Yuck!

I guess he had to get knee-deep in the muddy water in order to figure out how wonderful it really was. He wore most of it into the house and left it on the floor despite vigorous toweling...

The cold dry weather continues. The sky is tinged with pink as I look out the front door this evening. If it rains, I must not forget to take in the seat cushions I put on the patio chairs this morning . I'm not used to looking out my bedroom door at a sunny patio. All I could see from the old bedroom was the neighbors' bedroom!

The water in the birdbath and the hummingbird feeder was frozen solid this morning. We've been waiting for the hummingbirds to discover it and this morning they finally did, but couldn't get a thing out of it.

The goldfinches weren't slowed down at all by the cold weather, they empty the thistle feeder every two days! There is a whole covey of quail who bob across the hill behind us, furtively lurking under a bush and suddenly making a break for it scurrying across the open spaces to the next bush. They can fly but have to be under grave duress to do so. Dana thinks their topknots fall forward over their eyes to give them something to follow...

The morning doves burst from the agaves with much commotion and a great flapping of wings. We had a pair that tried every year to build a nest in the eaves outside our bedroom windows despite our frantic efforts to discourage them. There is a reason why their heads are so tiny--they do not have to contain much brain matter! They build very messy nests, hardly nests at all, and abandon their babies to survive, precariously perched on little more than a pile of grass on a narrow beam, pitifully calling for sustenance. Not appealing at 4am!

The vultures wheel and hover in the thermals above the hills. They are graceful to watch and quite social, lined up on fence posts, wings outstretched to catch the early morning sun, or gathering for meetings in the bare branched trees like a bunch of old Italian men sitting in the piazza.

The other day we saw a kite (of the raptor variety) madly flapping it's wings to steady itself aloft in one spot and precipitously diving straight down to capture some little vole or field mouse.

With all this activity in the skies, what is Ozzie, a bird dog after all, doing with his nose in a mud hole?