birds – Page 2 – The Hermits' Rest

Joy! Twice in One Day!

The world is so complicated. There’s a lot of negativity going around. So the fact that I was able to feel real joy twice today is a sweet and precious thing. What does it say, about, well, everything, that the source of my joy both times was birds?

It’s because birds are tiny (or larger) packets of joy.

I’m sure thankful for my animal friends, my birds and horses especially, for helping me get through the weirdest of times! Today was a great example.

I took my morning hike today to a part of Nail’s Creek (Lake Somerville) park I never made it to before. It was pretty in a dry, post-oak Savannah kind of way.

I followed the path of Cedar Creek, which was mostly dry, and saw lots of wetland plants and hog damage. I saw hogs there last year, so I wasn’t surprised. I was hoping to get a better view of the pelicans and snow geese we’d seen earlier (and heard—much honking).

I heard snow geese, but when I zoomed in I realized that both geese and pelicans were flying around

I did find them, but still couldn’t see them much better.

As I was taking pictures of ducks, sandpipers, yellowlegs and such, some big birds showed up. They were black, but I had a hard time figuring out much about them, even through binoculars. Were they Anhingas? Black geese?

Finally I got close enough to see their bills. They were ibises! They eventually started making sounds, so Merlin confirmed they were white-faced (there are other dark ones). They dug in the shallow water and hung out on a snag in the water. It was most entertaining, and I was thrilled to get to watch them up close. By the time I heard Sandhill Cranes again that weird feeling in my chest that could only be joy burst forth.

A friend asked me if I felt any other emotions along with joy. Yeah, there’s a poignant sadness when I realize joy is just a momentary feeling. I had tears looking at the birds. But that’s what makes joy so special — its rarity and fleeting nature.

Phlox brought happiness! That’s good, too.

Anyway, the day continued and we took a drive around the area. We visited Yegua Creek Park, where Catherine from the comments section’s husband was camping. We missed him but did enjoy checking out the campsites and views.

We then drove to where the dam for Lake Somerville is, which has many camping areas. After going over the whole dam, we took the scenic route back. There are some nice properties in the area.

Back at our campsite, I wanted to take the good camera out to try and get better pelican pictures. We went to the day use area, where lots of birds were gathered. I helped a young man find his first Northern Shoveler ducks, and his excitement was fun to observe.

Then I got all excited because I spotted a Black-necked Stilt. The second joyful moment.

I jumped up and down and made happy noises, which Lee enjoyed. He said that’s why he likes to go with me sometimes, just to see me all happy. Aww. Here are a few more photos from the day.

The day ended with salmon patties made into sandwiches with really good potato salad. Lee got to cook on his little grill outdoors, so he had fun, too.

Thanks to all of you who’ve been reading the last few days. It’s encouraging to think I entertain you a bit. At least it’s a brief diversion!

A Beautiful Day if You Ignore Current Events

I’m gonna say it: I don’t like wars. I don’t like killing innocent people. So, when yet another one is started, apparently quite well planned, and no one tries very hard to stop it, it’s hard to enjoy a lovely day in nature.

This beautiful checkered skipper on a gorgeous smooth phacelia (*Phacelia glabra)* flower tried to distract me.

I wanted to enjoy the outdoors, though, especially after missing out on hiking and birding yesterday! Nature has her way of sneaking into my psyche and making me forget everything except what’s happening where I am in the current moment. I’m so grateful for that!

Carolina Wren serves to amuse and entertain

We enjoyed a quiet morning watching wrens investigate the underpinnings of our vehicles. I sure hope they aren’t nesting in there! Having a second morning with few neighbors was a real treat.

At last I was able to walk down the familiar trails of Lake Somerville State Park. It’s fun to explore new trails, for sure, but it’s equally interesting to see how places you’re familiar with change from year to year or in different seasons.

Today there were many shore birds on the lake, which is still quite low. Hundreds of White Pelicans, various sandpipers, dowitchers, and ducks entertained me. I was proud to ID Northern Shovelers, Green- and Blue-winged Teals, and Mallards by sight. Glad for the binoculars!

The pelicans were too far away for good photos until they decided to change location, when I could get some flight photos. These are all from the phone camera.

I was delighted to find more early wildflowers in bloom than I expected. There was even at least one I’d never seen before! It was like walking through a fairy garden with all the small, bright flowers along the path, including my beloved spring beauties. Ahh. Pink perfection.

I didn’t see any wild mammals but people with fancy trail horses showed up across from us, so I got to enjoy them getting tacked up. The park did fill up today. I sorta got PTSD from my last trip where I chastised Scouts when I saw a big gathering at the next camping area. Thankfully they only had one screamer.

With all the bright, blue sky and pleasant warmth, we ended up staying outside most of the day, just enjoying the peace. It was just what I needed! And to add icing to the cake, Sandhill Cranes decided today was migration day (they are legal migrants) and regaled us with calls for a long time. Safe travels!

Ooh I’m tired. I’m just going to photo dump the butterflies and other birds. See if you know what they are. It’s a quiz!

Survived! I’m an Hour Away from Home!

Note to self: stop blogging when you’re exhausted and have a headache. These stories would be a lot funnier if I were able to think straight.

Short version of my day: complex work events starting early, afternoon break photographing little birds, heading out in motor home, engine issues, successful trip to state park, manageable challenges. And we are here!

I’ll explain the work stuff later. I need to make some decisions. But I will say that “having” to go sit in the birding hut and watch the sparrows feeding made everything much better. All those studies saying nature is good for you aren’t wrong.

It was warm and sunny, so I sat in front of the hut (I will get blinds soon) very quietly. The White-crowned Sparrows weren’t at all bothered by my presence and hopped pretty close to me as they pounced on whatever they were eating. I was able to test out the capabilities of the iPhone 17 Pro camera, and I was not disappointed. At last, no more bird-shaped blobs.

Mostly I took pictures of a few females.

I also got the Great Blue Heron sunning and a House Sparrow thinking about nesting in a hollow fence post, plus an orange sulphur butterfly and a tiny spider .

Eventually we left to go camping for the first time in quite a while. It’s nice to have the family home to watch all those animals. Too bad we spewed oil all over the road. It seemed as if the dipstick wasn’t replaced right. Or we have a worse problem, but Lee got us going and we got to meet the nice man who owns the new Valero in Milano.

What’s she blathering about? I don’t know. Let’s go eat.

Yep. Now we’re back at Lake Somerville State Park in the equestrian camping area, in our favorite site. Being surrounded by trees and birds makes all the trouble worth it. This place is so quiet. I’m looking forward to hiking familiar trails and maybe seeing flowers. I just walked around the camping loop and enjoyed plenty of birds and wildlife.

I also enjoyed the scenery in the late afternoon. There are so many big trees out here in the post oak savanna.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I enjoyed walking around and taking them!

This apparently once held a beautiful moth.

Under the Weather

And also the weather is annoying. The annual late February cold spell arrived right on time last night, which made for a chilly and windy day, even though it was nice and sunny. The birds were there, even a Roadrunner, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Roadrunner from the coast, but my photo!

I started feeling like my lymph nodes were swollen last night, and it’s still going on. I’ve taken it easy all day, just crocheting and watching more of the Great Courses series on the Middle Ages. I got past weapons of war and into cathedral construction, which made me happy. It’s fascinating how they put them together. Yes, my life has gotten that thrilling.

Boy do I know how those arches stay up now. Photo from Pexels.

Then, since we finished The Closer (great series, satisfying ending), Lee and I started a show with more modern cell phones, The Diplomat. Lee liked it perhaps too much and we got halfway through all the episodes today. I like the scenery, lots of lovely English interiors.

I finally have come up with a hypothesis for why my immune system is on overdrive. Carolyn and I did a lot of playing around with cedar pollen yesterday, making the male plants “smoke.” Even though they were Eastern Red Cedars, not Ashe Junipers, all that pollen may have inflamed me. Oh well, it was fun.

All that yellow on the green tree is pollen.

Note that the tree is Juniperus virginiana, which hints both that it might cause some allergies and that you could make gin out of the berries (on female trees).

Let’s hope I’m better tomorrow, since there’s stuff going on at work that I have to be ready for.

I Have a Phone Camera Again

That’s been the highlight of the past few days. I’ve taken some early spring flowers and recognizable birds.

You can tell this is a Great Blue Heron!

I’ve just not felt very emotionally connected these days. That makes it hard to blog. I’m just blanking my mind out and gliding through each day. I enjoy the birds, the poultry, the horses, and the changing weather.

It’s all fine. I’m just taking a break from the intensity. Voting means that I don’t have to listen to all the campaigning and can throw the daily collection of post cards from this Schwertner guy who keeps repeating the reasons I didn’t vote for him.

I did have some fun, sorta, when I helped Kathleen do some kitchen reorganizing and watched our manly men remove our old washer and dryer. Tomorrow the new ones show up. Dry clothing will be awfully nice.

I will need to do some cleaning first. Luckily, water spewed all over the place, thanks to an unhappy connection. Cleaned the floor!

Tomorrow I get to go hang out with some friends in nature. Yay. I’ll get to take more close-ups of late-winter new growth.

Plus I will keep crocheting. It’s probably why I’m so zoned out.

Two colors of the solid squares for my blanket. Don’t worry, temperature blanket is moving along on schedule.

My mental state will head back up. It always does. In the meantime I’ll enjoy my numbness.

Phones. Can’t Live without Them. Wish I Could

Ok. I’m just about wiped out from my “day off.”I could use more wine but I hit my limit. I do want to sleep tonight, after all.

Empty glass, ready to watch Deep Space 9 and rest my brain.

I spent hours and hours today just trying to make my iPhone Air go away. It had good and bad points, but mostly was long. I spent the first 45 minutes or so chatting with Al, a Vietnam vet with 7 remaining fingers and an attitude that made Lee seem a dream customer. But I got him so settled down that by the time it was his turn, he pleasantly agreed tech support could help him out. I learned a lot about his preferred firearms, his friends with issues, and his precious great grandchildren. It certainly passed the time.

Then I discovered I had to wait an hour to deal with some theft prevention thing. So I went to the lovely Thai restaurant across I35 from the phone store. If you’re ever in Temple, try MeeMee’s Authentic Thai Cuisine. It IS authentic! It has an interesting menu, too.

I only had another hour or so after lunch to figure out every password I’ve ever had and make the proper incantations to the gods and goddesses of cellular networks. I finally have the phone I should have ordered three months ago coming my way.

Really all I want is the macro lens. No more blurry photos…speaking of which, all the sparrows came back today and I got blurry photos of them!

I had so much fun after I got home watching the sparrows bopping around, joined by two rabbits who didn’t care that I was there. That’s exactly what I needed after the stressful phone store ordeal. Nature to the rescue!

Too bad I need a decent phone camera to record all that nature? The joke is on me. I can’t live without them.

Everything’s Good but the Birds

Poor timing. The backyard bird count is still going on but I’m not seeing many of the usual birds. I’m afraid I know why. The first Barn Swallow showed up today. I’m afraid that means all the winter sparrows skedaddled with yesterday’s blustery front. There are still White-crowned and White-throated, but there’s a distinct lack of Fox, Vesper, Grasshopper, Chipping, Savannah, Harris’s, Swamp, or others. I’ll wait and see how tomorrow goes.

Sorry, Suna. Gotta escape before it gets hot!

And yes, I realize their departure for the Great White North heralds the arrival of buntings and such. Still. Sniff.

Flowers made me feel good. Thanks, Kathleen.

Otherwise it was a fun day in which I indulged in watching educational television, enjoyed looking at my pretty Valentine flowers, and crafted my heart out. I finished another red Danish hat, to replace the one I made that’s going to Canada for a friend, as soon as the Post Office opens again, which I made slightly larger than the pattern called for in DK yarn. Too long sentence, too bad.

I was working on it in the car and realized why the yarn color is called Firecracker Heather. There are tiny bits of blue, green, and yellow fiber in the yarn, like firecrackers! That gave me a chuckle.

I’m done with that yarn, but I have other red, if needed.

Lee surprised me by asking to take me out to dinner and surprised me more by taking me to the bookstore on the way! I’d planned to go to a candidate forum, but spousal requests take precedence. I really had a nice time, though I was tired for no reason I can think of.

I look forward to the books I got, even the self-help book. It seems like I could use some reminding that I can’t control anyone but me.

The deer book is about…deer! I already know how they were primary food sources for humans for thousands of years, but I Look forward to learning details about our two species’ relationships.

As you can see from the cover, the other one’s about the cheerful topic of diseases. I’ll have to let Anita read it next, since she reads about diseases in her work.

On the topic of books, it’s time to finish my current one. Then I can share all about it.

Encouraging News Tidbits

I was too tired last evening to write anything, then I didn’t get much sleep last night (Lee lost his phone and used his watch to find it, soon after I fell asleep—that got me wide awake for a few hours). I guess I should have blogged then, huh?

This is what I would have blogged about. My friend Phyllis found it at the thrift store. I guess they aren’t as popular as they once were.

Things have been pretty stable, at least for me and Lee, the past few days, which doesn’t lead to exciting essays. No complaints, though! It gives my mind space to send good thoughts out to others. Bonus!

There have been more signs of spring showing up, like this beautiful early Pipevine Swallowtail that I got some blurry photos of. Hmm, maybe the Presidents’ Day holiday will prompt me to trade my phone in for one with a good camera.

I’ve been seeing sulphurs and a couple of whites, too. I just hope we don’t get another freeze and set things back again. It can happen this time of year.

Most of my weekend will be spent counting birds, as it’s Great Backyard Bird Count time again. I got 60 species today, mostly because all the sparrows are still here.

I’m still here. Enjoy my singing while you can.

Yesterday I would have had over 70 species if I’d believed Merlin. My last capture had parrots, flycatchers that aren’t here this time of year, and some European something. I smartly checked the recording and realized it hadn’t gotten the location from the GPS and was identifying birds of the world. I discarded all those fancy non-Texan birds.

I’m encouraged, nonetheless. I’ll get some real birds, even though it’s going to rain tomorrow (also good news).

Super Fail (plus birds)

Cooking is not my favorite activity but I’m usually fairly good at it. Today was probably my worst cooking failure ever. Well, maybe the time I burned hard-boiled eggs was worse.

Anyway, I wanted to make a roast, and Lee had bought me all the things to go with it. I put it in the oven with potatoes and onions to cook slowly in my covered ceramic baking dish. I added some beautiful carrots later.

When I went to see if the food was cooked, the carrots were charred and smoking. The potatoes in the baking dish were also burned.

It appeared I’d cooked it at the wrong temperature.

I took it all out of the oven and pried the carrots out of the oval glass dish they’d blackened. Then I thought I should soak the dish so it would be easier to clean. You can guess what happened.

Pow!

The second water hit it, the glass shattered. It was still too hot. Lucky for me, shards were contained in the sink and none went down the drain.

That’s all the glass after I got it out of the sink.

Well, the food was delicious, if over-cooked. It added the excitement that was missing from the Super Bowl. I’ll spare you any entertainment analysis. There’s enough of that!

Instead you can enjoy the miniature Danish protest hat I made today using fine yarn and small needles. I’m using it as an accessory on my backpack, since I think wool hat weather won’t be around much longer.

Bird News

Ah birds. Sometimes they poop on you or peck at your fingers when you’re trying to fix their water dish (Darryl Junior). But mostly they’re gently entertaining. That’s very true this time of year when they’re getting ready for migrating, nesting, and love.

The first sign of bird love season is the arrival of the Purple Martins. I’d been hoping the ones who were here last year would return, and sure enough, the first scouts arrived last week. After Merlin Bird ID heard them three days in a row, I looked up blog posts by my friend Donna, who always wrote about them for the Master Naturalist group. Yep, hers usually arrive a bit before Valentine’s Day. I’m so happy we have repeat visitors and that our woodpeckers have made nice homes for them.

Another sign is the male songbirds start singing their melodic mating calls. So far I’ve noticed the Carolina Chickadees, Cardinals, and Mockingbirds are trilling away. Oh boy, I can do without the long, extended Mockingbird sonatas.

I’m expressing myself now. No more chirp chirp.

The Mockingbirds are also doing something unusual, and that’s gathering in groups and chasing each other around, complete with scolding and shouting calls. I wonder if they’re pairing off, dividing up territory, or what?

You can’t see them, but the birds were chasing each other through these trees.

I’m used to seeing large groups of Cardinals, especially after fledging time, but not Mockingbirds. I’ll have to investigate!

Challenging day at work tomorrow, so I’m off to sleep. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

A Little Good News Means a Lot

After my deep funk last night, I wasn’t all that well prepared for today, but by the time you get to be a senior citizen, you know that “fake it ‘til you make it” is a real life hack. So I hacked my way through the day and have emerged unscathed. The day was fine, successful even!

I got through my long webinar like a seasoned veteran (oh wait, I AM a seasoned veteran). My colleagues helped out with questions and I think everyone was happy enough. And I spent the rest of the day cheerfully doing my things.

And I finally heard that my contract was being extended until June, which pleases me very much. I’d been recruited by another company to do a similar job, but I was more interested in staying where I am, because it’s such a collaborative environment. So, good news there. We will see how I feel this summer about taking a break or what.

Lee and the dogs vote for taking a break.

The other factor that’s encouraged me today was that I realized I’m not waking up every day to worse and worse news in the US. It’s now like 50/50 ratio of disgusting to encouraging! I just hope we can someday go back to not being “led” by lying pedophiles and their amoral puppeteers. Feel free to disagree on your own blog!

Humor break. I set my phone down on the bed with the camera on. I noticed a camera icon on my watch and used it to take a picture from the bathroom! Nice ceiling, huh?

The weather is warming up, too. Birds are singing love songs and Apache may well be starting to shed. Between him and Alfred, the birds have lots of nesting material!