Guess who's back- and who moved in!

So we went to the woods Monday afternoon after work.  The first worthwhile pic I took was what I thought was an unusual bird...  I just didn't know HOW unusual!

I looked and looked on the net for this bird- and one looked just like her.  A female red-flanked bluetail.  Absolute perfect match.  Problem was, the experts say this bird is not in the New World.  So I found a site that was a deal where you can e-mail them a pic and they'll identify it (or try to).  I swiftly got this response:

Colors are not true but maybe an Eastern Phoebe

 

So I looked up eastern phoebe:

 

Yeah, right.

I continued looking and found that they've recently been sighted in Canada and California, but not many and not around here.  But unless someone wants to give me a CONVINCING other choice, I'm saying I got a pic of the current rarest bird in Indiana.

 

So we moved on, and suddenly Laurie said, "Look at that!"

Not only deer, but deer that posed for pictures- and not only that, but I spotted the doe with the lame leg- our family from last summer is BACK!!

We counted six of them all told, with a couple of young'uns.

This is the lame-legged mama.

I was and am so excited!  It's like family who spent the winter in Florida returning in the spring!

We also saw the first chipmunk I've seen in the woods so far, got smacked in the face by a miller (the little moth, not the beer), and then we got another excellent example of why Purdue is a good school if you are mentally-challenged to start (because you will be when you're done.  Imagine if you will a group of thick brush bushes on the side of a flowing stream.  Imagine an old, not in good shape tree nestled in the middle of them.  Imagine Purdue, who owns the wood, decides to cut out all the brush EVERYWHERE along the trail, including this one grouping by the stream.  Without the living brush to hold things together, what do you suppose happens to the not-in-good-shape tree, which they left in place, all alone?

That's right, class- it falls into the formerly-flowing stream!  This from the same people who decided to put in a new gravel trail and two soccer fields into a watershed area without running drainage tile.  I can't wait until they actually try to use the former meadow-come-soccer fields (if they ever do- they sat unused all last year).  I can see the sign now- "Soccer fields 20 and 21- use only during drought conditions"!

NOTE: I wanted to find a picture linking "Purdue" and "stupidity" (thinking it couldn't be THAT hard), but all I got was various Purdue sports teams and their coaches (makes sense), along with a smattering of bikini clad Purdue "girls of the Big Ten" contestants, and, curiously enough, a handful of scenes involving the University of Michigan (insert your U of M joke here).


Before I go (or am assassinated by terrorists from IPFW), I have a couple of other photos to share with you.

From our Saturday walk- a goose trying to take a nap in all that wind...

This here is Joseph- he lives near my son's back door.  He's the one who keeps having territorial spats with the neighborhood 'munks.