Good day, sunshine!

Thank you to all who took the time to read my son's guest blog post Tuesday night.  He was delighted to read all the comments and feed back.  You guys totally made his day.  I don't know if him writing will become a regular thing but I'm so happy he had such a positive experience.  He did the whole thing himself, including resizing and color adjusting on the images.

Last night I didn't write because it was the season finale of Survivor and I just *had* to see who won. I'm not surprised Tony won. Tony was a good player even if I'm not sure I liked the persona he was portraying.

On to other things.

First, I have to share this photo of the beautiful BLUE sky.  We've had cloudy skies the last few days.  The sun came out this afternoon and it was such a happy surprise when I left work.

Okay, now for the really exciting news.  My incubator arrived yesterday!

I was lucky enough to be home when it was delivered so I was able to set it up right away and calibrate the temperature.  It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be.  Course I'm used to looking at the bitty little Brinsea's.

This is a Janoel 8-48 that was purchased from an eBay seller.

It's set up in my craft room.  When I first started filling the water channels I kept pouring water in (because I didn't know better) and after a while I heard the water pouring out of the overflow.  Ooops.  It's not noisy at all. So far the only thing that annoys me is that the alarm goes off when you lift the lid.

It's currently chock full of eggs.  Today is day two though some of the eggs in there were laid today.  This is really exciting.  I can't decide if this is more exciting than when Elvis goes broody.  I'm almost giddy at all the potential baby chicks.  I know the hatch rate won't be as high but it will be more than what Elvis can sit on.  I'll post occasional updates.

Speaking of Elvis; guess who's hanging out in the nesting boxes again?

 She's laid two eggs this week.  I give her two more weeks and she will want to be broody again.

Buck and Honk's beaks seem do be coming along nicely.   Today was their first evening out of the shelter in a few days. I swear Buck has grown almost to the same size as Brewster.  Could be my eyes playing tricks on me.  

The turkeys, guineas and other chicks are growing by leaps and bounds.  They all are still happy in the new coop.  I wonder how much longer they can stay in there before outgrowing the space.  I can see the guineas are already taking on their adult "walk." They aren't as upright as they used to be.

This morning I noticed at least one bear has discovered our bird feeders.  Most of them were knocked down, including my outside thermometer.  I was not pleased.  My DH went out and set up the hummingbird feeders again because we had three hummers out there waiting for the feeders. The hopper style bird feeder I have survived but one of the welds is busted. 

For tonite's dinner I picked up some smelt for the boys.  I don't eat fish.  Smelt is a huge treat for my son.  He LOVES it.  They went out back and my DH showed our son how to clean smelt.

As you can see, they Wynadotte (aka Greedy Gut) was right there, looking for a handout.

 In this photo you can see the feeders.  The suet cake holder is higher than it used to be. We have a lot of birds coming now. *Someone* cleaned out the one feeder.  Birds are messy.

This was after a few smelt heads were tossed to the girls.  They love fish and play "keep-away."

 

Brewster was in his glory, calling the girls over to get what he "found" 

No-tailed Red coming back for more.

Daily 5 things of the day that made me happy

1. Getting out for a walk at lunch.  I miss walking on my lunch hour.

2. My average MPG is really good right now. I hardly have to run the heat in my car now and it shows in the increased MPG.

3. I'm meeting a friend for coffee tomorrow.  I haven't seen her in almost two years. 

4. My DH cooked the smelt outside so it didn't mess up the kitchen. 

5. I had homemade hummus for supper. I thought the flavor was excellent!