Birds and Deer

We've found the birds and deer have an interesting relationship here on the mountain.  We fill the bird feeder on the rear deck with a typical mix of bird food. This consists of sunflower seeds, nuts and bits of fruit.

The Stellar's Jays will knock the sunflower seeds aside and to the ground below to get at the nuts and bits of fruit.  The deer have figured out  they can forage on the large stash of spilled sunflower seed and frequent the area under the deck for their evening snack.

The deer have no fear of our watching them so it makes for fun nature watching...

Somehow the word gets out and the herd then arives

The Finches  have discovered the bird seed and show up in groups of a hundred or so and consume everything. Pretty interesting to watch.

We keep the seed in the galvanized pail to make it easy to refill the feeder

Living in the Mountains in Winter

We are spending the winter months in the mountains at 9,240 feet in a secluded part of the state of Colorado. We love it up here in the summer and decided we had better see how year round living suits us.

We made it up here after the first big snow and the neighborhood snow plow had cleared the road to our drive way. We strapped on the snow shoes and made our way to the cottage, started the tractor and used it to blow the drives clear.

There was a lot of snow to clear to get the plow truck ready for use.

During the growing season all of the neighborhood takes the brush and branches they trim and deposit them on the "Slash Pile". On New Years Eve the pile is burned and the various neighbors gather around to celebrate the New Year.

The critters were sure glad to see us return. We've been feeding the birds and we've found they don't like the millet in the feed and  knock it out of the feeder onto the ground below the deck. The deer have discovered the seed and now spend time there eating away.

When we head into town we pass by the lake and the ice fishermen trying their luck.

We've experienced our first big winter storm where it snowed and blew for two days. We got about 16" of snow out of it and higher drifts. After it ended we spent several hours clearing the drives and using the plow truck to clear many miles of roads. Quite the experience.

This secluded life style suits us well. We head into town once a week or so and spend rest of our time on various projects, reading and winter sports.