birds of a feather + freebies!

Going outside is a must. Specially with little kids. 

(Yes, girls like going outside just as much as boys do...so I'm not going to play that card!)

And when we do go outside, there are several things that interest the boys.

Like sticks and rocks...

...and climbing on cars and pretending to fly....

But I found something that REALLY interested me the other day....

It was these noisy little things. 

We have two man-tall bushes outside our front door. Usually I see birds fly in and out of them and we stay clear of them because their edges are sharp.

But I peeked in on one, and found a nest. 

I peeked inside the nest, and found four tiny ugly birds.

Then I ran inside to get my fresh-back-from-the-shop camera.

And I saw them stretching their horrible looking scrawny necks at me to feed them.

Sometime later, I was able to get a shot of momma bird.

It was really neat to be able to capture that as it was my first close encounter with ugly, baby birds.

And I don't have a zoom lens, so I was up-close-and-personal with them with my stock 18-15mm lens.

(yeah, I know, I need to invest in more lenses)

Short story even shorter, the bush got trimmed, and two birdies died.

But we also managed to get this little one for my little sister this week....

She's nameless and is such a basket-case, but hopefully with love and some good-name-thinking those problems will be solved.

Have a great weekend and I'm leaving you with pretty pictures of my greens!

 Click on the image to enlarge

  Click on the image to enlarge

 Click on the image to enlarge

You can even use them for pretty desktop backgrounds!