Muskoka

This is what I LOVE about going home!

The silence
The sounds
The calm
The excitement

Perhaps that seems a little contradictory but I stand my ground. When I leave the house, it's sooooo quiet. No sirens, traffic (besides an occasional car), or humming of who-knows-what. Just quiet.

But then I hear this tapping, and chirping, and squeaking.




The Black-capped chickadees are going to town on the bird feeder! This is the tapping I kept hearing... This little guy (or gal) is holding a seed between his (or her) claws (or talons, I'm never sure if talons refers to big raptors or all birds) and is hammering it open.












Ah ha! Look, he/she got it open!














And when I talk about excitement and calm. There is nothing more calming than being home, surrounded by birdies!

And then there's nothing more exciting than seeing this amazingly cute Red squirrel pop out of the snow next to the bird feeder!

Plumage

So... here's a game! What do these two birds have in common....?

And NO, it is not that they are both seagulls! In fact these pictures were taken in two very different places. The top picture on Sanibel Island, Florida in January, the bottom on Delaware Bay, New Jersey in May. Does that help?

Well believe it or not, but they're the same bird. These are both Laughing Gulls (although I must admit, it took me, mom and dad quite some time to figure out what our wintery guy was!). It's amazing how much their plumage changes throughout the year, and look at the beak! Even the beak colour changes! I've also seen some wintery guys with slight reddish tinges to their beaks, to help support my identification, but it still boggles the mind!

I wonder why their heads are black and beaks red? Thermoregulation? Species recognition? Something completely weird?

Hmmmmm...

While I'm at it...

Well, at the risk of turning this into a knitting/spinning blog (of which it is NOT), I just have to share some other fun stuff...

Debbie's Wool,KoolAid and soon-to-be mommy's knitting should equal CANDY CANE SOCKS! We shall see...

More on fun wooly stuff

So this is why my proposal is taking so long! A week or so back, a friend emailed me a link to a blog describing felted bowls. Now these are completely useless! I mean I guess you can put keys in them or something, but not much else. That being said, I promptly decided to try my hand at making one. Anita, recognize the wool? Left over from your hat!

So I made up a pattern and learned how to knit in the round AND how to felt. Not bad for a whim!

But I have since learned never to check my email right in the middle of working... what if another project were to pop up and de-rail me!

Testing version #2

Ah ha! Guess what!!! The ScribeFire plugin is now testing the image upload function and I'm a pre-tester! Here goes nothing...

Yayayayayayya!!! Look at this!! Image uploading works! These were some lantern cranes at in the Chinese Gardens at the Montreal Botanical Gardins.

Testing... Testing... 1...2...3...

Ah HA! I think I finally solved my blogging blues! I am currently using ScribeFire, a browser extension for Firefox. Well, so far so good, it's logged me in, and I can see all my posts, maybe this will even post the way I want it to!

What would a post be without a pretty picture?

ARGH! So no pictures yet with this... grrr, I'm really going to have to switch blogs I think...