Look at that! I've opened my very own 'Wild Bird Saloon' here and to say that its 'wild'ly popular is an understatement!
Those tiny little feather-balls are Bush Tits and they come by once or twice a day with the whole family, sometimes there are as many as 10 of these little guys hanging from that feeder! Which looks something like this (sorry, a little blurry):

 

I have a couple of different feeders out and among those the suet feeder certainly is very popular.
That's a Song Sparrow in the pictures above and the one below is a Downy Woodpecker ..

The most popular feeder though is hands-down the tube feeder, which I filled with black sunflower seeds.
That cute little guy on the left below is a Nuthatch and the one on it's right a Chickadee:

     

Next up .. a Black-eyed Junco ..

He's one of the few that actually also goes for my least popular feeder, the 'hopper', which is filled with a variety of seeds. The Spotted Towhee likes that one too ..

                                                      

The hummingbird feeder got a place on the wire too! I normally have it hanging on the awning on the other side of the RV where we're sitting outside in the summer, but since we're inside right now I couldn't see them anymore. Voila, problem solved!
These Anna Hummingbirds are the only hummers that overwinter here in Oregon and they're so much fun to watch ..

When the sun hits them just right that pinkish spot under his shin will shimmer like a jewel, just like the green on his back .. so beautiful!

    

Of course we do have squirrels in these woods around us, and of course they've already been here to check things out:

                    

So far they have not been able to walk the wire or attempted to jump on the feeders.
They are very agile and resourceful, so it probably is only a matter of time ..

        

I do like to watch them though, and I think I'm going to get them a feeder of themselves to fill with peanuts. These are Fox Squirrels by the way, the largest of the tree squirrels here in Oregon ..

 

Besides all these birds we also have a young Whitetail buck that comes visiting us ever so often lately.
He munches a little on the (still) green grass of the orchard but mainly seems to come around to sharpen his antlers on the willow upshot along the ditch ..

                                                                      

It's hard to take a picture of him doing this but here you can see him rubbing his head against the branches .. he'll be doing that for 10 to 15 minutes!
This buck is a yearling and should be about 1,5 years old right now, but the fact that he only has these little 'spikes' for antlers may suggest that he is only a year or so old.

Spike bucks are typically viewed as genetically inferior, but instead of genetics the reason for them is usually that the deer herd is above carrying capacity and the animals are not getting the proper nutrition, or that he was born late in the season when the food is losing it's quality.
Often these are the ones that are getting culled first to promote better antler development of the herd, but in fact most of them will develop normal antlers eventually when they receive better food.

On another note, look what we got done this Wednesday .. yeah, our boosters went in!

                                       

I was lucky enough to snatch up two early appointments 2 weeks ago, when only out of curiosity I looked on the Internet to see if they were available yet.
It turned out they were literary just approved, and the website only just loaded.
Appointments at the moment aren't available until late January! Like my sister mentioned, sometimes you're just lucky!
(Funny side note, we actually had an appointment for a week earlier but they refused to give them to us since our previous shots were not quite 6 months ago .. we were 2 days early! Ridiculous!)

There's not much else to write about this week other than that we visited the Woodburn Outlet Mall after attending the memorial service for Brenda's mom who had passed away the week before.

I wanted to do some shopping around for various items but I forgot (we'd been their before) that it's a clothing-only kind of mall. On top of that it wasn't even decorated very much whereas I had hoped to see some festive over-the-top Christmas-lights extravaganza.
Oh well ..

About those lights .. yes, 'tis the season!

I've started decorating, always so much fun! So far the outside lights are up, the wreath is hung and inside the garlands are in place.

I've saved the inside tree for this coming weekend.

'Tis the season for some stick-to-your-rib food too of course, so last but not least, I made a wonderful chicken soup and a hearty Brussel-sprout mash with a slice of meatloaf.

Yeah, we Hess's know how to have a good time .. with food!