oh, I'd love to have some anna's or black-chinned or buff-bellied or calliope here, too, patrick, but I sure love the rubies! sarah, I was holding the camera, and was seated about 8 feet from the feeder. I was indoors, looking through the window. the optics and zoom on the canon s1-is are great, but already I want more pixels. this one is 3.2 megapixels. I sure am having fun with it, though. I hope my visitor is here again tomorrow!

Marilyn Sue, its Sunday, so that calls for fried chicken, rice and gravy, green beans, biscuits, lemon cake, and pickled peaches. I cook before we go to church and have fixed the same Sunday meal for the past 50 years. Now I will have to change that , for a while would put the roast that cooks at 225 in the oven on Sat. night so it would be ready when we walked in from church. This is the only day of the week we eat the high calorie foods. For breakfast on Sundays we have the boney parts of the fried chicken, cream gravy , cream corn, and in the summer cantaloupe. Growing up all of this was cooked before we left just in case the preacher and his family of five kids came for lunch. Now the preacher doesn't come home with us, most of our folks eat out on Sunday. Love getting up on Sunday mornings, brings back all the memories of life in the 40's and 50's, growing up on the farm. One thing that is different, we don't have to dress the chickens before we start frying.

I like them too. We had some nest on the back of the farm several years ago, they completely demolished a sweet corn patch. We gave up the corn for the fun of watching the little birds hatch and grow. it's my understanding that they are legal to hunt in some states, I guess there are big populations in some spots. I have a friend who calls them "ribeye of the sky". He was amazed that we had such fun watching them. There are quite a few of them in southern Michigan by Elery's, there's even a winery called "Sandhill Crane Vineyards". We went to Lowe's one day for paint and there were a couple standing right under a tree in the parking lot, just watching people come and go, so I'm thinking they're either curious or not so smart. (grin) Cathy, I'm glad I'm not the only one who moves turtles. The girls used to call it "turtle patrol". We'd be driving along and I'd pull over and yell "turtle patrol". The girls would bail out and (while watching for traffic) move the turtle. I was told by a DNR officer to always put them on the side of the road in the direction they were heading or they'd just turn around and go right back. I don't know if that's true or not, but we always did/do. Yeah, Elery thinks I'm nuts, sometimes. Maybe most times. Annie

I was surprised that so few knew my handle was a pun. It's pronounced Annie DayNow...No Beulah in there though... I thought I remembered an actress Beulah and there was...Beulah Bondi. She died from injuries after tripping over her cat. Hmmm...I think I can relate...