? Maybe since I posted about the parrots last summer. Well, for you critter lovers out there, I have two words for you:

Eagle Cam!

I don't have a photo from the actual Eagle Cam, but go here and you can get addicted enjoy seeing it for yourself.

I was lucky enough, the very first time I went to the Eagle Cam, to see Mama Eagle feeding her eaglets their dinner. I read through the moderated discussion and found that I had just barely missed seeing Papa Eagle bring them a fish to eat. Pretty cool stuff.

They were just hatched between March 14th and 17th, and even though they're still pretty downy, they're getting big fast! Their feet are huge, and you can see the tiny talons that are growing already.

Here is a great link to a photo by Nicholas Dory on Flickr, showing a bald eagle landing on its nest. It gives a great perspective on the size of the nests, to give you some comparison while you're watching Eagle Cam.

Enjoy!

I'm sharing today at A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday.



More Parrot Love

Our third Monk Parrot season is officially over here at Opulent Cottage, sadly, as the pear tree is done giving its delicious offering and our birdies have gone on to feast elsewhere (and most likely back to their nest at White Rock Lake). The last few days of their visit, we were lucky enough to get a little closer to the sweet squawkers and take these fun photos. I thought you all would enjoy these for this week’s Outdoor Wednesday.

 

This couple was lacking in chlorophyll and vitamin C, and decided to supplement from our neighbor’s St. Augustine grass. Strolling lazily down the sidewalk, they nibbled and chatted, enjoying their afternoon snack.

 

Decadent treats! So much more tasty when garnished with fallen leaves of pink crape myrtle.

 

What’s that you say? You would like for me to come a little closer for the camera? Well, I’ll be happy to oblige, just be sure to photograph my good side!

 

This pear is just so delicious, I’m going to wolf the whole thing down myself.

 

A friend flew in just for happy hour. Please meet Ms. Baby Red-bellied Woodpecker, who seems to prefer the fresh sliced apples over the languishing pears. Let’s remember to thank the crazy parrot lady!

 

The parrots’ brief visit really is one of the highlights of our summer. The last day, my friend Katy captured these two darlings. She took this amazing photograph with her new Canon 50d, such a precious shot with the most incredible clarity –

 

To read all about our parrots, go here. And to visit Outdoor Wednesday, please visit Susan at A Southern Daydreamer.

 

Enjoy!

Love, Andrea

 

 

Random Blatherings

1).   Our monk parrots have not visited much this summer. Instead, we have a flock of gigantic black birds (don’t know what they are) that seem to be chasing them away. But the last few days, two have been roosting in our big tree in front. Plenty of squawking, tumbling, and some seriously flirtatious wing-flapping have all been taking place. (Last year’s post, with photos and links, is here.)

Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Parrots.com

 

2).   Look who was at my feet yesterday when I was outside watching our two parrots, in 107 degree heat, like a crazy person. Our sweet little Marvin, who continues to get friendlier each day. He follows us around the yard now. Yesterday he almost walked right into the house while I was holding the door open for Abby. When he can’t see us in the kitchen, he goes around to each window looking to see where we are. We heard something tapping on the living room window the other day – sure enough, it was Marvin!

 

3).   I am completed fixated on the idea of getting a travel trailer. We’re not really very good travelers, mainly due to the fact that I do not like to stay in hotels or eat in restaurants. Combine that with my:  a. contentedness in not leaving the house for entire weeks on end; b. obsession for small, cozy spaces that can be made homey and adorable; c. longing to be a country, and not city, girl; and d. total adoration of nature; well, it just makes sense. My own little travelin’ home. Would be awesome.

 

4).   It’s Hatch chile season, and I have yet to purchase a single chile. This happened last year, also. Must remedy that immediately. Green chile-sour cream- chicken enchilada recipe coming soon, I promise.

 

5).   Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution won an Emmy! He’s an inspiration, truly.

 

6).   I could not stand to look at my summer wreath for one more minute, so I went ahead and put up the fall one. Silly, I know, but it cheered me up immediately. I secretly wish that I had the nerve to decorate for Halloween right now.

7).   Amidst all of the busyness, I have had some wonderfully, insanely creative days. The kind where you start out your day doing mundane chores, then creative inspiration strikes, and you lose yourself for hours, ignoring your blog, the cooking, the phone, and everything else around you. It seems that artistic revelation is all around me lately, and I’m so in tune to it that I can’t shut my brain off at night! Every color sparks an idea, every shape has me running for pen and paper. It’s delightful and exhausting, and just so darn fun.

 

Thanks for listening! Y’all are the best. I’m joining in Outdoor Wednesday today, and hope to be back soon!

It’s a Hot One

Our forecast this week: 104, 106, 105, 104, 103, 103. Seriously, it’s hot, even for Dallas. It will still be 103 at 9:00 tonight. The low predicted each night is 80 or 82, which won’t give our garden much of a break from the heat. Not much is still blooming at this point, even with daily watering, twice a day sometimes. These zinnias are barely hanging in there

 

Begonias are one of the few flowers that still have color in this heat. Not even the African Daisy is blooming right now!

 

The hibiscus is still trying to bloom, but seems to be getting tired, too.

 

But the ferns are happy!

 

It could be a full-time job just trying to keep the plants, birds, and squirrels watered, and stay mindful of our water use at the same time. I found this great magazine the other day, Backyard Projects For Less, published by Birds & Blooms –

 

This project, a rain barrel, really interested us. We’re thinking of building it right outside our laundry room, and filling it with the rinse water from our washer. Makes sense, don’t you think? We would still have repurposed, free water, even when we don’t get rain. I’ll have to paint it up all cute like she did here, too, completely camouflaging the plastic barrel.

 

We could keep ourselves amused all summer, and then some, with the projects in this book. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves gardening projects!

 

Marvin came by to say hello to you all this morning. He and his siblings have been having a good old time planting all of the pecans that we have been feeding them. We’re going to have a forest of tiny pecan trees if we ever get some rain!

 
  

"Just one more, pleeeeease?"

Bye for now, I’m going to visit everyone for Outdoor Wednesday today! Stay cool, if you can!

Hungry Critters at the Haywoods’

It’s a critter day for us today, while we’re joining Outdoor Wednesday.

 

Meet our new outside pet! He’s Abby’s squirrel. We have named him Marvin.

 

This little guy will come up and tap on the window when he’s hungry for a pecan. He eats right out of her hand. Eventually, we joke, he will just come in and help himself out of the basket of pecans in our kitchen. Just joking, really. The cat and the dog would not be too happy about that!

 

On a sad note, I won’t be showing our pond today, as I had promised. Our hungry neighborhood mama raccoon found it, feasted on our fish, destroyed our plants, and broke the fountain pump. It can’t be easy to find two little fish in the dark, in the water! She worked hard for that tiny meal, so I couldn’t be too mad at her. We have seen her out late at night – she’s huge, maybe 40 pounds. Our two fish were just a snack! She must be this big --

 

We wonder if this is the same mama who was nesting in our attic last summer. She tore a huge board off of the side of the house to get in! They are really strong, clever creatures. We lost a whole month of sleep with the little demons stomping around at night, but never got to see them. I sat outside to watch every night, hoping she would bring them out to hunt, but no luck.

 

At first we weren’t sure what was upstairs, but the Humane Society information tipped us off: If it sounds as though you have Sumo wrestlers in your attic, it’s probably a raccoon family. There was no doubt about that! We still refer to them as the baby Sumos. We didn’t want to disturb the family, so we let them stay until mom was ready to move them. This is so bad, but I couldn’t help putting some cat food and a water bowl upstairs for her. No wonder she didn’t want to leave!

 

Our neighbors had a mama and babies nesting in their unused kitchen chimney. My friend came home one day and heard something in her kitchen cupboards. She looked in and sure enough, there were the baby raccoons!! They sealed up the cabinet, and let the family stay in the chimney until mom was ready to move on. She would come out at night and plop herself on top of the chimney, looking like Oh my gosh I’m just so exhausted. We would all run over there every night just to watch her from their upstairs hallway. All the moms could sympathize with that adorable, tired girl.

 

Apparently it’s common for raccoons to raid ponds in the summer, especially hungry mamas, I guess. We’re going to regroup, study up on how to keep our pond safer, and plan for another attempt at having fish. Wish us luck!

 

*All raccoon photos were loaned to me by David of AAAnimal Control in Orlando. Thanks, David! Check out his site to see more of his precious raccoon photos.*

 

Please stop by to see Susan at A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday. Have fun!

The New Coop in Town

Hello friends, I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! Just for fun today, and for Outdoor Wednesday, I have some adorable photos to share of the new “house” in the neighborhood. This is our local elementary school’s new chicken coop! Isn’t it the cutest thing ever?

 

This sweet coop was built by a neighborhood dad, an architect who is now building chicken coops along with people houses. Every detail is so charming, and the hens seem comfy-cozy in their new digs.

 

Alas, the girls would not come out and show themselves off for us this day. It was hot, and their run is in the full sun in early morning. The coop and run are both locked up securely when the teachers aren't there to supervise.

 

I have been meaning to get back up there again with my camera, but we have had day upon day of rain, compliments of Hurricane Alex. Looks like a few more days of rain this week, too, although we’re not complaining, after the dry spring we had!

 

Poultry fever has spread like wildfire, and now the science teacher is almost finished with his custom coop, also. Local chatter is centered around the coop frenzy that’s taken hold of East Dallas. I’m afraid that we may have been bitten by the chicken bug here at our house, too. Remember the playhouse, turned potting shed, in our back yard?

 

So, what do you think? I think I feel another project coming on!

 

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few photos of this darling coop. There are more to come, when I can get back over on a nice, sunny day. Please stop by and see Susan at A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday!

A Special Creature Encounter

Quite a few wonderful days have been spent in the garden here at Opulent Cottage lately! For Outdoor Wednesday, I have a special creature sighting to share with you. Last week I was out in my back yard, when I heard something overhead. Up in our 100-year-old pecan tree was a huge, spectacular red-tail hawk! I have seen them from afar, but never this close. He was about 25 feet high up in the tree, and was easily 22 or 24 inches tall, just gigantic. And simply gorgeous, a truly majestic creature.

 

Carefully and slowly, I backed away, not wanting to scare him off. Not that this intimidating bird would scare easily! I ran to get my camera, then to our bedroom window where I could be a little higher and slightly closer. We had winds of 40 mph that day, and it was difficult to get a shot without a branch blowing in the way. I took photos for nearly an hour, and came away with only these few decent shots.

 

We do have a good amount of wildlife here, for being smack dab in the middle of the city (we live only about 1 mile north of downtown Dallas). But blessed as we are with so many large, old trees, we have occasionally had large and small birds of prey visit us. We’ve had a flock of pygmy owls, and another huge raptor that I wasn’t able to identify. Of course there are the parrots, who we hope will visit us again this summer. We often have several types of unusual backyard birds, and the occasional water bird flies over, visiting from local White Rock Lake.

 

Here’s the shot of the day, when I’m certain he saw me spying on him

 

This rare experience is one that I will relish for a long, long time, for certain. I’m hopeful that this will not be the last I see of this lovely creature, as I saw him circling overhead today, very high in the sky. The beauty of his wingspan made me catch my breath again.

 

The next time you’re outside, remember – look up! You never know what you’ll see. Please stop by A Southern Daydreamer and visit Susan for Outdoor Wednesday.

Happy First Weekend of Spring … ??

We’re usually pretty happy to get some snow in Dallas, since it doesn’t happen very often, but now, seriously? I braved the high winds and cold this morning just for you, Stacey, in camaraderie of our snow event!

 

The pool always looks so pretty when surrounded by snow. Maybe not so much in March.

 

Our back patio is now open air, due to our last big snow, when the gazebo totally collapsed.

 

We lost quite a few branches from our big Live Oak tree the last time, too. It sure lets a lot more snow through now!

Yikes, that’s a hibiscus plant. Guess I forgot to bring that one in.

 

The jasmine vine doesn’t seem to mind the snow!

 

The iron furniture has a new beauty with several inches of snow piled on.

 

Oh well, it’s supposed to be almost 70 tomorrow, and I hope to be out photographing the patio for this week’s Outdoor Wednesday! Time to go have some hot cocoa and wait out the storm.

 

Stay warm,

Andrea

 

A New Snowfall Record

Our 12.5 inches of snow really was a record-breaker! Here are a few photos from our outing yesterday. Enjoy!

 

A look down our street

 

 

Next door

 

Can you almost see the snow people lounging in the Adironadack chairs? Love the cowboy hat …

 

Another Texas-style snowman

 

Our snowy doggie! She’s half American Eskimo, but doesn’t really seem to know it, as she looks pretty perplexed by the whole thing.

 

This crape myrtle looks a little more like a weeping willow today.

 

A snowman and his entire family! The red “collar” you see in the right front is actually a doggie. (hard to see, I wish I had gotten a closeup!)

 

Down the street at our neighborhood sandwich shop.

 

A closer look shows the snowman’s cabbage hair, cucumber eyes and a pickle for a mouth!

 

Valentine Mantel

For Laurie’s Valentine Party today, I’m showing our mantel all decorated for the holiday. Actually, it’s only partially decorated, as I was unable to run around today due to all of our snow! I had planned to go out and buy fresh tulips and some urns I had been eyeing at Michael’s. Oh well! We’ll just make do today.

My crochet hearts were strung on a single crochet cord and made into a garland.

 

Remember the sweet birdie plates that I found at HomeGoods last year?

   

These candlesticks have been a few colors throughout the years. I love how fresh this red looks. The color is Heritage Red by Rust Oleum.

My favorite, vintage punch cups, used for votives. They are so sparkly and pretty.

But the real treat here today is the SNOW! It has been falling for over 14 hours now, huge, wet, gloppy flakes. We are about to break the all-time record, totaling over 7 inches! Several more inches of snow are predicted, and school is closed tomorrow.

These photos don’t really show the magical, lacelike look of the trees, such a rare occurrence for us.

Our cardinals seem to be delighted by all of the snow. They have been flitting around and chirping all day! They love to sit on this branch and eat from the feeder.

My neighbor’s house looks like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? I took this photo from our living room window.

Thank you for indulging my snow story! I know it may seem silly to those of you living up north, but it really is a special happening here in Dallas.

Here’s the link to Bargain Hunting with Laurie, where you can see everyone’s Valentine decorations!