Befriending A Magpie

You heard it hear first………..yes it’s true…………I’m becoming friends with a magpie.  Who would have thought that I would befriend a loud, squawking magpie.  It started out with me going outside, throwing bread pieces on the ground and whistling the sound of a chickadee.  I was trying to get the chickadees to come in and eat the bread while I sat in my swing to watch and take photos. 

Not to be outdone by a little chickadee, one magpie started coming in every time I whistled.  All the other magpies wait at a far distance until I go in the house and then they will come and snatch up all the rest of the bread.  But Gus (that’s what I named him) will fly in the tree close by and then fly to the ground and get the bread, within 9 feet of where I am sitting.  While he is sitting in the tree, we actually squawk back and forth to each other – too funny!

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In the video below, one of the little chickadees is eating bits of bread.  Not in this video, but shortly after, the chickadee picked up a piece of bread and tried to fly away with it.  I don’t know if it was too big for him or what but he dropped it on the ground.

Chickadee Eating Bread

Gus, standing close by noticed that the chickadee dropped his piece of bread so he hopped over, scooped it up and took it a short distance away and proceeded to bury it in the grass.  After he buries it, he covers it with dead leaves.  He frequently buries the bread he takes and comes back later and gets it.

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I guess if I keep befriending Gus, I’ll have to keep feeding him.  Good thing I Started making bread, hmmm.  I must admit, he is fun to have around.

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Bread Machine Bread Cooked In Oven

Yesterday when I went to get something in the pantry I noticed that we were very low on bread.  In my head, it was Thursday and I was thinking that my husband had to work the next day and he wouldn’t  have any bread to make a sandwich for his lunch.  I didn’t feel like going to town so I thought I would make some bread, a rare thing indeed!  I also didn’t want to get out the heavy KitchenAid mixer so I thought I would just make the dough in my bread machine then take it out, form it in a loaf and bake it in the oven.  I’m so glad that is the route I chose.  Very easy and the bread turned out wonderful.  I’ve never done that before so it was new to me and I was very pleased with the results…..so much so, that I actually made another loaf today, only this time instead of using entirely all-purpose flour, I added in a cup of wheat flour.  I’ve got an old wheat grinder (Kitchenetics (K-Tec) Kitchen Mill) that I bought at a garage sale for practically nothing.  It’s been about 20 or so years since I purchased it but it still worked like a charm.  They had a nice picture of it on Google Images, which is pretty similar to mine so I will use it to show you what it looks like:

This is how my first loaf looked after taking it out of the oven and brushing butter over the top.

After leaving it on the counter to cool, my next step was to slice it and bag it.  For slicing, once again, I’m going back 20 years or so and using my old Presto bread slicer.  This little gadget is wonderful too.  All you do is put your bread on it and slice between the grey and white pegs, getting all nice, even slices.


The recipe I used is an old recipe that my father used to make bread in his bread machine.  It is a very tender, good bread.

 
For the loaf of bread using wheat flour, I used the same recipe and just replaced one of the regular cups of flour with one cup of wheat flour.

That was just simple enough making bread this way that I think I won’t be buying too may loaves of bread anymore. 

What Day Is It….St. Patrick’s or April Fools?

To those of you who think today is St. Patrick's Day, raise your hand.  I’m thinking it’s more like April Fools Day.  This past weekend it was so nice and warm that my husband and I put our two-seated swing back up that we had put away for the winter.  Well, look at the following pictures I took today and try to tell me once again that today is really St. Patrick's Day and not April Fools Day!

UPDATE:  Just looked out the window and the wind is still blowing wildly but a lot of the show has melted.  St. Patrick’s Day….hmmmm, maybe?!

Freeze Tag/Photo Bunny

As I was driving down a dirt lane yesterday, I spotted this bunny sitting along the edge.  I drove up pretty close to him (assuming he was a him) and started taking pictures.  I think this little bunny was playing a game of freeze tag……or freeze photo…….thinking – hey, if I don’t move, maybe this human thing will not notice me and go away.  Same bunny, different photos.

After sitting there for a few minutes, I could see he wasn’t going to move.  So, I slowly started inching my car forward and off he hopped over to the fence.  And once again, there he sat………..not moving a muscle.  At the bottom of the fence, I could see his escape route.  Smart bunny.  Once again, same bunny….different photos.

I very quickly got tired of playing freeze tag/photo as all my pictures looked exactly the same.  When I started moving the car, as suspected, the smart little bunny took his escape route under the fence and hopped away.