Gone Fishin'

While in Florida my son hooked this stingray from the dock. We put him back after the picture was taken. We always practice "Catch and Release". :0)



We caught alot of these baby barracuda's in the keys


hand-feeding the tarpon's in Islamorda

Baby Cockatiels

Not sure how many of you know , but we have 2 cockatiels hear in Vintage Husband land.

Poppy our male. Pictured below. He came to us through our neighbor across the street.

The neighbor works construction, and Poppy flew onto his shoulder at a job site. After bringing him home, it was decided that Poppy was too much for his family to take care of along with their two children.

Next up is our female, Bird-Bird. We purchased her from the Bird Store.

Bird-Bird has been with us now for close to two years. She is also close to 2 years old. We are not sure how old Poppy is, but we believe he is slightly older that Bird-Bird.

Last year Bird-Bird and our male at that time Bob, had 7 eggs. None of those eggs turned out to be fertile. Bob passed away shortly after that. Fast forward to this year. Bird-Bird and Poppy have 4 eggs which as of Saturday all hatched.

Looks like we have one baby that will be a Pied Cockatiel like mom and 3 that will be gray like dad. The Pied (Yellow) baby is the first one to hatch and is therefore the biggest.



It is surprising how much care the male gives to the babies. It is definitely a 50/50 relationship. Sometimes it even seems like Poppy spends more time with the babies than Bird-Bird. It has really been quite an educational experience for all of us.

Stay tuned to my blog, I will try an update this as things progress.

TVH

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5-5-09 update - we started hand feeding the babies today. Man do they grow fast.




Proud daddy Poppy looks on.....


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5/14/09
Things are going great. The babies just keep getting bigger. We have started to hand feed them, but Poppy and Bird-bird still feed them as well.



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5/20/09



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5/24/09
Man the babies are getting so big so fast. Almost the size of the parents, the oldest 2 fledged today. As we tried to hand feed them, the oldest jumped up and flew around the kitchen and landed on top of the cabinets. Not long after that, the 2nd oldest also flew around the kitchen as well.

The first born

2nd oldest

All the babies on the perch inside the cage

Petaluma Antique Faire and the North California Coast

Today, the family and I headed out of Sacramento and to the quaint little town of Petaluma for their bi-annual Antique Faire. Located one hour away from Sacramento and 30 minutes north of San Francisco, we planned to make a day of it. Off to a late start, we rolled into town at 9:00am. After finding a spot to park on a side street, we joined the other shoppers in beautiful historic downtown Petaluma. With close to 200 hundred vendors, there was plenty to see and buy.




Several street musicians were performing, including Petaluma Pete and his upright piano.









After a little shopping and a picnic lunch, we continued on to the ocean. We drove through the small town of Tomales, located on Hwy 1. After passing through Tomales, we headed over to

the families favorite Northern California beach destination, Dillons Beach.

In the picture below, you can just make out the trailers of Lawson's Landing situated on Tomales Bay.




My kids love the ocean. Let me repeat that, they LOVE the ocean. Jake especially. He never wants to leave. Today was kind of cool, with a constant breeze rolling in off the water.

But as you can see, it didn't stop the kids from getting knee deep in the ocean and rolling around on the sand dunes.


Never one to miss an opportunity to do some birding, I was able to catch a couple photos. Seen below is an Osprey that was gliding along the edge of the dunes before heading out over the water in search of a meal.
There were several Marbled Godwit's searching the sand for a snack.


After chasing Jake down, he decided to walk all the way down the beach looking for some tide pools, we started heading back toward home.
Along the way we stopped at a yard sale and several antique stores in Petaluma. In no real hurry to get home, we took a detour through Sonoma and Napa, but didn't stop. We just drove through and enjoyed the view of all those vineyard's and grape vines that line the road as you wind your way along Hwy 121. Sorry no pics, I was too busy enjoying the scenery.


TVH