Evening Grosbeaks

The evening grosbeak is only an occasional visitor to my feeder, either early in the day or late. But I think I miss most of their visits. Recently, I had the male . . .

who was joined by the female.





And then a third one -- the youngster of the family -- came "crashing" into the scene. He spent a lot of time in the tree, just looking at the feeders as he went from branch to branch.

Mom and dad occasionally glanced up at him, but they didn't let that crazy kid distract them much from filling up with the seeds.



He made several attempts to get to one of the feeders, usually ending up back in the tree. But a couple times, he actually made it to the feeder next to the adults.

And I did end up with one image of all three of them.

Noisy Kids

The blue jay family was out today in full force -- these three and another four in the tree were raising quite a ruckus.

Who's in the mirror?

I've had the most fun this summer watching the tufted titmouse in the trees and at the feeder. [By the way, what is the plural of titmouse? Is it titmice?] It's a very active bird, and fast -- the slightest movement from me and it's gone! While I've succeeded in getting some pictures like this ...




. . . more often than not it's like this!








But their antics with our car has been hilarious. They must love the silver color and the reflections, and the passenger mirror makes a perfect perch. One day, I heard the loudest bird and it seemed like it was right by the door -- it was the tufted titmouse, calling over and over from our car's side mirror.



After sitting on the top of the mirror for awhile, the titmouse flew to the lower edge of the passenger window -- of course it's always on the window away from me, so I have to shoot through the windshield.

Then from the window, he flew right at the mirror -- flapped and pecked at his reflection for a moment -- and then landed on top of the mirror again. From there he hollered his "peter peter peter," and started the routine over again. He'll go on like this for ten minutes sometimes, unless he catches me watching him.

This has been going on for the last couple weeks. I've also seen two of them do the same routine, taking turns. And a few times, one has landed on the windshield wipers, using the windshield as a mirror. I'm just glad the tufted titmouse appreciates the "playground" we are providing!

Memories

Thinking about our special memories of people and places . . .

I'm writing this at my "new" desk, which replaces the table that I've been using. Actually, it is an old oak teacher's desk with a special meaning for us -- it was my husband's grandfather's desk when he retired as a school superintendent in New Hampshire. I feel honored to be using the desk of someone who served his country in war and served the children in his community.

We have still other things that represent the people who are important to us -- the spindle-backed couch that my grandfather slept on, the camera that my father had, hand-written recipes that my husband's grandmother used, needlework that my mother made, walking sticks that my husband's father and grandfather used. We also have many things that represent the places we lived and visited as we grew up in the military -- yearbooks from California, Nebraska, Iowa and Germany, mugs and glassware from Germany, lacquerware and seashells from Okinawa. And our years in New Hampshire have added artwork by friends, lighthouse and horseshow photographs, shared recipes and wines.

As important as these objects may seem to us, it is really the shared memories attached to them that we hold dear -- memories of the people who were and are special to us.

Growing Up

My birdfeeders have been very busy this summer – goldfinches, purple finches, house finches, evening and rose-breasted grosbeaks, nuthatches, blue jays, hairy woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, and catbirds.

Of course, in the spring and early in the summer it was mostly the adults. But gradually the youngsters have started appearing. By now, they're about the same size as the adults and have similar markings, but their behavior often gives them away.

Several times I've seen a white-breasted nuthatch come flying across the street to the feeder, followed rapidly by three or four others landing on the branches above in the pine tree. As the youngsters hide in the branches, they start their begging "murmuring" until the adult flies back to the woods with the juvies zipping along close behind.

Sometimes the youngster is given away by its grace – or lack thereof. This downy woodpecker was out on his/her own one day and attempted to land on a thin pine branch . . . and whoops . . .

Then s/he settled down tight on the branch and watched me for awhile:

But eventually the suet feeder was the target for a perfect landing:

It Was a Foggy Day . . .

Last Sunday, my husband and I drove down to Portsmouth to photograph one of the lighthouses. Even though it was a very foggy summer morning, with an occasional mist in the air, it was a perfect day for getting some interesting shots. As we drove out 1B toward New Castle, we were not the only ones out -- the fishermen were all out along the little bridges trying for their early morning catches. Our "catches" were images like this one.

We continued on to Fort Constitution, which is next to an active Coast Guard station. To get out to the fort, you actually follow a blue line through the Coast Guard station parking lot. We smelled their bacon cooking for breakfast and chatted with one of the Auxiliary members, who gave us a little history of the fort. He's one of the participants in the yearly re-enactment of the December 1774 raid on the then-named Fort William and Mary by the colonists. From inside the old fort walls, we took some pictures of the Portsmouth Harbor Light, which is the only lighthouse on the New Hampshire mainland.

On our way back through Portsmouth, we stopped at Prescott Park to check out the progress of their flower gardens. Every spring, the gardeners create a beautiful landscape. We love stopping there throughout the summer as the flowers fill out, sometimes just to walk through, and other times to take close-up shots of the blossoms.

We ended our morning with coffee and hot chocolate, before meeting a friend for lunch and a visit to our favorite wine and cheese shop in Portsmouth. What a great way to spend a New Hampshire Sunday!

What Will She Do?

Well, this is a new step I'm taking! I've just retired after 38 years as a high school librarian. So far this has just felt like the beginning of any other summer vacation -- just relaxing, reading, running errands and so on. But this morning I officially felt like a "retiree" when I joined our group of other retirees for the monthly breakfast in town. There were five of us who joined the ranks just this year (although only two of us made it to breakfast today), so the group is growing by leaps and bounds. At our end of the long table, we talked about traveling and national parks (see what JPDave said about the topics at the other end of the table).

In the spring issue of our library newsletter, the other librarian and our assistant surprised me with an article titled "What Will She Do?" Since my plans for retirement were somewhat vague, they came up with some ideas for me -- hike the Appalachian Mountain Trail...get into the Guinness Book of World Records...learn to fly...build an igloo...run for president...hunt for Sasquatch...visit a library in all of the 50 states...join the cast of Spamalot...become tri-lingual -- in all, a list of 27 things that I should have started on 38 years ago! But, there is one that I can do now. So, Pam and Casey, I accept your challenge to start a blog!!