I’ve had a few holiday decorating projects to do for clients this year and oddly enough, the major color I’m using is lime green! It’s not a color I usually use for decorations, but I’m really liking it this year. Add some glitz and shimmer with gold glitter, and you’ve got something special! Behold!
What holiday decorating fun do you have going on this year?
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat,
Please to put a penny in an old man’s hat;
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you.
(English nursery rhyme, set to music in the late 1800’s and often sung as a round, appeared in The Real Mother Goose book in 1916)
The geese flying overhead are very noisy these days. It is seen as a sign of the season, but I wondered why, instead of flying south, they were all flying north! Perhaps they were all meeting up on the banks of Lake Ontario before deciding where to winter.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology here, there is plenty of grain left in the open corn fields and usually open waters in the lakes and ponds to allow them to stick around in some places in the winter. Our town lies along one of the traditional migration routes, but the numbers of geese around here in the winter definitely seem to be growing. The ponding areas around the malls are full of them all year-round.
Cornell also says, “Migrating flocks generally include loose aggregations of family groups and individuals, in both spring and fall. Flights usually begin at dusk, but may begin anytime of day, and birds fly both night and day. They move in a V formation, with experienced individuals taking turns leading the flock.”
So, long story short, I don’t know why there were so many geese flying north for several days. Perhaps our winter will be milder than usual!
On Sunday, my sister, sister-in-law and I took a little excursion to the George Eastman House to catch a breath of spring.
(*this photo from http://www.vanguardist.org/index.php?/archives/874-New-galleries-Washington-and-Rochester.html)
This National Historic Landmark built between 1902 and 1905 was featuring a winter/spring flower display called The Dutch Connection 2011 in the Conservatory with more than 2,000 colorful tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, freesias, amaryllis, and alliums. These bulbs are of the same species as Mr. Eastman had ordered to fill his conservatory back in the day.
The Dutch Connection Flowers in the Conservatory
PEOPLE! It’s time for the Great Backyard Bird Count! This is the 14th year for this fun and fabulous example of great citizen science. Sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society, it brings together bird-watchers of all ages and skill levels across North America to gather information for a real-time look at where the birds are for one weekend in February – and this is it! Count for as little as 15 minutes on one day or for as long as you like. Take pictures of the birds, or of you and your family watching them, and submit them. Go to www.birdcount.org for more information!
Carolina wren
This little guy, the Carolina wren, is one that I have been attempting to get a picture of ever since he arrived at our feeders last year. Very elusive, very “bibbity-bobbity,” he made it difficult to get anything more than a blur! As you might remember, I did get his footprints last year though.
Tracks of Carolina wren
This year, he has been very photogenic, posing on the deck railing in-between food forays in the viburnum and the potentilla, and then zooming at breakneck speed over to the birdfeeder and back. Don’t you just love the way his tail points straight up? Click on this one for the big picture.
Carolina wren
As of 2 PM today (Fri, Feb 18th), there were 989,746 birds counted. Whew! and the counting goes on until Monday, Feb 21st! The deadline to enter your tally checklists is March 1st. Go to www.birdcount.org and see what birds are being counted in your neighborhood, see where birds are found all over the continent, and check out the spectacular photos in the gallery. And if you aren’t quite certain just what birds are in your backyard, go to their excellent learning pages starting here or the ever-excellent online bird guide from Cornell here.
Happy birding!
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