Our Third Bird Feeder in Six Months

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You may remember I bought my wife a combination bird feeder and bird bath for Christmas. This worked well until a rat found it. Then I had to get rid of it, lest the rat find a way into our house.

We then ended up buying a separate birdbath and a rat resistant feeder. I also changed the feed to one that was less likely to attract rats. This also limited the type of birds that it would attract, but that was an okay compromise.

The new feeder hung from a shepherd’s hook and worked well for a while. Then, about two or three weeks ago, it stopped working well. Suddenly the food that originally lasted weeks, lasted only a few days. Most of it was being dumped on the ground, and into the bird bath. I assumed a large bird found the feeder and was swinging it so the seeds dumped out, but we never saw the culprit. It might have even been a squirrel but I’m not sure if the squirrels would like the new seed any more than the rats.

In any case, we decided to start over. This time I found one that was heavier and attached to a pole rather than swing from it. The one I found had a camera that seemed appealing. The pole I bought separate.

The camera could be attached horizontally or vertically. I wanted my videos to be horizontal, so I attached the camera vertically. I know. It didn’t make sense to me either.

It also came with a solar collector to power the camera but the engineers did not think people would want to attach it to the feeder so they designed it to be attached to another surface, which did not work for me so I used the optional piece that was for attaching the feeder to a house or barn and rigged it so I could attach the solar panel to the feeder. If they were smart, they would have designed the solar panel to attach to the roof of the bird house, but they weren’t smart.

The camera attached to our Wi-Fi so we can either view our feeder live from wherever we are or watch saved clips using an app called Coolfly.

Above is a clip from this morning. You can see from the top it automatically identified the bird as a Northern Cardinal. That is impressive but that cardinal and his female counterpart have been to the feeder dozens of times, yet it only identifies it about a quarter of the time.

All in all, I’m happy with the new feeder. It seems solid and doesn’t spill seeds like the last one. Click here if you want to see a link to what I bought. It is an affiliate link, but I don’t necessarily recommend it. It does have its issues, like the solar panel mount, but since I only paid $50 for it, I have nothing to complain about. What do you think?

Photo Friday: I smell a Cat

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Frankie took his time yesterday smelling this storm drain.

I assume it is because there is a feral cat that seems to regularly use the stormwater sewers as a way to get around without being seen. A larger storm drain closer to our house has a metal grate over it and I have seen the cat through the grate on our walks at least twice, maybe more.

14th Blogiversary

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Today is the 14th anniversary of my first blog post. Can you believe it’s been that long? Most bloggers don’t last a year. Here is the first photo I posted.

Chris and Chuck
This is Chris on my shoulders, doing what he has done since the day we met.

I think the photo is a good representation of what Chris was like.

This is my last photo of Chris, which turned out to be a very sad day.

Since than I have carried on with stories of Frankie and Floki.

Blogging has been a life-changing experience for me. I don’t know if I would have become an author if I hadn’t started blogging first. I also would not have gotten to know so many wonderful people. I hope to continue with this blog for as long as I am able.

My Newest Book, Last Breath

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I recently published Last Breath, which is the sixth in my Last Healer Mysteries series. If you want to read about where the idea came from, check out my blog post here.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the victim in the story had a cat which Katie and Joe adopt. The cat becomes a minor subplot as it wakes Joe up early every morning. He also adds a little bit a humor to the story as in this snippet:

After Katie hung up, she sat on the sofa with Joey and started reading him a children’s story. Max lay on top of the sofa, casually watching them, but the smell of bacon and eggs drew him to the kitchen, where Joe was cooking breakfast. He rubbed his face on Joe’s leg, then sat, looked up, and meowed.

“I fed you already,” Joe said.

Max meowed again at Joe.

Joe sighed. “This is not going to be a habit.” He picked up a piece of bacon that he had already cooked, blew on it to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then put it on a small plate. He put the plate on the floor next to Max and whispered, “Katie doesn’t need to know about this.”

Max sniffed the bacon and picked it up. He then ran into the living room with it. Joe put his hands on his head, both in surprise and dread.

“Joe!” thundered Katie’s voice from the living room a few seconds later. “The cat is eating bacon on our clean floor!”

As always, I need reviews, so I hope you consider checking out my books and reading one that sounds like it might interest you. Now I need to get on with writing Chris’s memoir.

Photo Friday: Frankie the Spot Stealer

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Our cats have their own spots. Floki lies on the cat perch to the left and Frankie lies to the right. Lately though, Frankie has been stealing Floki’s spot.

That is not the only spot of Floki’s he’s been stealing. Floki likes to hang out under the bed. He’s not one of those cats that spends all day under the bed but if there is ever a time when we can’t find him, he is probably there. He lies on top of a large, folded pet carrier that we keep, in addition to a smaller carrier, in case we ever need to evacuate. My wife even puts a towel on it, so he is more comfortable.

Frankie was never an under the bed kind of cat but since returning from vacation I have found him under the bed in Floki’s spot twice. Either something has changed with him, or he is taunting Floki for some reason.