ING Direct and the cost of gas

This one is too good to be true, but it definitely is legit! You all know ING Direct from the commercials with the guy with the accent who tells you to save your money and not to use other banks. Well right now, they have a referral program to people opening new accounts. If you are referred by another account holder and you open an account with them, when you deposit $100 before the end of August you each will get $50 deposited into your new account! I did it last Friday, filled out the form, sent off the cheque, today is Tuesday and they already cleared my cheque and put the $50 into my account. If you are interested, this is the link. It explains all of their different accounts and if you want to open an account and you need a referral, my Orange Key is 39626323S1 which you can enter near the bottom of the form. I originally was just going to open this as a savings account for emergencies but I compared the interest rate of my bank's TFSA to ING's and will be moving my TFSA over to them as well as they pay higher interest. It's not a huge amount but better in my account than theirs!

Also, for those of you who drive, there are a number of sites that tell you if the price at the pumps is going up or down the following day. I usually get updates on twitter via 680 news but they don't always post about gas prices. This site seems to be the most reliable and it's not just for the Toronto area, in fact, not even just for Canada. I like knowing whether I should fill up or top up the day before.

Hope everyone is surviving the never ending heatwave!

Cheap...not cheep, cheep!

This one isn't about birds!

I haven't done a lot of shopping lately but this week got a few great deals:

Ocean Spray Cranberry juice - no coupons but $1.50 for 1.89 litre containers is a great price so I got 7 at No Frills, usually they are usually between $3 and $4.

Egg creations - I like these because I eat a lot of eggs and these are just egg whites, usually around $3 but they were $1.50 each and I had $1 off so it came to .50 for one container. I am going back for more. 1 carton is the equivalent of 9 eggs and I use them for omelettes or quiche.

Cheese Strings - $2 a pack, usually almost $4, I had coupons for .75 off so they were $1.25 a pack and had $6 in coupons inside. Among the coupons were $.75 off cheese slices and I just noticed they have small packs of them on sale for $1 so I'll go and get some of those this week!

Oasis juice - Orange juice and some other varieties for $2, I have a ton of $1.25 off so I bought 4 for .75 each. They have excellent juices so I'll likely get more. I've been on a smoothie binge lately so they are great with frozen fruit and protein powder.

Catelli pasta - 3 boxes at $1.47 each minus 2 coupons at $1 each and one at .75. That's tonight's dinner!

Who, woo, hoo doesn't like owls?

Okay, these owls don't hoot, they screech (occasionally), they whinny, they meow, they tremolo and they're always adorable!

Papa Screech:

Mama Screech:

Baby Screech:

Early morning at the Bluffs

Molly woke me up at 6 this morning and I decided to put the time to good use by going out. You can double click on all the pictures to make them bigger. I went to Rosetta McClain Gardens first:

I saw a mama raccoon climbing into the cavity of a tree, and when I went closer..

Hello sweet little face! I think there were 3 babies in there and they were quite happy to have mama return. After that, some baby starlings were screaming at their parent for food:

And more baby starlings!

Beautiful paths. Last picture before Bluffers:

A very loud red-winged blackbird at Bluffers Park:

I love willows:

Robin:

Mallard ducks and ducklings!

Looks peaceful, right? All of a sudden, something swimming below the surface made a beeline for the duck family. I'm pretty sure it was a mink but I never saw it because mama duck freaked:

Safe!

Regrouping...

We're baaaack!

And we're beautiful!

A baby Killdeer is getting bigger!

Run!

This last picture is from the east parking lot. Swallows nest in the bluffs. You can see them flying around and some of them are in the nest holes:

Bluffers Park with Ann

Ann and I met up at Bluffers Park just after 4 pm. I won the race down the hill and she showed her maturity by sticking her tongue out at me after we parked. It's on!

We went along the west side and saw...nothing. No turtles, no beaver, no night herons. We got pretty excited when we saw a robin so it wasn't looking good, even though the robin was adorable.

We kept going because I wanted to show her the Canada goose on the nest, and as I approached it I was horrified because there was some green thing on her neck. I thought it was garbage of some sort but it was a band:

That really bugs me because it's so big but they do this for a reason, it just seems way too invasive to me. We walked over to the boat launch and go figure, a second Canada goose with a green band was swimming around:

What we really wanted to see was the long-tailed ducks, and they didn't disappoint:

Buffleheads wouldn't come too close:

Beautiful Mallards:

Beautiful swan:

Complaining gull:

Canada Goose:

Sharp-shinned hawk on the east side of the park:

Around the Scarborough Bluffs

I had a pretty quiet work day today so between dog walks I went down to Bluffers Park. I'd run into my friends Pat and Nancy earlier and they told me there were Night Herons on the west side along the bluffs. Here is what I saw in a few different parts of the Bluffs today, click on each shot to make it bigger if you wish:

A Brown Thrasher. I didn't get a clear shot because he went into the branches and was gone really quick.

A male Downy Woodpecker:

Male red morph Eastern Screech owl who gets cuter every time I see him!

A male Gadwall (thanks Lev!)

Two Night Herons in flight!

Double-Crested Cormorant:

Turtles, turtles rah rah rah, turtles, turtles ha ha ha!

The Night Herons landed on some fences but I couldn't get too close. Their eyes are orange/brown:

The three of them flew into a tree:

A female Canada Goose on eggs. I saw a solitaire Canada Goose swimming nearby and figure it was the male. Needless to say I didn't stick around.

How smart are they? The Bluffs are so steep where they were climbing and it took them a while to get to the top.

A couple more of the Herons before they flew off: