Early Puppyhood Education - Greta!

Meet my new puppy, Greta, from Grandgables in Moffat, Ontario. 

"Grandgables Ms Melt Ya Heart"  

A more helpful puppy I've never met. She got in this basket of delightfully warm clothes on her own.   She can fold pretty well. If I could only teach her to iron!

She's been here for nearly three weeks now and I started on her "formal" training about two weeks ago. I primarily use clicker training, with other positive, fun methods included as needed. Besides riding in the car, house-training, and other in-home behaviors like "outside", "kennel" (go in your crate/pen/room), and such we're working on other fun stuff, all hands off, no collar, no force, no compulsion. Greta is destined for the conformation show ring, but will learn lots of other helpful and creative behaviors. I recently stumbled upon circus dog training, particularly the Bay Area Dog Trainers blog. I am intrigued by their "Macro Medium and Micro" breakdown of behaviors, and their YouTube video channel is not to be missed.  One thing I did with Winnie is really focused on only her show training behaviors - standing and trotting on leash. I really want this puppy to be much more versatile. Winnie tends to default to "stand" and look pretty - sometimes it's hard to get moving, thinking, behaviors from her. More work needed on getting her "in the game"!

Greta's "in the game"

Here's "down".

Here is a fun one, "On the box", she jumps up on her own.

"Hup!"

I found these small hula hoops at a yard sale. This was only her second time exposed to them. I did use a treat to "lure" her through, you can she she wasn't convinced - her expression tells all. 

Clicking and treating her for any movement toward the hoop changed her mind! She did this several times easily once she got started. "Hup!"

The always popular "sit".

 The beginnings of "Touch it", there is no food in the hand I'm asking her to target.

I use different hand shapes for the different cues. "Touch it" is fingers held as if I had a treat in them, 

"Stand", below, is index finger pointed, other 3 fingers to the thumb - like you'd do a "d" in sign language.

No cue for this yet. But it's the best spot from the living room to watch for me coming down the stairs apparently! Easy access from the couch. Hopefully she didn't use Al's toothpicks to floss with while she was waiting.

Mile High City

 I spent this past weekend in Denver with my husband Al. He has a work conference that lasts through Wednesday and two older daughters agreed to stay home with Maggie, so I got to go.

We had some gorgeous blue sky when you could find it.

Barnes and Noble - look what i found. Julie Zickfoose's new book The Bluebird Effect. The books were all squished, so I liberated one for all too see. Much better.

There are birds to enjoy even in the midst of the city. This nice lady was feeding these pigeons and the purple cab gentleman was watching as he waited for a customer.

There were some really pretty birds in this flock.

This fella with the orange wings was my favorite. Bold fella, too.

I found some magnificent trees in Civic Center Park - look at this beauty - I think it is a locust.

Lots of ground work happening at the park - check out this magnificent oak - well magnificent for the west anyhow. It was glorious.

A peek at the state capitol building.

Some fun architecture.

Giant, scary Bathroom People.

Citified Buffalo looking for the prairie.

 I went into this store - what a step back in time! Great traditional western wear, some really fancy stuff!

Down at the train station I snapped this shot just as a crow was flying past the clock - see his shadow?

It was a nice weekend. Al and I had some quality time and very nice meals together. When I was not walking around, I had the privilege of sequestering myself in a nice motel room and reading.

And I saw Robot Mike.

Birding the Big Thompson Bird Walk Series

Again this year I’ll be leading a series of bird walks; Birding The Big Thompson – here in Loveland, CO.

All walks are free, please bring a friend, dress for the weather and let’s have fun! We’ll probably be out 2-4 hours depending on how birdy it is.

After each walk those that want to will be meeting at The Coffee Tree 422 E 4th street for a cup and a chat.

Here is the planned schedule, walks typically on the 3rd Saturday.

March 24th, 8:00 a.m. Big Thompson Ponds
April 21st, 8:00 a.m. Simpson Ponds – off County Road 9E
May 26th, 7:30 a.m. Meet at Railroad Dr/Fairgrounds park – bird east to 287.
June 16th, 7:00 a.m. Meet at Railroad Dr/Fairgrounds park – bird west to 1st Street.
July 21st, 7:00 a.m. Meet at the 1st Street parking lot by the hockey rink, bird west to Wilson.
August 18th, 7:00 a.m. Meet at Namaqua Park, bird the park and nearby areas – picnic at the park?
September 15th, 7:30 a.m. Meet and bird at Morey Wildlife Reserve.
October 20th, 8:00 a.m. Meet and bird at Vienstenz-Smith Park.

An Eagle Moment In Time

Took a nice walk today at nearby Lon Hagler State Wildlife Area to do a Great Backyard Bird Count.

The first bird awaiting me was this glorious immature Bald Eagle. He had just completed a loop around the lake and was busy preening himself.

He lost his balance and nearly fell off!

A spectacular recovery, I thought.

Back to preening.

Day 6, Portal, Arizona

Woke early again, made coffee and started a toasty fire in the fire place. 

 Chilly here in Portal, about 30 degrees. After a nice breakfast of oatmeal and toaster strudel, we headed back out to the Cave Creek Ranch feeders. Enjoying another show of birds, it was not near as active as the night before, where all our target birds showed up. But we did find this Sharpie.

5 White-tailed deer, 3 of them bucks entertained us. 

We visited the gift shop, bought a few things, then headed up to the Research station - which was closed.

We decided to drive several miles up the Canyon for another try at finding Mexican Chickadee and Yellow-eyed Junco. We found a nice mixed flock of Bushtits, Dark-eyed Juncos, Bridled Titmouse, Juniper Titmouse, but none of our target birds.

We then walked the main street of Portal, which was extremely quiet, so we departed to check out the old Jasper home site, now owned by Bob Rodriquez. We passed it as the sign has been moved and walked down the drive way of someone else, coming upon two hunters taking pictures of the "javelina' they had killed. They were very kind and directed us to the correct home.

The feeders at Bob R's place hosted a Canyon Towhee, with cardinals, Pyrrhuloxia,  Curved Billed Thrasher, a lovely Black-throated Sparrow and many White-crowned Sparrows. 

Plenty of Common Peccary with itchy butts..

That was the end of our fabulous trip and we are headed for Santa Fe and home.

Thanks Arizona! It was a blast. We'll be back.

Patagonia to Cave Creek

We wake up again too early, it’s winter birding, remember?  

 We decide to head down to Patagonia Lake State Park and bird there for a bit. We went to the end of the day use area and got the scope out. 

We added a lifer – Pyrrhuloxia! Along with Cardinal, a lovely Great Blue Heron and several other new species for the trip. Came back and drove through the famous roadside rest area and only ticked WCSP. By now it was 8:30 and the birds were actually waking up.

We visited the Patton’s home.  

Michael M. the resident renter came out and visited after a bit. 

The birds were abundant with Broad-billed & Anna's Hummingbird, Pyrrhuloxia,  Northern Cardinal, White-winged Dove,  Botta’s Pocket Gopher, (thanks Michael!) Abert’s Towhee, Green-tailed Towhee and many others. 

A delightful time, this would be a wonderful place to come back to in summer. 

Off then to Cave Creek Ranch which we hit about 2:30. Unloaded our stuff into a very cool rock cabin by the river – which was bolstered on all sides by numerous sandbags. White-tailed Deer decorated the area.

We drove up the South Fork and hiked over a mile in on the Maple Camp trail looking for Mexican Chickadee and Yellow-eyed Junco. No go.

 We found a Brown Creeper, Ruby-crowned Kinglet and thought we heard a YEJU. It was a really lovely hike. We did a total of 10 stream crossings.

Back to the main canyon road and up to the Herb Maryter road where we heard and got distant looks at two Mexican Chickadees! Stopped by the research station and gift shop which were closed. We’ll go back there tomorrow. (It was still closed, oh well.)

Back at the ranch we parked at our cabin and started birding – 4pm-ish. Bridled Titmouse, White-tailed Deer and at the feeding station area which was excellent by the way, we had some great birds! PAINTED REDSTART, BLUE-THROATED HUMMER and Magnificent Hummingbird, Cardinals, Pyrs, White-crowned Sparrows.  3 more lifers in five minutes! We birded there until thoroughly frozen!

The cabin has a lovely fireplace, so I started and kept a fire going until bedtime. We had TGI Fridays Sesame Chicken, for a wonderful end to our day. I even moved my twin bed so I could fall asleep watching the fire.  Heaven on earth.

Day 4, Madera and Florida Canyons

Wow, what a day today. It seemed like it took forever for the birds to wake up. We hiked up Florida Wash, but only saw a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and some wild cows. It was extremely quiet. So we headed over to walk and bird the trail in Madera Canyon from the Madera Canyon Picnic area to the Proctor Trailhead and back. Birding was kinda slow in the morning, except at the lodge feeders we had great looks at the Mexican Jays, Bridled Titmouse, and the Hepatic Tanager again.

The trail birding picked up below Whitehouse area - we came upon a mixed flock that included Dark-eyed Juncos, OLIVE WARBLER & HUTTON'S VIREO, both which were lifers for us. The vireo was right above our heads, and even vocalized for us. It was so very cool to be able to really see the differences between it and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Awesome.

 Not much further down the canyon we found a lovely male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker male and an ARIZONA WOODPECKER, another lifer!

We saw more birds along the way to Proctor, with a nice flock of Western Bluebirds, a Hermit Thrush, Cardinals and curious Mexican Jays that wanted to pick our pockets.

The way back was slow, but we were startled by a vocal group of Mexican Jays that showed us a nice female Arizona Woodpecker. Interesting note on the bluebirds we saw. In the picture below there are three, all snuggled in between the bark and the tree trunk. We watched them for quite awhile shuffle, fly in and out and finally settle in for an early morning siesta. It was very sweet.

Back at the Madera Picnic area we sat and refreshed ourselves and were joined by a curious and darling male WB Nuthatch, foraging, polite, Mexican Jays and an Acorn Woodpecker waiting for a handout.

With reports of Rufous-capped Warblers and a Rufous-backed Robin we headed over to Flow-ree-da Canyon. We hiked to the dam and were captivated by the thick riparian scenery in the midst of the desert. We did see a flick of a bird, but could not refind or see it clearly. No ticks on those two birds, but what a lovely hike. It was rather late in the afternoon, also.


We then continued east on Box Canyon Road to Highway 83 then south to Patagonia, where we spent the night at the Stage Stop Inn. Tomorrow morning we'll visit the famous Patton's Yard and feeders.