A NEW BIRD
Last Saturday Linda and I went to a potential new walking place for us, a cemetery in the Terrace Heights section of Yakima. Summer Girl's BFF (Linda H.) had told us about this cemetery which has a pond, so we had been wanting to check it out for any interesting birds. After arriving, we parked and walked down to the pond and immediately saw the most beautiful birds, which by the way were HUGE.
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| A new bird for us |
These beautiful, graceful birds are Trumpeter Swans. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a wonderful website that is very useful to help identify and learn about birds. Click here to visit this website and read about this swan, the largest waterfowl species in North America. Be sure to click on the various icons at the top (Overview, ID Info, etc.) to read about various aspects of the swan's life.
One thing that really struck me about the Trumpeter Swan was the fact that they are very loud. Once you hear them, it is obvious why they are so named. I managed to get a little bit of the male swan trumpeting on video. It seemed that every time I hit the video button on my camera, he would clam up. The video below is about a minute long, and you can hear him vocalizing in a couple of places. Most of the time I was filming them, they had their necks under the water, foraging around for vegetation. Someone had put out some food for them on the deck, which they nibbled at from time to time. We would have stayed longer at the pond if it wasn't for the fact that the wind was blowing a gale and it was quite cold. We did get at least a small walk in before we returned to the truck and headed home. But we were so happy that we got to see these beautiful birds, and I'm sure we will be going back.
SIGHTING AN OLD FRIEND
It is always a pleasure to see a bird that we know from our days back in North Carolina. Not very many of our Eastern birds are present here, sparrows and finches being the main exception. So I was very surprised the other day to spot a Mourning Dove (click link) under our front feeder. I grabbed my camera and got a quick shot, which didn't turn out to be a very good picture, but I figure a quick shot is better than no shot.
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| Mourning Dove |
We loved all the Mourning Doves that we would see in North Carolina. In the Spring, they would bring their babies to our back yard Sanctuary, as did most of the birds. We loved their soft cooing sound, and their gentle demeanor. I miss seeing them because it is very rare for me to see one in Yakima. I have seen a few at places like the Greenway, but I believe this is only about the third time I have seen one in our yard, in the past 12 years. When we first moved here, we did have a paired couple that came to our yard. But soon the invasive Eurasian Collared Dove appeared, and I think they have pushed the smaller Mourning Dove out of this residential area. I am keeping my hopes up that this guy will be a regular visitor to our yard.
I mentioned above that we also had finches in our yard in Lumberton, and I do believe that the House Finch can be found all over the United States. One thing we did notice about the finches in North Carolina was that a great majority of them had a bacterial eye disease called Mycoplasmal Conjunctivitis. I could walk right up to the feeder and they wouldn't fly away because they couldn't see me. You could always tell one with the disease because they had a very erratic way of flying. A couple of days ago, I saw a very yellow-colored house finch at our front yard feeder, so I got some pictures of him. While I was taking the pictures I realized that he also had this eye disease. He seemed to be able to see out of one eye okay, but the other one was completely swollen shut. I hope the little fellow is able to survive.
That same day that I was checking out the little house finch, I happened to see this gathering of quail under the feeder. We are so happy to have some of our quail families visit us again! (This video below includes a little ditty I made on GarageBand using the musical "loops." Turn your sound up to check it out!)
LILAC TREE
Our lilac tree has been blooming now and the smell is out of this world! This tree is absolutely beautiful this time of year. Linda transplanted it from a small seedling that came up over near our neighbor's yard. They had a small lilac tree and I guess it came up from theirs. It was so tiny, we weren't sure it would live. Every year we have watched it get bigger and bigger, and the last few years it had several blooms on it. This year it has really taken off and is covered in blooms. Too bad my blog doesn't have smell-o-vision or you could enjoy the wonderful scent.
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| Linda's picture on top, mine on the bottom |
PUZZLE UPDATE
The last puzzle I mentioned in the blog a couple weeks ago was the "Dragon Dreams" puzzle. We worked on that one for over a week and didn't make much progress. It turned out to be more frustrating than fun, so we boxed it back up and took it to the Harmon Senior Center so it could plague someone else. Linda had picked up a couple of puzzles there the other week that really looked intriguing, so we decided to do one of those. Although I didn't get to do much on this one (due to not being able to see very well), I still managed to get a few pieces put in. Linda really enjoyed it, and so did I. This one is of an Edward Gorey illustration from 1965, which is untitled. The puzzle may look familiar to you because the opening credits of the PBS series "Mystery" are based on his style. He wrote many books himself, as well as illustrated many book covers for other authors. This puzzle is definitely a keeper.
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| Edward Gorey puzzle |
ASPARAGUS UPDATE
I haven't seen any activity in the asparagus patch over the past week, so I can only assume that it has all died. Below is a picture of my entire asparagus harvest. After three years of coddling and babying these plants, this is what I got. I grilled it the other night, being very careful not to let it slip between the grill grates. I could tell that it was asparagus, but that's about the extent of it. I included a toothpick in the picture to show you how big it was (or wasn't).
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| Asparagus from the Rue de la Pathetique (nod to Jack McFarland) |
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl was outside just now, enjoying the sunshine and keeping a watchful eye on the back yard. She expressed great displeasure at my interrupting her reverie for a photo op!
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| "There she is again with that camera!" |
I put the blog up a day early this week because tomorrow I go in for eye surgery on my other eye. So be sure to check back next week at the regular time to see what's happening!
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