One of my favorites of Lorelei. Why? Because I don't know if she is pointing at the bald eagle 3 feet away, or the snazzily-dressed birder to the left of the eagle!
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One of my favorite photos of Isabelle. Why? Because she's being my "little junior birder" This was at Magee Marsh Bird Trail last year. I can't wait until we go again this year!
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Better late than never

New Year's resolution: (yeah, yeah, I know it's March!)
Bird at least once a week...not counting the feeder-watching.
I don't think that I can feasibly bird with the girls so the birding would have to occur on the weekends. If anyone wants to come over and join me, let me know. I WILL bring someone into birding someday! I need that bird-or-die mentality.
We in Cincinnati don't have the true birding "hot spots" but we do have some great places...the Oxbow, lots of the parks, the Cincinnati Nature Center in Milford, etc. I'm not exactly sick of my yard birds, but there are a finite amount of species I can attract in my rural/suburban yard. Give me wild turkeys like Mom gets...or an indigo bunting like my lucky-dog in-laws got. What I would give for a warbler...any warbler!

Sandhill Crane Web Cam

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/cranecam/cam.html

Even at night, this is awesome. I just went to this site, and all was dark, but you can hear the cranes chatting back and forth in the gloom. I almost have Geoff convinced we can get there by the first week of April.
Hey, I didn't get to go to San Fransisco, but I'd settle for Nebraska.
Listening to those cranes affected me. I have seen sandhills in Magee Marsh, but thinking about the 500,000 cranes that show up along the Platte made my heart do a thing...can't describe it...
Geoff's the writer. Maybe if he commented on this blog occasionally...
Here's an interesting statistic: I have had more comments from strangers than from Geoff.
Sigh.
Anyway...go to this website!

Caterpillars and rototillers

We are hosting 5 painted lady caterpillars in our home, as part of one of Isabelle's Christmas presents...we sent away for these caterpillars and they arrived in a plastic cup with a lid and all the food they need inside. In about a week, these little guys (who have TRIPLED in size in 2 days) will climb to the top of the cup and form their cocoons. Then we will put them in the habitat provided (a big mesh tube) and they will pop out as painted ladies. Pretty cool.

I am positively ITCHING to dig in the dirt this spring. Just when I thought I might get a decent afternoon to try out my new rototiller (thanks, Mom!) the temp dropped about 12 degrees and knocked out that idea. Oh well, as Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."

The National Arbor Day Foundation needs a reality check

We got our yearly appeal from the Arbor Day Foundation to join and we would get 10 trees to plant in our yard. We have done this in the past, but before this year, I hadn't really paid attention to what kind of trees they sent us. (And to tell the truth, we never got around to planting them..oops)
Well, this year, the list of flowering trees they offered were these:
Washington Hawthorn
Flowering Crabapple
White Dogwood
American Redbuds
Golden Raintree
Now, look at the title of my blog. Can you guess what I checked on when I looked up these trees?
That's right...are they native to Ohio?
All of them checked out except for one...the golden raintree. Let me say first that it's a beautiful tree. Now: It's not only NOT native, it's a very aggressive, invasive species. They have seed pods that scatter every fall and saplings will pop up everywhere around the mother tree. So the Arbor Day foundation is giving away a bad, bad tree. If you get this notice in the mail, by all means join and accept the native trees, but it wouldn't hurt to do what I am going to do: call them to the carpet on sending out trees from Asia that could shade out and overpower our native flora.

And Susan's command for today. Go outside your house today and smell the air. Can you feel spring coming? Hooray!!!!!!!

Nellie, will ya quit changin' the channel?!