November! Already?

 Greetings everyone. This is The Daily Bone and I'm your doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

Sorry we haven't been around much lately. My ghostwriter has been working a lot at the nursing home. They finally were able to find some new nurses to hire, and they're in orientation now, so hopefully things will ease up in the schedule soon. Meanwhile, we've been looking for the many amazing things in my yard, both down on the ground, and up in the sky!

Weird, tubular cloud one morning

The last mushrooms

Maple leaf

Hydrangea bush

Hawthorn berries

Sun behind the clouds

Moon rising

In other news, the Evil Squirrel Cartel has been extra busy lately. We often see two or three of them eating birdie seeds that fall from the feeders. They run away when I go out! But today we found this: 

 

Some rotten squirrel chewed a hole in our pumpkin! 

Can you believe it?

Who me? I wouldn't do that!

Yeah, right!

Well, the days are getting shorter. It's dark by 5pm now. I guess I'll have to deal with those squirrels tomorrow. Good night!

Late October

 Greetings! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

The month of October is drawing to a close. The weather here in WNY has been changeable. Yesterday it was gloomy, and dreary, and depressing, and pouring rain non-stop all day. 

In the evening, just when it was getting dark, hundreds of geese flew by! They were going real fast, and it was cloudy so my ghostwriter had a hard time getting a good picture of them. 

The local Sparrows Incorporated flock has at least three dozen birdie members now. They can finish off two birdie feeders full of seeds in less that two days! They're pretty bold too. They don't bother to fly away when I'm outside sniffing around. Do you see them sitting on the fence in this picture, below?

There have been three crummy, rotten, evil squirrels hanging around lately! They don't even run away when ghostwriter taps on the window. In fact, they'll look at her as if they expect her to give them a peanut butter sandwich! They take off pretty fast when I come outside, though. 

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Today, the rain stopped, and the sun came out! 

Hooray for blue skies!

 We were surprised to see this little critter trying to get into the feeders:

At first we thought this was a chipmunk. But a closer look confirmed that this was a baby squirrel. We think it's kind of late in the season for youngsters like this. We wonder how he's going to make it through the winter, especially with competition from the bigger, fatter, meaner squirrels. Well, there are plenty of berries on our hawthorn tree that he could eat in a pinch. Oh, and lots of acorns in the neighbor's big oak tree. 

I guess I'll give him a pass! 

Mushroom Time

 Greetings friends and fans! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your earnest doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

It seems we've been having a couple rainy days every week through summer and autumn this year. Dad has had to mow the lawn every week because it never dried up and stopped growing. (Good thing he has a great big roaring monster mower machine tractor thing that he just has to ride on!) 

But the wet weather has been very good for growing mushrooms! Long time readers may remember that a couple years ago we had the gigantic silver maple tree in our back yard cut down. (There's a link to that big adventurous day below.) Now there are still a lot of old roots underground, that mushrooms are thriving on! Here are a few pictures:

Ghostwriter says this last bunch looks like a Smurf village. I didn't know what a Smurf is, so she said they're little blue guys who live in mushrooms. 

You have GOT to be kidding me!

Don't I  have enough trouble chasing chipmunks and squirrels and bunnies out of the yard? Sheesh!

big-tree-down.

Look Up, Look Down, Look Around

 Greetings everyone! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your assiduous doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

I know it's been a while since I last posted a report. But my ghostwriter has been working a lot. On her off time, she's been digging in the garden. But we did take a little time to look for incredible and amazing things in our yard. 

Sometimes you have to look very carefully to find something. Do you see the little walking stick bug in this photo? 

We carefully caught this bug and took it into the house for a photo session, and then let it go again.

We had some rainy days in the past week. 

It was perfect for mushrooms! 

Here's a bumblebee on a flower:

Looking up at the sky, we saw some amazing sights too!

 

In other news, there's been a pesky little chipmunk stealing seeds the birdies drop from the feeders. I especially dislike chipmunks. They go sneaking through the garden, leaving their stinky footprints which I feel compelled to follow. I always get in trouble when I go stomping through the garden! Now take a look at this little varmint: 

He thinks he's so clever to have gotten up onto the birdie feeder! I chased him away pretty quick! He'd better watch out, though. Mr. Cool Beans Cooper, our neighborhood Cooper's hawk has been very busy too. We've been finding piles of feathers on the lawn. I'm sure C. B. wouldn't turn his beak up to some chipmunk for dinner!

One little birdie got so startled by Mr. C. B. Cooper that she smacked up against the window and left some feathers behind!

We think she was all right, though.

Well, that's all for now. It's nap time! 

Here's a link to one of my favorite chipmunk related posts: 

stinky-chipmunk

And here's a link to more information about Cooper's hawks: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R48CXL1hxls

Little Birdie

 Greetings friends and fans! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your diligent (and expert scent tracker) doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

Now that it's September, you may have noticed the days are getting a little bit shorter. Here in WNY it's dark by 8pm. You never know what kind of day to expect. Yesterday it was warm and sunny. But today, it's cool and it rained all morning. 

There have been big flocks of sparrows at our birdie feeders all day long! (If you enlarge this photo below, you'll be able to see the hummingbird that's been visiting lately too.)

Oh, and guess what happened?

We left the back door to the garage open, and the next time we went out, there was a whole flock of those sparrows INSIDE the garage! They all flew back out pretty quickly. But one little birdie decided to fly into the house! Wow! That little birdie flew all around the place and ended up hitting the wall and falling down behind the big shelf the TV sits on. Dad managed to chase her out of there, and ghostwriter caught her and put her outside. (Sorry we didn't get any pictures of the little birdie. Ghostwriter didn't want to stress her out any more.) 

So then I, being an excellent cocker spaniel hunting doggie, picked up the scent and decided to track everywhere that little birdie went: all over the garage, and then all over the house. Unfortunately, I tried to squeeze myself behind the TV cabinet, much to Dad's objection. Well that's exactly where the little birdie had gotten herself stuck! My nose doesn't lie! 

While Dad was pulling me out of there he discovered that there was a TON of dust back there. So GW decided they might as well clean things good. She got the big, noisy, screaming dragon, scary, horrible, loud shop-vac noisy monster machine thing to suck up all the dust. Yipes! 

They ended up vacuuming the entire first floor of the house, plus the steps and rugs. Did I say it was super extremely noisy? GW said that knocked about ten things off her "to-do list." 

All that work because of one little birdie! 

Little Birdie