Project FeederWatch begins!

For the second year, I am involved with Project FeederWatch, run by Cornell University Department of Ornithology. Here's what you do:
1. Sign up for Project FeederWatch in the spring or summer. (The program runs from November to March)
2. Count the birds at your feeders for 2 consecutive days a week, between15 minutes to 8 hours a day.
3. Report your findings to Cornell, either by paper forms or online data entry.
The university then takes the data from the counters and uses it to track trends, abundance or absence of all the different types of birds that visit feeders. They have been doing this for many years, and it has really helped them in seeing a broader picture of where the birds are (or aren't).
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/index.html
This is the link to the FeederWatch home page.

Quote of the day

Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children. - Kenyan Proverb

Out cold
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Up to our ears in leaves
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Some neat news about Heather

Heather, my niece, has been offered a Dean's Scholarship to Mount St. Joe's! She is still waiting to hear from UC. She has worked so hard with her grades..she deserves this. I am so proud of her, I could explode into a million shiny little pieces!

Book list for today

Here's some books I have read recently (or not so recently) that I highly recommend to anyone:
Spook by Mary Roach: How science is trying to investigate the afterlife.
Stiff by Mary Roach: The curious "life" of cadavers...very interesting, never irreverent.
Suburban Safari by Hannah Holmes: The author spends a year in her yard, meeting all of the critters she shares the land with...(I have read this countless times and it's still hilarious).
Attracting Butterflies, Birds and other Wildlife by David Mizejewski, the guy from Backyard Habitat on Animal Planet: Isabelle found this for me at the library because it has a picture of a bluebird on the cover, and this is the book that started me on the wildlife habitat path.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson: He usually does travel stories (which are shoot-milk-out-of-your-nose funny) but this is a book about how the universe,
planet, animals and humans got here. In fact, I recommend ANYTHING by Bill Bryson.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I just read all these again, and now that I am an adult, knowing that these stories are Christian allegories, I got alot more out of them. (And I wanted to brush up for the upcoming movie.)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling. What can I say about Harry Potter that hasn't already been said?

My big rant for today (composing a post about compost)

While I was driving back from dropping off the girls at school, (and putting more money in Starbucks coffers) I saw something that just made me crazy. You know those brown bags you can buy at Lowe's and Home Depot, etc, to put yard waste in? This house I passed had 8 of these bags waiting at the curb for the garbage truck. Let me say this now: Kitchen and yard waste account for 30 % of landfills! Do what I did...start a compost pile. You don't need to buy a bin or any special tools. Just start with a pile of leaves and green grass from your yard, wet it down, (to the wetness of a wrung-out sponge) and leave it alone. Here's a link to a good composting site.
www.compostguide.com
Take a look at your yard. Is there a forgotten, or hard-to-see corner? Put your compost pile there. I started composting maybe a month ago, and thanks to the warm weather we have been having, I already have some compost. It improves your lawn soil (and we all need that, since housing developers usually scrap off the good topsoil and leave you with crappy subsoil), it reduces landfills (let's get serious, people. Where is all the trash going to go when we run out of room?) and it does what nature intended yard waste to do...feed the trees and shrubs and flowers. You will also save money on fertilizers...by putting nourishment back into the soil, for FREE. As you can see, this is an issue near and dear to me. Think about what you are doing to the planet, one yard at a time. BTW, I just got my sign from the National Wildlife Federation certifying our property as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. Check out the link to the left for more info on certifying YOUR yard!