Friendship prayer

Friendship prayer

Originally uploaded by susangetsnative.

My last post here for awhile

 

 I had started this post last night, and didn’t want to scrap all the work it took.

 

Another try at fussing with photos.  Yesterday, while entering a park in Camp Dennison (Thanks, Katdoc, for showing me where the “legal” birding area was) I noticed a strange sound when I walked.

*Crunch…flippety-flippety…Crunch…flippety-flippety*

I looked down and the sole of my boot was slowly vacating the premises.  Good thing I had another pair of shoes in the car.

After all the healing this tree has been doing, why would someone carve the words “HOW DO I LIVE” into its tender inner skin?  I guess the dork was trying to be deep or something, but I think a person who does this needs a class in silvaculture.

I uploaded Firefox, because I heard in one of the forums that  it might work.

Back to Blogger…damn it.

Hello world!

I activated a new blog, and since WordPress promises that I can import my Blogger posts, I thought I would give it a whirl.

Taking the long way

I’d like to think that my sense of direction is quite good.

I wanted to go back to the dam and estuary I visited a few days ago ( I hear there are peregrine falcons at the dam, and even though I work with Lucy all the time, I can’t count her). A morning bird excursion with Katdoc got rained out, so I thought I would roll the dice and see if the afternoon would be drier. I thought of a new way to head down to the estuary…Rt. 222.

I saw that Rt. 222 ends right at the estuary, and I knew where it started, up at Rt. 50. So I thought, “Hey. I’ll go down 222 and maybe it will be shorter.”

*Insert maniacal laughter from Kathi, who sees just where this is going*

Well, as it turns out, 222 goes right where I thought it did, but it took twice as long. And it’s not a short trip to start with, anyway.

Rt. 222 meanders through farmland, up and down hills…I was laughing out loud about it eventually.

I did get the opportunity to see some interesting road names.

“Bethel Hygiene” was a good one…but the one that made me almost run off the road:

“LAYCOCK CUT OFF”. I kid you not.

I didn’t get any life birds today, but it was a nice trip.

American kestrel: 2

American crow: 15

Turkey/black vulture: a lot

Pigeon: 50?

Pied-billed grebe: 6

Ring-billed gull: 20

Eastern bluebird: 4

A rest area near Point Pleasant has some info about Ulysses S. Grant, who was born across the street. And a list of all the presidents born in Ohio. I found my first “wild” pellet…presumably an owl’s. I couldn’t really tell what the animal had been, but it had dark fur. It was a BIG pellet.
And when I turned it over with my shoe, I found a pretty orange spider.
I watched and watched the pigeons on the dam, waiting for a peregrine to come rocketing out of the sky and pick one off.
You are here.

Two things meme

From Laura at Somewhere In NJ:

(I didn’t know what to blog about tonight,

and this meme saved me from blathering…thanks, Laura)

two names you go by: Susan and Mommy
two parts of your heritage: German and Irish
two things that scare you: Tall bridges over water and bears
two everyday essentials: Frappuchino from Starbucks and a shower
two things you are wearing right now: Life is Good T-shirt and leopard print jammie bottoms
two of your favorite current bands/artists: Blue Oyster Cult and KISS
two things you want in a relationship (other than love): Balance and joy
two favorite hobbies: Birding (dur) and reading
two things you have to do this week: Make a doctor’s appointment and remove residue from Christmas
two stores you shop at: Target and Truly Blest (a second-hand children’s clothing store)
two favorite sports: Birding and birding (that’s a sport, right?)
two shows you like to watch: Degrassi the Next Generation and ER
two things you’d buy if money were no object: A hybrid car and lots of land
two wishes for 2007: Improved mental health and happy kids

A day I needed to happen

I had a wonderful day. Thank goodness for the Cincinnati Nature Center.

1025 acres of re-established forest, lake, wetland, prairie and streams…and I had it mostly to myself today. I wasn’t out to go for extreme exercise, but I got it anyway. I went up a trail I have never gone on before, because the girls would have staged mutiny. I hiked for two hours, up and down valleys, across streams that smelled like they should (clean and bright), marveled at the silence, interrupted only by a dry leaf rasping against a trunk or the irritated call of a red-bellied woodpecker or white-breasted nuthatch. And lots of Carolina chickadees…and titmice…and robins…and golden-crowned kinglets.

At the Learning Log (a fallen tree at the Visitor’s Center, allowed to decompose and invites children to discover all the life that can exist on an old log) a red-bellied woodpecker showed off his pretty red head.

Pam over at Nature Woman gave me the word for these little sprouts that I have seen before but didn’t know their name. Seta.

A natural stairway, made of mossy stones.I officially love fungus. And need a field ID guide. Blue fungus. BLUE.
A seashell, or a rack line on the beach, or stacks of clouds at sunset. What a beautiful surprise.
I got a life bird 10 minutes into my walk. That makes for a nice time, doesn’t it?

A brown creeper.

I never thought I would actually see one. Reading my Birds of Ohio guide, I assumed that they would be so camouflaged it was pointless to even hope. Guess again, Susan. They look like mice, scuttling up the trunk of a tree, then when they reach the top, they flutter down like a leaf to the base of the next tree.

I finally got lucky photographing a golden-crowned kinglet. These little pips are about as small as our largest hummingbird. And fussy and flitty. But there were a large number around me suddenly, so it was easy to get a good shot.

What a relief to find a stream unspoiled by human trash and slime. It even smelled good, like moss and wet stone and winter.

I was so inspired after my walk, after the girls got home from school, we made chocolate chip cookies. Well, one BIG cookie. I couldn’t find my square pans, so we plopped it into a 9 ” round cake pan. Gooey and delicious.

HAPPY DE-LURKING WEEK!

I didn’t know it, but this is National Delurking Week (found out through John’s blog, who found through another blog, blah blah blah.).

Lurkers are folks who read a blog regularly, but never leave a comment. I’m sure I have some lurkers…on my SiteMeter, there are folks who come around daily but aren’t making their presence known.

So, if you read my blog alot but don’t speak up, now is the time to start. I like comments. I like the people who visit my blog , as long as they mind their manners and act like they have some sense.

Time to come out of the closet!

Antsy boredom

Very little happened today.

So I am sitting here trying to blog about nothing.

I did get a few nice pictures today:

A male and female house finch, with just the head of a goldfinch below.

Call me immature, but a song came into my head watching them…

“boy bird and girl bird, sittin’ in a tree,

K-I-S-S-I-N-G”

A good shot, if I do say so myself.

A starling partaking of some “Bluebird Nuggets”

A troubling image: We have elderly neighbors to the north, and an ambulance and EMT vehicle showed up and took Leo off. A few minutes later, a car came and picked up Annette, his wife and off they went too. Oh, dear.

Is it me, or are the white-throated sparrows brighter this year?

The cat with many names:

Lorelei calls her Miss Kitty, Isabelle calls her Sprite, I like the name Praline…Whatever her name turns out to be, this is one neat cat. She is calm but playful, her coat nearly takes care of itself, she uses a litter box without problems, she is vocal without being annoying, and she fetches like a dog. I have a spare lead and jess set-up from my days of bird-handling training, and I started teasing her with it. I got bored with the game and tossed it across the floor. Next thing I know, she is bringing it back and placing it at my feet. Over, and over, and over again.

Cute little fur ball.

More pics from today

A flock of Canda geese flying down the Ohio.
The Ohio River always makes me feel small. The West can keep the Colorado and the south cacan have the Mississippi. I love the Ohio for its part in my history. Dad spent most of his summers jetskiing and boating on this river, and I learned to ski on it.
More fungus…A shelf.
If you look close at the underside on the right, you can see someone’s fingerprints (not mine) like someone just had to grab it and see what it felt like.
Here’s my sapsucker picture. Cute little guy. I knew I had something different from a downy because of the red chin and “dirty” appearance of the back. 

Straight up day of birding at Crooked Run Estuary

I love Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those are the days that both girls go to school until 1 pm, and I can go birding alone. I love them, but they just don’t get the “shhh…there’s a bird up there” thing as well as I would like. I like being able to amble through a forest or a swamp and not have to worry about turning to someone and saying “Quit beating that tree with a stick!” or “Okay, I will carry you up this steep incline just to stop your whining”.

Crooked Run Estuary is a beautiful spot along the Ohio River in Clermont County. Geoff and I discovered it a few years ago, the girls like it, and I have done education programs with my raptors there at the yurts (yes, they have yurts you can stay in…Swami would love them. And if you are a new reader of my blog, Swami is my father-in-law, and one of the funniest people I know. And you would never know, if you knew him professionally, that he was capable of such hilarity on Yak Herder Central.)

Anyhoo, on to my day:

Why does fungus remind me of food? This one looks like a bloomin’ onion.And this one reminds me of green popcorn. Mold on fungus? Alot of life on this fallen tree.

A male belted kingfisher with a FISH in his beak!

(Male kingfishers are less colorful than the females…the females have the reddish “belts”.)

A tree full of burls! I can’t wait to see how this tree handles all that infection. Imagine how much money all those burls will be worth when they are big.
Blogger wouldn’t let me add all the photos I wanted, so I will put them in with Picasa later. But in this tree, I saw my life Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. (Go ahead and run with that one, Jim)

In this picture, you can see the drill holes made by the sapsucker. The bird was pretty far up in the tree, and I wouldn’t have even noticed it if it hadn’t been calling. I froze and trained my bins straight up…almost falling backwards in the process.

A sign showing some of the birds you can see at the observation deck by the Ohio…nope, didn’t see any of these.

I’m rather proud of this one. I spooked a great blue heron as I stepped into one of the bird blinds at the backwater of the estuary, and I caught him in flight.

This is the backwater of the estuary. So peaceful and lovely. I can’t wait for spring, to come back here and see all the bird fallout in this tiny corner of Ohio.