Around The Farm In March

Once our snow and ice melted, I began opening the window for the fantail pigeons during the day. They seemed happy to stand on the windowsill and look, but did not fly out - at least not at first:

They've paired up and have been busy building nests:

The chickens too got their door opened and they were very happy about it even though at first they had to walk across some ice to get to what was left of last season's grass:

They remembered from last year that the best place to find goodies to eat is right below the bird feeders. Those wild birds drop a lot of seed:

Inside the farm house, the parakeet cage sits empty and reminds me of my former bird, Chirpy. Some would find it difficult to get so attached to a parakeet, but this one had such a happy personality that he was a pleasure to have in the room. I fear his guinea pig neighbor, Dixie, misses him also. It's awfully quiet now in that bedroom:

I had several woodpeckers at the suet cake. This is a Hairy Woodpecker, the bigger of our two common species:

He or she was bigger than a robin, with a comparatively long bill:

The Downy Woodpecker looks nearly identical but is much smaller, nearly as small as a sparrow, and with a shorter bill:

This Downy put on quite a show and was less afraid of me than the Hairy:

Here's a chuckle at my own expense. The barn door hasp tended to lock itself shut when the door was closed from the inside, causing a problem for whoever had entered. So one day I used a Sharpie to print an alert on the door frame, with a warning on how to avoid that problem. But the next time I used the door, I discovered that I had misspelled "vertical" as "verticle." I know how to spell the word, but there it was, misspelled, for all the world to see. I corrected it as best I could, but my mistake will be evident to anyone who uses that door for many years to come:

The melting ice sent the cows out into the field to find grass:

Alas, it was still too early. There were tiny green shoots, patches of ice and frozen cow-pies, but nothing much to eat. But still the cows enjoyed getting out in the sun: