Tomorrow is Throwback Thursday, a day when you are supposed to share pictures from your past. Since I do my blog on Wednesdays, that doesn't work for me. So I am dubbing today as Way-Back Wednesday. Yes, friends, it is time to take a little walk down memory lane. Lately I have been transferring old pictures from disks back onto the desktop computer so I can add them to Google Photos. This is one way to make sure I have the pictures in case picture CD disks go the way of the 8-track tape (meaning become obsolete). I thought it might be fun to share some of these pictures on the blog. And seeing as how I didn't go anywhere this week to take any new pictures, now was a good time to do it. So fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a ride back to 2004-2005 (a couple of years before I became a southerner in the Northwest).
OUR LITTLE HOUSE
I know you've heard me refer to our "little house in Lumberton." Little is definitely the operative word here because it was less than 1000 square feet. It was totally a fixer-upper when we bought it, but it had so much charm and was perfect for just the two of us and our kitty. We enlisted the help of a couple of our friends in getting it fixed up (huge thank-you to Mike and Scott). We had so many good times there, enjoying our yard and having parties with our potluck group. We loved our little house so much that we would have brought it with us in the move to Yakima if we could have.
Our little house
THE YARD
The picture above shows what our house looked like right before we moved. Linda had transformed our yard from a barren, hard-pack dirt wasteland into a beautiful "sanctuary" for birds and other critters. I used to love to sit outside and watch the birds in the summer...while the sweat just poured off of me. But it was worth it as I have so many memories of watching the birds court, eat, drink, and play in our back yard.
The back flowerbed
We eventually put in a walkway around the flowerbed
Another flowerbed in the back yard
The picture above shows a rose bush at the top right. We had transplanted that rose bush from my parents' house on 14th street. My mother loved her roses, and I am so glad we were able to bring cuttings from that same rose bush with us to Yakima. We now have two rose bushes from those cuttings, and they are full of beautiful roses every year.
Linda talking to me as I sit outside in the heat & mosquitos
THE CRITTERS
We had so many beautiful songbirds come to our yard in Lumberton. I didn't realize how much I would miss them when we moved. I remember one day counting 21 different bird species in our yard over the course of the day. I loved them all, but I do believe my favorites were the cardinals. They would visit our feeders constantly, and they even brought their young ones to our yard because they knew it was safe. We did not have an outside cat then, and we had a fence around the entire back yard. We rarely had a visit from any stray cats so our birds were relatively safe. We had squirrels, too. Lots of them. They would bring their babies to our yard as well. Our house was surrounded by three huge, very old oak trees and the squirrels would scamper up and down them all day. Sometimes we would sit in our back room (in the air conditioning) and watch the squirrels and birds outside while we had our drinkiepoo.
Cardinal Love
One day Linda called me at work and told me that our back yard had been invaded by a flock of cedar waxwings. She managed to get several pictures of them before they moved on. I was so sad that I wasn't there to see them! They are such beautiful birds with their face masks and colorful wing tips.
Cedar Waxwings We sometimes see these birds in Yakima
I had an ongoing battle with the squirrels to try and prevent them from eating our birdseed from the feeders. We had them destroy several plastic feeders until we got wise and purchased metal ones. We didn't mind feeding them, but they would park themselves on a feeder and prevent the birds from getting any seed. I'm sure they would have eaten us out of house and home if we had let them. So we looked around and found a "squirrel-proof" feeder, bought it and hung it on our fence. The birds were happy, as you can see in the picture below. The perch on the feeder would go down if a squirrel (or really heavy bird) got on it, closing up the opening to the seed.
However, it wasn't long before one devious little squirrel figured out how to outsmart the "squirrel-proof" feeder. He would hook his little foot on the top of the feeder and hang upside down so that his little mouth was right at the opening to the seed. He didn't even have to touch the perch, so it didn't close up. I was determined that he wasn't going to outwit me, so I devised a shield to go around the feeder. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. He was soon relegated to foraging around on the ground for seed.
Here he is, scoping out the situation
He thinks he knows a way around it
Now, to implement his plan
Curses, foiled again!! (Shields at maximum)
The birds did not seem to mind the shield around the feeder, as you can see a Tufted Titmouse on it in the picture above. I know for a fact that the squirrels hated it, though! He tried his best to get around it, but he fell off every time. It was only about a yard off the ground, so he didn't get hurt. We felt sorry for the little fellow, so we got a ground feeder for the squirrels and the larger birds, like the Mourning Doves.
Male Rose-breasted Grosbeak
He's happy now! A feeder all to himself
In addition to birds and squirrels in our yard, we also had visits from the Easter bunny. This little cutie showed up one day and we were delighted...until she started eating our plants! The last straw was when she completely ate Linda's Obedient Plant all the way down to the ground. There was nothing left of it. We finally managed to get her out of our yard using the water hose. We hated to do it, but she would have eaten every plant back there if we hadn't run her off. By the way, we named her Stella.
Stella, the Easter bunny
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl was so determined to make it into the blog this week that she enlisted Linda's help to get an up-to-date selfie.
Reclaiming her rightful spot
That's all for this week, friends. I hope you all enjoyed our trip down memory lane for a change. Tune in again next week when I hope we get back to how things are going around here.
It's not very often we get a chance to see a bird that we have never seen before. As most avid birders do, Linda and I keep a "life list" of the birds we have seen. In the back of The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior (illustratedby David Allen Sibley), there is a Species Checklist. This is where we keep track of our birds. So this past weekend, I was able to mark another one off of our list.
This gorgeous bird is a Wood Duck. I had heard from one of my local birding groups that there were some of these ducks at the Terrace Heights Cemetery pond. Since I had been wanting to go back there to see the Trumpeter Swans again, we decided to go last Saturday. Upon walking up to the pond, I spotted him right away. I think he was hoping we had brought him something to eat (we didn't think about it) as he was swimming back and forth, back and forth, at a discreet distance. I saw a total of two male Wood Ducks at the pond. I am not sure if there were any females present because I really didn't know what they looked like, and anyway I was focusing my efforts on getting pictures of the male. He was absolutely stunning with his beautiful coloring. The red eye is very distinctive.
I took the picture above with the light falling behind him, making the water look like a mirror causing a nice reflection in the pond. The picture below shows him swimming across the pond. He had just taken a drink of water and you can see a drop falling from his beak.
Of course I had to get some video, and this little fellow was very willing to oblige me. The swans got into the act as well. I love it when they start vocalizing to each other!
The swans were also keeping their distance. The male swan seemed to be glaring at me across the pond.
I could have stayed there all morning watching them, but it was a bit cold and we needed to get moving to stay warm. We took a short walk around the cemetery but found that it was not quite as interesting as the Tahoma Cemetery because there are no headstones. All of the graves are marked with ground-level markers. However, we did stop to read a few of them. Whenever we do this, I am always reminded of the ancient Egyptian proverb, "To speak the name of the dead is to make them live again."
VALENTINE'S DAY & A SAD ANNIVERSARY
I hope that everyone had a nice Valentine's Day. I took my sweetie out to lunch at our favorite restaurant, WaterFire. Actually, we took each other out because I made the reservation but she paid, LOL!
Lunch Date
We had a delicious meal as always at this restaurant. We reminisced about the times that we went there with Linda's dad. It's around this time of year when we talk about him a lot. This Friday, February 21st, we are coming up on the second anniversary of his passing. It doesn't seem like it has been two years already. This is a great picture of him, taken on our front porch when he was polishing up the gong that used to belong to Linda's mom. And just so you know, he excelled at doing exactly what his T-shirt says to do.
Dad - very much missed
After our lunch out, we came home to spend a lazy afternoon reading. Just as we were getting ourselves ready for drinkiepoo, our doorbell rang. Linda opened the door and there was a big box, a present from my sister, Manners, and her partner, Susan. We were absolutely delighted to find this inside...
OMG, I just cracked up when she started fluttering her wings! So cute! Susan told us that she found this at Walgreens and got one for herself, so she just had to get one for us, too! She said it brought her joy. We are all for anything that brings someone joy these days, and it is true...you can't look at this without a huge smile breaking out! It was a wonderful way to bring the perfect day to a close. By the way, we have named her Veronica Valentine (we have this habit of naming everything.)
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl was not very excited to be sharing her big bed with an intruder.
Is she ignoring her?
That's all for this week, my friends. Be sure to join me again next week for more from the Southerner in the Northwest!
Since we are well into the month of February, the time has come to once again treat our duck and geese friends at Randall Park to a bag of cracked corn. This past Sunday we took them their monthly treat. I was hoping we would see some different ducks there, and as it turns out, we did. As soon as we pulled into our usual parking space, we saw a group of ducks off by themselves, and they looked a bit different from the usual Mallard ducks that we see.
Some kind of brown duck
The ducks in this group all had bodies and heads that were various shades of brown. I am guessing that the lighter brown-colored ones are the females, and the darker ones are the males. I could see just a tinge of green on the heads of a couple of the males when the sun was hitting them at a certain angle. I tried to identify these ducks on Google, but there were so many possibilities that I gave up. I am guessing that they are some variation of Mallard, or they are in some kind of seasonal plumage. If anyone knows for sure, please let me know.
Once again, Linda took over the task of spreading out the corn while I shot video. It was a beautiful, crisp day with the sun out in full force.
I shot my video from two different angles and I was surprised to see that when the sun was hitting the ducks from a side angle, the head of the male Mallards appeared to turn blue! When the sun was hitting them straight-on, their heads were green. This was very interesting to see and I am sure it has something to do with the refraction of the sun's rays. You can see this very well in the video below.
We only had a couple of Canada Geese join the communal feeding as most of the other geese were over on the pond. It takes a while for word to get around the the food has arrived, so we saw a group of American Wigeons come up well after the feast had begun. And of course, there's always one guy who's late to the party no matter where it is.
We left the ducks and geese to their dinner and walked over to the pond to see what was happening there. The curious thing is that one end of the pond had a group of Canada Geese silently hanging out with a lone duck, and at the other end of the pond we had various ducks and geese, all mixed together and very loudly coming and going. I think the geese in the picture below are the "in" crowd of the pond.
There's one in every crowd
Suddenly there was a ruckus off to one side of the "in" crowd. Two male Mallards were going at each other in a circle, perhaps fighting over a female (isn't that the way it always is?). After the fight, there was one male duck quietly taking a quick bath. I suppose he was getting himself all spiffied-up to take his girl out!
WELCOME BACK BLACKBIRD
Back at the house, we had a visit from one of our bird friends who is a regular in the summer but one we seldom see during the winter...the Red-Winged Blackbird. I caught this guy snacking underneath the front yard feeder. You can just barely glimpse a touch of his red epaulets as he flies off.
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl was outside basking in the sun this morning, so I decided not to bother her. So for the Parting Shot this week, I am going to share a picture of her sister, Precious Baby, also more widely known as Peeber. I've been taking some pictures off of disks and putting them onto our desktop computer this week. I came across this picture below and it was just too sweet not to share.
Snug as a bug in a rug
Summer Girl is probably going to get mad because she missed this week's blog, but you know...ya snooze, ya lose!
That's all for this week, my friends. I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day, and remember...be sure to tell your loved ones just how much you love them! See you next week.
Lately I have been wanting to shoot some video using the 4K setting on my camera. I've had this camera since Christmas of 2017, and so far have not tried 4K videoing. In essence, 4K (also known as Ultra High-Definition or UHD) offers a much higher resolution than regular HD, so video is supposed to be much clearer and sharper. Here (clicklink) is a short article that explains this technology in more depth, if you care to learn more. It's the way all video (and television) technology is heading.
Last Thursday we woke up to a heavy frost outside and a clear day, so I figured it would be a good time to take a walk and try out the 4K. We drove to the entrance to the Jewett Pathway section of the Greenway. Upon arriving we spotted a large bird resting in a tree near the parking lot. I was able to get some video before he flew away. One thing I had read about 4K was that "grabbing" a single frame from the video will give you a much clearer picture. Below are two pictures that I took straight from the 4K video. They are much clearer than they would have been if I had been shooting in regular HD. Plus, I was able to crop them down without losing a whole lot of the definition. I am very pleased with the results.
We've determined the large bird was a Red-Tailed Hawk, as we could see the red feathers on his tail as he flew away (see below).
Definitely a Red Tail
All three of the above photographs were taken from the same video. Even with my lens zoomed all the way out, I was still able to capture enough detail so that we could identify him.
Here is another frame grab from a different video.
Once we were at the pathway, we headed for the "Eagle Trail." The temperature was rather low, so Linda and I were both suited up in our snow pants, heavy jackets, hats, scarves, and gloves. We have found that braving the elements does lend its own rewards.
Frost-covered leaf
We walked to the end of the path and didn't encounter anything of note, but on our way back we saw this guy...
I wasn't sure about the identification on this one because we couldn't see any colors. However, I posted his picture on two of my nature groups on Facebook, and the consensus was that he is also a Red-Tailed Hawk.
After watching the hawk, we walked back to the picnic area around the pond, where a gaggle of Canada Geese were gathered.
If you look closely, you can see the breath coming out of the beaks of the two very vocal geese on the shore, proof of the low temperatures that morning.
The pond looked like it had a little bit of ice on it in spots. In the dead of winter around here, there isn't much color to the landscape. Still, the reflection of the bushes and trees in the water was quite nice.
A study in brown
All in all, our trip to the Greenway to try out the 4K video on my camera was a huge success. I plan on using this technology to have clearer "frame grab" pictures for the blog in the future.
WIND STORM
Last Friday night we had a wind storm here in Yakima that was reminiscent of a hurricane remnant. Wind speeds that night were 25-35 mph sustained winds, with gusts up to 50 mph. Blowing through this valley it sounded like a freight train going through. Even I, with my bad hearing, could hear it. Linda and I both were awakened by the wind several times that night. The next morning we decided to walk down to Kissel Park to check things out. We were stunned to see that two large trees had blown over during the storm.
Trees uprooted at Kissel Park
The wind continued to blow all day on Saturday. It's interesting to note that on Friday and Saturday we had two record high temperatures, 65 and 62 degrees, with the lows hovering around freezing. Then on Sunday it was back to normal with a high of 45 degrees and a low of 21. Monday night's low was even colder, settling in at 16 degrees. It felt like we were on a weather rollercoaster.
PUZZLE UPDATE
We finished one of our favorite puzzles this past week. This one is 1000 pieces, like most of our puzzles, but we did kind of cheat on it because we didn't put together the black pieces at the top. They were all almost exactly the same size and shape and it was just too much. The rest of the puzzle was fun to do because it is titled "Cocktails," but I think it should be titled "Drinkiepoo!
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl has taken to sitting in what used to be Precious Baby's favorite spot. Peeber used to sit there almost every time Linda was sitting on the couch.
Following in her big sister's pawprints
That's all for this week, my friends. Join me again next week for more from the Southerner in the Northwest!
