Contest time, my gentle readers

Okay, you bird nerds. Time to show off. (Or desperately search the Web for the answers). Either way, you will all learn a bit about feathers.

The contest:
Name the basic parts of this feather. (The lines)
Bonus: Name what the "arrow" is indicating.

Now, remember this is a basic diagram. You don't need to go into barbs, barbules, proximal and distal barbules to the next barb, hooklets....okay?
Don't anyone hyperventilate on me.



Hint: This is a wing feather.

The Prize:
A suncatcher for your car's rear-view mirror...complete with Swarovski crystals and a cute little bird charm.

A video and a contest

We were walking out to meet Isabelle at the bus stop...
I glanced up, and in the tree right above us sat a red-shouldered hawk. I whispered for Lorelei to back up slowly. I got my camera out of the car and got a quick video.
(It's a good thing Lorelei got that answer right...how embarrassing would that have been, a child of mine not knowing her hawks?




For the first time, I got a personalized license plate. A shiny new Subaru needs some bling!
Here's the contest...let's see how well some of you know me.
A standard plate has room for seven letters and one space. I used them all.
First person to guess correctly (or the closest guess) what I chose for my plate gets this:





Silver bracelet with heart-shaped toggle clasp, and a cute, lightweight charm. The beads are metallic glass and green/pink stones.

Leave your guess in the comments.
And....begin!