Disappointing Pictures of Lambs

Well I guess the title is a bit of a giveaway!

A couple of days ago the weather was good so I went to take some pictures of the sheep. There were two images I really wanted to capture, one being the difference in the coat of a wool lamb and a hair lamb, and the other was a picture of Diamond's twins (born on October 17) and Girlie's triplets (born onOctober 8) to show how much bigger Diamond's lambs are.

I was able to get one picture of a wool lamb and a hair lamb but the picture won't be winning any awards for cute lambs because I was never able to get them close together until they were walking away from me. These two are twins, their mother, Blackie sheep is part wool but has a bit of hair sheep in her too. The father is a hair sheep. You can see the lamb with more white inherited more genes for the hair coat, while the other lamb inherited genes for wool, and his coat is much shorter, and the poor guy has a harder time with the colder days.

The other planned picture of Diamond's big lambs next to Girlie's smaller lambs did not happen, the sheep were not cooperative. Diamond is a larger ewe but I think there were also other reasons why her lambs are so massive; she produces the most milk of any of our sheep, and with her lambs being twins it is normal they would be larger than triplets. I think Diamond may have been over due too. The white lamb is the ram lamb and he is bigger than the black ewe lamb.

At any rate I was a bit disappointed with my photography that day, but as the weather has turned worse (today was –12 C with a bitter wind) I will not be going out to take more pictures for a little while.

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Feathered Winter Vistors, Pine Grosbeaks

This winter has been pretty good, temperatures were actually well above normal, there was not much snow (I know, I know, bad for crops), but that all changed two days ago. A cruel cold wind blew in snow and drastically cold temperatures. We went from +5C to -20C in a matter of less than a day.

The wind also seemed to blow in some new guests, birds that we have not really seen here in the past, although they are not uncommon in the area.

We normally have black capped chickadees, waxwings, nuthatches, and blue jays, but over night we had a group of two new arrivals, redpolls (small birds), and some very attractive, robin sized birds.

At first we had only the female birds. I had a hard time identifying them because the bird book I have only pictures a male, and the females had what I would call an orange head, and the bird book said the females have an olive head (to me olive is greenish). So I thought I had a mystery bird at the feeder, eating sunflower seeds so fast I had to fill up the dish several times throughout the day.

It was not until the afternoon that male arrived (no surprise) and I was able to make an accurate identification; Pine Gosbeak, perhaps Alberta's equivalent for winter beauty to the cardinal, a bird that is rare to see here.

From what I read, Pine Grosbeaks are a forest dwelling bird most of the time but enjoy mountain ash trees (which I have always wanted but still have not gotten around to buying). They are slightly larger than finches and the defining feature is the white bars on their wings, which the females do have also.

The location, for anyone who is interested, is central Alberta, about 1 hour SW of Edmonton.

Other than the new birds, there is not much happening, the weather is frightfully cold so everyone is trying to stay warm.  I gave a whole bunch of chopped up apples to the sheep this afternoon, they liked that.  I suspect the birds might like some too, I shall put some out tomorrow.

Pictures are copyright © owned by me.