Bird Class

I signed up for ornithology class again and the first meeting was Monday.  This is my third year taking this same class.  The first meeting was like a reunion because at least ten of the students have taken the class before.  One woman has taken it six or seven times.  The lessons don't change much.  The field trips are the same.  And it's not that we are slow learners. We're just a group of people who enjoy being outside and discussing nature while looking for birds.  And different birds show up each year.  We have two teachers and they are both top notch educators. I was just looking over our handout.  Hidden in all the words are some great tidbits.  Tidbit #1 Birds are great to improve minds, senses and bodies.  Tidbit #2 70% of bird species in the world are declining.  Tidbit #3 Birds are great indicator of worldwide environments.  Tidbit #4 Birds are good to enhance travel and add quality to our backyards.  I agree with all those tidbits.  So I will be busy Monday nights and early on Saturday mornings and I might even complain about not being able to sleep in on Saturday but I'll be improving my mind, my body, and my senses.



Welcome Back Helmet Hair

I didn't plan on a motorcycle ride today.  A change in plans resulted in me getting home earlier than usual.  I put something delicious into the oven and thought, "How am I going to take my mind off being hungry for 45 minutes?"  Bingo!  A motorcycle ride will take your mind off anything.  I usually wait for the streets to be swept so I don't have to worry about slipping on the sand.  This year I couldn't wait.  I put on jeans and boots and my jacket and helmet.  I put the key into the switch.  I had to pull out the choke to get the six month old gas to ignite.  Adrenalin surged as the motor sputtered to life.  My motorcycle doesn't rumble the pipes like some bikes.  Mine sounds more like a giant mosquito.  I thought I would just drive around the neighborhood a few times.  I did go through the neighborhood and then thought I'd cross the highway and try another neighborhood before I came back to the garage.  I got onto 167th and thought I'd try that curvy, hilly road near Mork Well Digging.  That road took me to Cleary Road and from there I went south on Hwy. 47. I love the part of the road that crosses over Trott Creek.  I handled the curve down to the brook just fine but the best part is the "S" curve going back up the hill.  I knew I had to head home because I had something cooking in the oven.  The most difficult part of the ride was my driveway.  I'm just not used to handling the motorcycle in a couple inches of squishy mud.  Don't want to go too fast but don't want to stop either because I'd have to put my feet down in that mud. I managed just fine.  The odometer read 2650 at the beginning of the 2011 season. My first ride was amazing.  My legs are cold but it was still an amazing ride.

A Sure Sign of Spring!

Coming out of work on Monday, I heard a chorus frog singing his song of reptile love.  Snow is still piled on the ground yet this frog is singing.  He sounds like a person slowly rubbing their finger on the teeth of a comb. 

Syrup

I boiled maple sap on Saturday.  I had about 7 gallons collected from my two red maple trees.  I had taps in a couple box elder trees but I never got any sap from those trees.  So this was purely red maple sap.  My two largest kettles weren't big enough to hold all the sap so I added more as the quantity boiled down.  Saturday was a nice day so I opened my kitchen window and my deck door to air the sweet humidity out of the room.  I set a fan to blow right at the stove to move the humid air around.  I wonder if some sugar didn't get into the air.  The ceiling might be sticky.  I don't know.  My kitchen has a vaulted ceiling so I can't reach it anyway.  I started boiling the sap at 9:30 a.m. and finished about 7 p.m.  I probably could have stopped about 6:30 and had a little more syrup.  It's hard to know exactly when to quit.  I don't like the really thick syrup.  I know they say it's done when the thermometer reads 219 degrees F. but after dropping my candy thermometer into the boiling sap twice, I gave up on that and just called it done.  I tasted it.  It tastes really good.  This was a fun project.  I will definitely do it again. 

Project Feederwatch Update

Junco-3, Black capped Chickadee-5, White Breasted Nuthatch-3, Downy Woodpecker-2, Red Bellied Woodpecker-1, Pileated Woodpecker-1, Blue Jay-2, Cardinal - 2, Crow - 2, Robin-1
I'm going to miss those chubby junco's when they leave for the artic circle.

Plasma

Earlier this week I donated plasma.  This was a first for me.  I've donated whole blood many times but never plasma. I knew blood was removed and I knew some parts of the blood were returned to me but I didn't know how.  Turns out they use only one needle.  The blood they take goes into a machine that spins the plasma out.  The red and white blood cells are returned after each cycle.  Giving  plasma takes 7 or 8 cycles.  When you give blood you squeeze your hand.  When they return blood to you, you stop squeezing.  As they return the blood to you, they add an anti-coagulant.  After the second cycle, I had a strong taste appear suddenly in my mouth. I tasted soap.  Yuck.  The attendant gave me a caramel viactive chew and that got rid of the soapy taste.  When I was finished, I had produced a large bag of yellowish fluid; AB+ fluid.  Then they gave me a dose of saline to replenish my fluids.  I felt like a patient instead of a volunteer.  I think I prefer to give whole blood.  I don't like to feel like a patient, I don't like to be given drugs and saline, and I didn't like that the process took an extra 45 minutes.

Ornithologist Alert

Long thought to be either extinct or quite possibly imaginary, it was first described by Sir Reginald Smith-Smythe-Smith, O.B.E. in 1893 in a seedy bar in Quito, Ecuador, as he regaled indifferent listeners with tales of his travels around the Horn, etc. Apparently the bar was so filled with hookah smoke that nearly everyone passed out in the course of the evening, and doubt was cast upon the bird’s existence.

Decades later, however, a team of scientists with high-powered binoculars claimed to have spotted the peculiar variant high on a rocky ledge on Wolf Island. Unfortunately dissension arose amongst the team, all of them academic glory hounds and keen birders, and much was made of a tiny fleck of purple paint found on the lens of the binoculars.






This new photo has touched off a firestorm of controversy, naturally, and the Royal Booby Society, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has offered a prize (to be known as “The Booby Prize”) of $10,000,000 (which they do not presently have) to the first sportsman who delivers a properly stuffed and mounted specimen of this magnificent bird.
 

*This was posted on Facebook by the Galapagos Conservancy.  I totally fell for it. I am so gullible. How can I be so gullible when I know I am gullible?  You'd think sef-awareness about a defect would help.  But no, I went for it hook, line, and sinker.  I had a tinge of doubt when I read about the seedy bar and the fleck of purple paint.  I guess I read what I hope to read; not always what is actually printed.  And I was dumbfounded when they asked for a stuffed specimen because why would they kill a rare bird such as the purple booby? In my defense, the sky blue feet of the boobies I saw there are unreal and unnatural in color.  And I knew they had red footed boobies.  That made purple footed boobies less of a stretch for me I guess.

 

I love April Fool's Day.