It's hard not to feel rather blah about birding at home in the winter after a person has had such an exotic experience in another country. I don't think I could go out and list 70 birds here during this cold season. Of the birds I saw in Tanzania, only 2 or 3 are birds we see here, the rest were of such exciting color and shape and size. Even regular birds like crows are extraordinary, strutting around in tuxedos and showing off.
Plain old brown birds aren't so plain when their heads are shaped like this hammerkop!
He may be a little ugly, but who wouldn't want to add this big fellow to their list? Of course, there's always the fun of trying to identify which hornbill is which.
A trip to the game park can keep one busy with a good bird book for quite awhile
and even longer with a bad bird book .
It seems to me a great number of the small birds wear flashier outfits in tropical countries than their American feathered friends.
But of course, one can't bird all their life in phenomenal places, but it's just a little difficult not to be bored with the same old Oregon juncos everyday after such variety. Since we were not home for a few months the bird feeders hadn't been supplied with seed anyway, so I figured we would wait until Spring and hopefully the flurry of migration would inspire some excitement again.
One day when we took a trip up North to get our dog I noticed at our friend's house quite a stack of Birds and Bloom and I spent some time perusing the pictures. Outside their windows were feeders of every sort. I could not believe the volume and array of birds at their feeders. That got my Attention! I tried forever to get some good photos and I am feeling more and more ready for an SLR camera!!! Photographing birds can be rather challenging with the wrong camera equipment. Anyway, I came home and bought some bird seed. It's a little slow going attracting the birds when their hasn't been anything offered for so long, but you can always be sure of an Oregon junco! I hope to attract many more in time for the Great Backyard Bird Count that begins on Feb 13.
In defense of American birds I must say that they are MUCH friendlier than their African counterparts. The little birds at our feeders are used to our presence and often even seem to communicate with us when they think we ought to refill the feeder or something. I grew up where chickadees landed on your head and begged for sunflower seeds in the winter. It isn't totally unusual to feed nuthatches and jays and hummingbirds from our hands here, but birding takes a great deal of patience in Africa.
I took stock of all the birds I saw in a week here and this is my list.
1. a chukar standing by the side of the road on one foot
2. bald eagles standing on the ice of the river's edge together with a crow
3.chickadees - at the feeder
4. juncos - everywhere
5. red-breasted nuthatch at the suet feeder
6. goldfinches in on the thistle bags
7. crows
8. a wild turkey sitting in a low bush by the highway
9. a red-shafted flicker flying it's peculiar flight
10. California quail at the feeders and in the shrubs
11. Canada geese at the river
12. Mallard ducks at the river
15. pigeons on the barn roofs.
For the off-grid solar people: Best information I can find is that a solar storm like this one should only have a minimum affect on PV systems---I have not been able to find alot on this topic but most things point to minimum or no damage to Solar panels with the worst case scenario being degradation of 20-25% over a period of years--atleast in theory. If anyone has any info on this please share>Blessings>faithfarm
Well, it's cold. The temps have dropped a little since last week and I am chilled to the bone. We were told that we were going to have 4 to 6 inches of snow today but the wind is blowing so hard (gusts up to 55mph) that it really didn't even stick to the ground. It is the type of wind that pierces your skin and chills deep. I didn't think we were going to even be able to call this season WINTER because we have been having some really decent weather, but Today..... well.... IT IS WINTER. hehehe
I hope you all are staying warm. I have decided to just sit in a cozy blanket (thank you Laur) and read my bible and maybe work on a little art and think about being in front of a roaring fire place.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 - Wonderful Opportunity for Writers!
Posted by SimpleFolk
Since I was a child, I have loved creative writing. This makes the project I've been working on the past few months even more exciting for me. I'm so pleased to be able to share it with you now.
The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine is now accepting submissions for its second Storytime Writing Contest! We have two creative fiction categories: adults (16 and up 2,500 words or less) and children (15 and below 1,500 words or less).
The deadline to enter is midnight March 16, 2009.
Grand prize winners in both the adult and child categories will receive prize packages valued at over $1,000, publication in the Summer 2009 issue of TOS, and publication in the Storytime 2009 Compilation E-Book. Eleven Honorable Mentions from each category will also be included in the E-Book in addition to receiving gifts from top homeschool companies.
There is no limit for submissions, but there is a $7.95 fee per entry. For a detailed list of prizes, official contest rules, to meet the judges, and to upload your story, please visit:
Here is the recipe for the buns that I made yesterday. It is simple and easy. You can mix it by hand or use your bread maker on the dough cycle if you would like. ( I use my bread maker for the dough when I am in a hurry.)
Recipe:
12 oz. water
1 and 1/2 t. sea salt
1 and 1/2 T. oil( olive oil is really good.)
2 T. raw honey
2 cups wheat flour
2 cups white flour
2 t. yeast
Mix, let rise, punch it down and shape in to buns. Place buns on a cokkie sheet , let rise until they are the size you want them to be, Bake on 350 until done. When done take them out and brush the tops with real butter and let them cool. When they are cool, use a long serated knife to cut them in half. Eat and enjoy!
I took some of these to my parents and they thought they were really good! And my Father is a man who thinks that Sonic is the best. So it made me feel really good that he liked them!
You will never buy store bought buns again. These are to quick and easy. They are much more healthy, taste so much better, and are so much cheaper!
My finger is really sore as one of our rabbits bit it this morning! I didn't know rabbits would bite? Well they do. I guess the poor girl was hungry, I was filling her feeder when she decided to latch onto my little pinky. It makes it hard to type........so this will be short.
The insurance adjuster came this morning. The building that burned was not listed on the policy, so not covered, which we pretty much knew. Only the garage and 2 open sided sheds were listed. The other little buildings (misc. chicken houses and such) are really not worth enough to insure. Until this happens, then you wish they were! But the garage siding will have to be replaced and he said he would include the shingles on that side also.
So, since we felt that we should wait until he came to start clean up, we did get a little done on that this afternoon. We picked up all of the tin, which made a huge difference in the looks of things. The roof was tin and also the sides were lined with tin inside the building, so quite a bit of tin was laying around.
No baking today, a little laundry, chores and just everyday things other than that. Hubby has been promoted to dish washer for a few days!
Much to the delight of a certain seven year old that I know...it snowed! There's a blanket of fresh clean snow here in the woods. It looks just like a fairyland. Of course, he has been distracted all day, waiting for the school day to end. When "the bell rang" he was out the door! I've been making a list of things that I want to accomplish this winter. These snowy "home days" will soon be here and gone and I'll be putting on boots, grabbing gloves and heading out into the soggy spring land. In the last several months there were some projects left undone, letters left unwritten, clothes that need mending, and things that I just haven't felt well enough to do. These things need to be done now. I'm not sure why I have this surge of energy, but I'm just going to just embrace it. :-)
I have decided to get back into making soap. If I am to have any for Farmers Market in spring and summer (or for our own use and gifts for that matter) I need to get busy now. I've also been daydreaming about our raspberries. I'm sure that this stack of seed catalogs here on the table isn't helping my spring fever much, but, I do want to enjoy each season to its fullest. And I do love snow, too. Probably not enough to brave the cold to sled in it tonight as the boys are doing, but I think it's really lovely. Besides, my job is to see to it that they warm back up. I'll stay indoors, put some wood in the fire, a pot of hot soup on the stove and warm some biscuits in the oven for when they come back in. Oh, and maybe dream a little more of spring.
Well I'm back. I decided to take some time off and prioritize. My husband and I have been playing at church more often and that takes up a lot of our time.
Some things have changed since last I was on here. My daughter has moved back from the university that she was attending and is going to community college to get her nursing degree. I am thankful to have her back in the area as she had gotten into drinking and staying out really late. I feel a little better with her nearby.
My 14-year-old really wanted to go back to public school so we decided to let him. So I am getting used to coming home from my client's at 11:00 and the house being empty. I have all this free time now and don't know where to start.
I have many things I want to accomplish this year. I want to draw closer to God. That is the most important to me. I have felt for a long time now that He has been wanting me to seek Him more. So that's that.
I also want to learn to knit and quilt this year. I am already planning our garden. You should see all the seed catalogs coming in the mail!
Today I am going to work on organizing my recipes all in one place. That way I'm not hunting when I need one and giving up and printing a new one off.
We are also dealing with my husband working less hours. He works for a support plant for Toyota and yesterday they sent him home 2 horus early. This is after working several months with between 5-10 hours of overtime a week.
So we are readjusting to a flat 40-hour week check. I am going to work really hard this year to stick to a budget and try to get us further out of debt. My plan is to have us debt-free (except for the house) in two years. We have 7 years left on the house.
We really don't have that many debts but what we do have makes me feel like a cloud is hanging over us.
Plus we are not to be indebted to any man and we feel that it is not God's will for us to be in debt.
Well, that's about it for now.
I hope to attract many more in time for the Great Backyard Bird Count that begins on Feb 13. 
