A Second Look--May 8, 2013

This had been the week of the azalea as most of them in the yard are close to full bloom. There are also daffodils still blooming, and the lily of the valley started to flower yesterday. I checked the bluebird box, and the mama is sitting on five eggs. The nest in the other box doesn't have any eggs yet, but the nest is changing. A few twigs have been added. I'm not sure what is making the nest, but it is not a bluebird because multiple nest materials are being used. A bluebird will use many different kinds of nesting materials, but only one kind at a time. The nest in the new box is made from moss, grass, and the twigs that were added recently. The bluebird nest in the other box is made only from pine needles.

 Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

We are having fewer birds at our feeder, but this blue jay has been visiting.

The farmer rotates the cattle among his fields during the spring and summer. There were none in the field behind me this week.

I think this is the 8th variety of daffodil to bloom.

 

We call this tree our woodpecker tree because it has holes all over it from woodpeckers. The hole in the picture has been freshly cleaned out. However, it's too high up to see if there are any eggs in it.

The bird's nest spruce is getting new growth on it.

 

You can see the different materials making up this nest, so it was probably not made by a bluebird.

Lily of the valley started to bloom yesterday.

 

It was raining the day I took the picture of this azalea. You may have noticed raindrops on some of the other pictures, too.

Munching day lilies.

Home, sweet home.

Enough Already--TV motion

Is it just me, or is anyone else bothered by all of the extra motion on the TV screen these days? Sometimes it's a little and sometimes it's a lot, but it all drives me crazy. The least amount of distraction usually occurs on dramas or comedies. On them there is the motion of the show, a logo for the station, and pop up ads advertising another show. Some of those ads show action, so you have a show within a show even without having a TV with that feature. On talk shows, in addition to what you see on the dramas, there is often a screen behind the talking heads with an abstract pattern that moves in a repetitive motion.

However, the worst are the news shows. First you have the anchors—sometimes two or three of them with split screens and the annoying time delay that happens as they try to talk to each other. Also there is a crawler along the bottom with headlines and sometimes another one with stock prices. In addition there is usually a logo in the corner that slowly spins around with a date and a time under that that also spins. And to top it all off, sometimes there are those abstract patterns behind the anchors heads with repetitive motion.

Aggghhh! Enough already. Our brains are not made to process that much differing information at one time. At least mine isn't. And as hard as I try, I can't tune most of it out. What's the solution? Well, the obvious one would be for me to stop watching TV, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. As much as I complain about it (don't get me started on the number of commercials), TV is still a comfort to me. I remember a time when my family bonded over watching a TV show together and TV can still evoke those good feelings in me. In the meantime, I guess I can keep complaining. : )

Do any of you TV watchers, get annoyed by all of the motion on the screen these days?

Brighton Dam Azalea Garden

Ward and I spent a pleasant afternoon visiting the Brighton Dam Azalea Garden yesterday. We discovered the dam and gardens last fall and hoped that we would remember them this spring when the azaleas were in bloom. So as I was thinking that we needed to do some weeding around our azaleas, I remembered the garden.  We hopped into the car and off we went.

The garden has over five acres of azaleas and trees that have nice walking trails and benches among them. About 2/3 of the bushes were in bloom giving a beautiful show. If we can work it into our schedule, I'd like to go back next week when the garden should be at its peak.

As for the weeds around our azaleas? I kind of like the natural look I saw at the gardens yesterday. Maybe I'll leave the weeds alone and see if I can get the same "natural" effect here.  : )

Brighton Dam Azalea Garden

Thankful Sunday--May 5, 2013

I am thankful for the sweet smell of cherry laurel.

A Visit with a Naturalist--Part Two

For most of the winter during my Second Looks, I found bones in the "wild" part of our yard. I became quite fascinated with them and wondered what they were and how they ended up where they were. Ward and I visited with a naturalist and found answers to some of our questions. I reported about the mammal part of that discussion in A Visit with a Naturalist--Part One.

I've been meaning to do the followup post of our visit for a couple of months now, and it looks like today is the day. This time I will focus on birds. More specifically, on parts of a crow that were found over several weeks. However, the problem with waiting for a couple of months after our visit, is that I forgot almost everything the naturalist told us. I do remember the bones were pretty easy to identify as coming from a bird because they were so lightweight. Also, the feathers found near some of the bones suggested that we had found parts of a crow. After that, it's all fuzzy in my head.

So today, I got out the bird bones we had collected and tried to figure them out. After a lot of Googling and help from Ward, I thought I had deduced what were the different parts of the crow. However, after more study, I realized that I had the front and back of the bird mixed up. Back to the drawing board. After more work, I think I have a pretty good idea of what we have. (And we only had two parts leftover.) Below you will see "our crow".

This drawing from the Enchanted Learning Company is what we ultimately used to identify the skeletal parts.

Here are the bones in their approximate positions.

Here is one of the wing feathers. The naturalist said that you could tell that by its shape. One side is much wider that the other making it look like an airplane wing. I found that really interesting.

Here are our leftover parts. They were a little darker than the others, so we thought that maybe they came from another bird/critter.

But Wait, There's More:

I think this is the crow's skull. However, at that time I wasn't collecting bones. I couldn't find it when I looked for it later.