Wrens are egg-cellent.

Word of the Day:

clarion \KLAIR-ee-uhn\, noun:
1. A kind of trumpet having a clear and shrill note.
2. The sound of this instrument or a sound similar to it.
3. Sounding like the clarion; loud and clear.

It freakin' snowed today.
And while I kept shaking my head in disbelief, I had to admit the flowers looked pretty, dusted with the stuff.

Someone jazzed up the front yard of RAPTOR with tulips...

...and it looks like some grape hyacinth has escaped. All over the place. The girls picked me a whole handful. So I put them in a baggie filled with water and hung them in the barn for all the other RAPTORites to enjoy.

I can't stop taking pictures of Lucy. She just rocks.

And now...drum roll...the first eggs in the yard for 2007:
I was out in the front yard trying to get pictures of the crows who have been hanging out in the trees but refuse to come down to eat what I have to offer. A brown blur caught my eye, and as I turned, I saw one of the Carolina wrens flying away from the nest box by the garage. I walked over and tipped the box a bit to see what was going on in there. And another wren came barreling out and scared the bejesus out of me.
I reached in quickly and felt at least two warm eggs. Damn. I flushed her from incubating!
I went back in the house and waited for her to come back, which she did. The whole time, I was talking to her (myself)..."Come on, get back in there. Please, please, please!"
A bit later, I walked out, stayed far away from her, and took a picture.
And I almost deleted it. On the camera's monitor, I couldn't see anything, but when I zoomed in, I saw this:


A bright, wary eye just peeking up from a throne of eggs.
I'm thrilled that wrens are making themselves at home here, and think this is a good enough place to raise a family. I am sure that they have nested here before, but I've never found the evidence. I have no idea when she started sitting, so I will call this Day +/- 2.

Plans

Word of the Day:
cogitate \KOJ-uh-tayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To think deeply or intently; to ponder; to meditate.
2. To think about; to ponder on; to meditate upon; to plan or plot.

Our yearly bird trip to Magee Marsh in northern Ohio is something I look forward to all year. As soon as we leave to come home, I am ready to plan for the next time. It's probably the biggest birding event in Ohio, International Migratory Bird Day, held on the second Saturday of May every year.
These are pictures from 2005.
The first thing we encountered in the parking lot outside the famed "Magee Marsh Boardwalk" was a raptor rehab presentation, given by a rehab center called Back to the Wild. Hmmm....foreshadowing, maybe?
Mona Rutger, the director of Back to the Wild, was named Hero of the Year from Animal Planet. Whoot!



They had about 15 birds perched in and around a tent (it always seems to rain on International Migratory Bird Day).
Red-tailed hawk (gunshot wound, which resulted in the bird breaking both wings)

Saw-Whet Owl...obvious eye injury.

Great Horned Owl, hit by car... and juvenile golden eagle, blown out of a nest before fledging, if I remember correctly.

Rough-legged hawk? That's the weirdest rough-legged hawk I have ever seen...Looks like a calico cat!...with obvious eye injury.

Bald eagle with one eye.

Look how small Lorelei was!
(She was pointing at the eagle saying, "Wa dat?"

The GHO is almost a twin to ours...except for the pretty white eyebrows.

Lake Erie is so vast that the girls thought they were at the ocean.



One of my all-time favorite pictures...Isabelle picks up my bins to look for birds. And a lifetime of birding (I hope) begins.

Everywhere you look, stands a great blue heron or a great egret. They are FREAKIN' EVERYWHERE.

This is a huge cheese store about 10 miles from the Marsh. 126 kinds of cheese. Now, I love cheese, but for the life of me I can't think of 20 kinds of cheese, much less 126!
We have never been in the store...we just take pictures of it. But this year, we are going in!
This year, it may just be Geoff and me on the trip. Swami and Swamette are thinking about keeping the girls that weekend. I think we could handle that.

And just to RUB IT IN for my fellow bloggers still gripped in the cold grasp of Winter...
It was 78 degrees here today.
NEENER. NEENER.

I don't know if I can even find the words for this picture. Lorelei was playing her pretty pink piano, and Trixie jumped up and listened.

And a bit of a mystery:

This gourd hasn't had any occupants since I put it up last Spring...or so I thought.

I peeked in today and found a nest of leaves, pine needles and sticks of this bamboo-like plant that grows around here. And there were two hollowed out areas that looked like two animals had gotten cozy in. No fur that I could see, or feathers...
Squirrels? Inquiring minds want to know.

To leave you with a warm, fuzzy feeling...
A watercolor painting by Isabelle. It's a sunset.

Macro!

Word of the Day:

coterminous \koh-TUR-muh-nuhs\, adjective:
1. Having the same or coincident boundaries.
2. Having the same scope, range of meaning, duration.


After a morning program in Mason, I headed up to Caesar's Creek State Park, where Melinda
"of red-shouldered hawk-blaster fame" and others were doing a bird banding demonstration. I had never been to a banding, so I was excited when I was asked to come up and bring some birds.
Did I get any pictures of banding?
Nope.
Did I get to talk to Kathi, (who drove about a million miles to get there) for more than one minute?
Nope.
Did I get to help band any of the birds?
Nope.
But it was a fun time anyway.


On a more positive note:
I figured out the super-macro function on my camera!
There are many things starting to pop their little heads up in the yard:


Sycamore bud...they always remind me of deer antlers, just as they are starting to grow out of their heads.

Attack of the Fifty Foot Pinecone!

The only green we have seen in the yard all winter...our pines.

Isabelle and Lorelei were thrilled to find these little flowers poking up out of the grass in the back yard and picked me a huge bouquet of them.
I call these little guys "mini violets". What are they really called?

Magnolia bud...like the tip of a cat's ear...yum!

Give me lichen, or give me death.

There's a fungus among us.

Blackberry baby. May you be fruitful and prosper. I wanna make pies and cobbler.

I hate the walnut trees that Geoff has allowed to grow along the outside of the fence, but the velvet-dipped branches are nice in their own, obnoxious way. God help us when they are mature enough to start dropping walnuts all over the place. Enjoy your nuts, Geoff.

An eye-opening post about the Staff of Life and things that we can live without

Word of the Day:

malapropism \mal-uh-PROP-iz-uhm\, noun:

The usually unintentionally humorous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound; also, an example of such misuse.

(Hey, I do that all the time. Does that make me a "Malapropic"?)

Oh, you are all in for a treat. I made bread today.

This is a picture of it mixing.

And here's the finished product.

I have a bread machine, and though I am quite capable of making a loaf with my own two hands, it is so much easier to just throw all the stuff in the bread machine and let it worry about making the thing. I was low on regular white bread flour, so I put in half white bread flour and half wheat. I have found that a loaf of bread made with nothing but whole wheat flour takes on the consistency and weight of a large brick.

And here's a picture that just pissed me off:

I pulled into Walgreens to pick up a prescription, and saw this big Hummer parked next to me.
Oh, yeah. THIS is necessary, right? Because you never know when you may have to engage in guerrilla warfare while buying a pack of Tums.

Could we all just get a freakin' clue here? If it gets 10 miles to a gallon of gas, maybe, JUST MAYBE, it might not be the appropriate vehicle to buy?

Tomorrow, we will be back with our regular standard programing.
A RAPTORite and the girls and I will be out nest-hunting. Pictures will be taken!

Okay, enough already. Bring on the warmth.

Word of the Day (And boy, does it fit!):
gelid \JEL-id\, adjective:
Extremely cold; icy.

I am getting quite attached to my little orangy house finch. But there is a direct correlation of redness and health and fitness in house finches and other brightly colored birds, so maybe he won't be around for long. Sometimes I wish I were ignorant of certain things, and could just enjoy nature blissfully unaware.

I miss my cats. I spend time with them in the evening, as I sit here and blog, but I miss them curling up with me in bed, and watching them tear through the house on their little kitty errands.

Sigh...at least ice is pretty. I tried all day to capture what I was seeing in the ice, but I failed. Each tiny knob, each icicle was throwing rainbows.
Anywhere I went today, it was like driving inside an ice castle. Or a glass house.

Makes me think of that song..
"Ow, she's a brick....HOUSE..."

Queen Anne's Lace, sleeping under an inch of frozen rain.

I didn't realize how funny this picture was until I uploaded it. I was photographing the tree sparrows at Mom's feeders, and when I saw this picture up close, I realized the song sparrow behind the tree sparrow looks like he is skating...or about to fall.
"WHOOOAAAA!"

I love to watch Nellie run. And I cringe the whole time. She just isn't young anymore, and every day, I am reminded how stiff her back and tail are. I don't ask her to "sit" anymore when I give out treats, because most of the time, she slowly lowers herself onto one of her hips, instead of sitting on her bottom.

The bluebird box had fallen down, and when I picked it up, a big slab of sod was stuck to it. Soon, Mister and Missus will be back, and by God, they will have babies this year!
All of the house sparrows and starlings will fall victim to my trap and RAPTOR's new CO2 chamber.
*evil cackle*

This fancy nest box has reared three successful broods of chickadees. These are last year's survivors.

Everywhere you look...ice.

Even the trunks of all the trees have a skin of ice.

Watching the sunset through the ice was inspiring. The ice pulled in every drop of gold light and I wish I could paint.

Boomer's time is running out. We are going to set a date, and if he hasn't been adopted by that time, he will be going to a local Boston rescue. Damn it.
I have two very big guns firing for me (Julie and Jane) but no one has stepped forward to adopt him. The longer he is here, the more painful it becomes.
In the above picture, he is stalking the cats through the basement door.
BIG sigh.

To end on a good note...
A bit of wisdom from the oh-so-intelligent and wise Susan:


"People in glass houses...

...probably go through a lot of Windex."

Dogs 'R' Us

Word of the Day:

kobold \KOH-bold\, noun:
In German folklore, a haunting spirit, gnome, or goblin.


I invited Kathi (Katdoc) over for a doggie play date with her two dogs and our two dogs.
Boomer was not in the best mood to greet guests, so he spent the afternoon in Geoff's office.

Three large black dogs...I couldn't tell which one Nellie was half the time!

Kathi brought a ball-chucker thingy and Isabelle tried to learn to do it. It's kind of tricky, but Kathi helped.

This is Grace. A beautiful, aged Rottweiler with a sweet personality.

This is Holly. A beautiful aged Lab/what have you with a sweet personality.

We had such a great time. What nice dogs. Kathi is like the Dog Whisperer...calm and assertive, and her dogs are well-mannered and polite. And I thought Nellie was a good dog. Well, she is, but these two are awesome.

"There it goes! I'll get it!"

"I wanna play, too!"

I had to add this one...Holly had just come by to give a kiss, and left drool on my camera lens.


After the Visit:

One seriously tired, aged, Rott/Shep/what have you- dog.

The thousand yard stare....

Boomer didn't really mind being left out of the festivities.
"Hey, little kid...you taste like cookies."

Later on, we took a drive to check on some nests:

The GHO is still sitting. The first day I saw her incubating was January 16, so she has maybe a week to go (33 days average incubation) I can't wait to see those little piles of dryer lint!

This was exciting:
Marc (RAPTOR, Inc....LURKER!) told me about this nest right off Interstate 275. I haven't paid attention to it until recently, and today I saw a red-tailed hawk sitting above one of the nests (there is another one just one tree over from this nest) and another red-tailed was sitting just down the hill from the nest. Birds are starting to pair up! The end of this crappy, weird winter is near.
And in that vein, we are awaiting3-6 inches of snow. That's a big difference they were forecasting yesterday. (12-18 inches)