Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/22/2020 – First Birds

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Looking at our birdfeeder camera videos and clipping a picture of the first bird recorded at the birdfeeder for each day of the month (so far). Can you identify each one? The clips from the video are not always clear. It’s easier to make IDs from watching the video – seeing how the bird moves. I put the list underneath the gallery.

  1. Carolina Wren

  2. Chipping sparrow

  3. Dark-eyed junco

  4. Tufted Titmouse (with a chipping sparrow flying in)

  5. Red-bellied woodpecker (male)

  6. Chipping sparrow with mourning doves below

  7. House finch (male and female)

  8. Northern Cardinal (female) and house finch (male)

  9. Carolina wren

  10. Northern Cardinal (female)

  11. Carolina Wren

  12. Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

  13. In the rain – Brown headed Cowbird (female) with Northern Cardinal pair below

  14. Red-bellied Woodpecker (male)

  15. Red-bellied Woodpecker (male) and Brown-headed Cowbird (female) with Northern Cardinal (male) below. The cowbird left first leaving the woodpecker to enjoy breakfast.

  16. Brown-headed Cowbirds (male and female)

  17. Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

  18. House finch (male) and Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

  19. Carolina Wren

  20. Carolina Wren

  21. House Finch (male)

  22. Carolina Wren with peanut

I noticed when I was listening to the first videos for each morning that there is often a phoebe in our yard greeting the day (they are insect eaters so don’t come to our deck).

The cowbirds are around a lot more this year, but they don’t seem to be deterring the other birds at the feeder. The woodpeckers and finches are aggressive enough to drive them away and the cardinals wait until they leave.

Refilling the birdfeeder and bath. I let the feeder be emptied by the birds. The little ones like the chickadees do a thorough job. The bigger birds like the woodpeckers are more interested in peanuts and sunflower seeds…very frustrated when the supply is low. The morning was so cold (in the low 40s) that I put my coat on for the chore.

Perfecting the grocery list. I have settled into a grocery delivery pattern: selecting a morning delivery time slot 3-4 days in advance then building up the list in the interim, marking my calendar for the 2-hour interaction with the shopper/delivery person. Thursday is the big day this week – and I got a morning time slot! There are 36 items on the list.

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Browsing Life Magazine from 1946. The March 25th edition included an article about Bikini Atoll… a topical paradise before the atomic bomb testing started just a short time after the pictures for the article were taken.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 29, 2020

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article. 

Hummingbirds' rainbow colors come from pancake-shaped structures in their feathers -- ScienceDaily – Hopefully they’ll produce some illustrations for these findings; this article and the materials it came from are just text.

New Discoveries in Human Anatomy | The Scientist Magazine® - It’s surprising the things we are just now discovering about our anatomy. Back in the 1970s when I was getting an undergraduate degree in biology, I remember being disappointed that there was so much obviously missing….and then realizing there were also unknown unknowns (thing we didn’t even know we didn’t know)! In the intervening years more has been researched, but we still have lots to explore.

Processed foods highly correlated with obesity epidemic in the US -- ScienceDaily  - I have kept a food log for the past few years and now am paying more attention to reducing the processed and ultra-processed foods that I buy and eat. Most of us probably intuitively know that the store-bought cookies, chips, snacks, etc. are not what we should be eating. And they aren’t even more convenient than foods like carrots or apple or grapes. I’m skewing my purchases at the grocery store to the produce aisle!

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Doves and Pigeons - Wild Bird Revolution and Nectarivorous Birds - Wild Bird Revolution – Two groups of bird photos this week…catching up on the backlog.

Image of the Day: Flock in the Night | The Scientist Magazine® - A huge flock of birds picked up by radar going from Cuba…over the Florida straits…on to mainland Florida.

The chemistry of snow and ice – We haven’t seen much snow and ice in Maryland this winter...but it’s a good time to bring up this topic.

Children to bear the burden of negative health effects from climate change -- ScienceDaily – We need to use these types of articles to motivate us to action rather than indifference/depression.

FS1205: Tree-Dwelling Lichens (Rutgers NJAES) – A short description of lichen. Did you know there are at least 13,000 species of lichen?

The 2020 Community Power Scorecard | CleanTechnica – A map of the US and the scorecard with some details – state by state. There is progress being made in the transition to renewable energy!

New, more appealing varieties of kale in the works - UPI.com – I like kale. I buy it in a bunch to avoid plastic bags or containers…use it in smoothies or stir fries or soups (the whole leaf and stem) and as chips. I rarely use it in salads (particularly during the winter when I tend to want something hot rather cold for meals). Chopping it up in the food processor (like in smoothies or before adding it to soups) makes the toughness of the stem and leaves a non-issue. Still – I would try the new varieties. I wonder how long it will be before some of them show up in my CSA share.

Rainy Day in Texas

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I stood at open sliding glass doors to take some rainy-day pictures last week when I was in Texas. The colors of the wet foliage were bright for such a cloudy day. Even the raw wound from where a big branch had been cut from a tree was colorful.

A squirrel surveyed the yard. I thought the animal might have heard my camera

When it darted off through the treetops.

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A few minutes later – another squirrel was on the ground. The face and paws looked lighter, but it might have just been the light.

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A couple of days later, the sun was out again….and I got a different perspective of the garden, but it was cold enough that I took the pictures from an open sliding glass door again…quickly to not let the heat escape from the house.

Carrollton Garden

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I was working on a blog post last week and noticed a butterfly in the garden. I didn’t get outside fast enough to get a picture of it but is did notice that there were Cosmos still blooming that might provide some food for butterflies.

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There was also some color left from summer: cockscomb (one being held by a dragon ornament in the garden)

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And hydrangea.

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The next morning I photographed another part of the yard. The red yucca seed pods are splitting. I hadn’t noticed how charred their seeds look when I’d photographed them on previous visits.

There is a mound of mums near a rock in the garden – a patch of orange on a cloudy morning.

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