Thursday, May 26, 2011

Dr. JB's Hummingbird Feeder

Last fall we were at my wife's family's cabin in Northern Wisconsin and were surprised to see hummingbirds visiting a feeder hung outside the kitchen window. 

Upon returning to Brookfield, I researched feeders online and bought one made by Songbird Essentials.

Earlier this week I installed it outside one of my office windows, filled it with sugar water according to a recipe I found online, and was pleasantly surprised when it attracted at least two hummingbirds within the first few hours.

It's fairly early in the season for hummingbirds here in Wisconsin given temperatures that are still in the 40s most days, so I think I'll see many, many more when the weather warms up in June. 

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Wonderful Time Of The Year

Here in Wisconsin, the daylight portion of each 24 hours is lengthening as we move toward summer solstice on June 21.

I'm up early and the sky is noticeably brighter at 4:45 a.m. when I go out for the paper.  Birds are singing by then, and today Sunrise occurred at 5:41 a.m.

It's been more than four months since winter solstice but we are well into spring now.  I've already mowed the lawn twice.

Wisconsin can have extremely cold and snowy winters but the 2010-11 one was average on both counts.

Summers here are lush and wet in an almost tropical way which is our great reward for the barren and dormant winter months when plants stop growing and animals hibernate or migrate south.

Let me conclude, however, by observing that the landscape in America's Dairyland is beautiful after a snowfall and few things are more stimulating than a sub-zero, winter day. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Cat Scratching Training

Training a cat to claw where you want her or him to and nowhere else is quite a satisfying accomplishment. With many cats, it happens very quickly because, for whatever reason, they are able to understand that Natural Scratch is just for them and is the one place they can scratch with abandon and with the hearty approval of their human companions.

I don't think coming to this realization is a matter of intelligence. Two of our three current cats--Twinkles and Gemini--were immediate Natural Scratch clawers and haven't scratched anything else in years. The third, Leo, is probably smarter than the other two but he was harder to train.

It wasn't because he didn't understand what Natural Scratch was for or that he didn't like clawing it. What bugged him was being restricted to just one approved target. Leo wanted to scratch anywhere, anytime. To him, Natural Scratch was fine but so was the corner of the futon.

Nevertheless, through a combination of rewards for clawing Natural Scratch and negative conditioning--cat jail--for targeting anything else, we were able to train his bad scratching habits out of him. If you have a cat like Leo, Natural Scratch and its easy-to-use training method is just what the doctor ordered.