Mom and Elvis and the Christmas tree

Mom and Elvis shared a birthday on January 8. She was 2 years older than him. I went back to New Jersey to celebrate with Little Sister and Little Brother. Mom was a big fan of Bing Crosby—Elvis not so much.

I probably should have taken down the Christmas tree before I left. I thought a few more days wouldn't make much difference, but I was wrong.

For reasons I do not understand, both dogs have decided it is their dogly duty to help me when I bring out the vacuum cleaner. 

Really Cyrus? Does that feel good?

A bird obsession: Part 2—The House Finch

On Christmas Eve, my Bird Buddy magically started taking videos in addition to the still shots like these. Initially I was very happy to watch the 1- to 2-minute little movies, but now that I am getting 10 or more videos a day, it is getting less interesting. 

It takes a lot of time to go through them all, and most of them have a lot of dead space. There are plenty of great views of the back of my house, with the feeder swaying in the breeze and the birds perched just out of range. I still have to watch to the end though, just in case my amusing woodpeckers show up.

Considering this was part of a Kickstarter campaign where a lot of folks from around the world paid upfront for a product that might never have been completed, I think the Bird Buddy team has done a good job of responding to complaints. 

My serial number is 00000004517. I think I was one of the earliest backers, and I was also one of the lucky 5% who got to test the videos before they were released to everyone. With time, I think the BB folks will work out the kinks and make the videos optional. I liked it better when I was getting more stills. 

There are at least 3 pairs of these house finches, and according to the BB, there have been 551 visits from them—by far my most frequent visitor. It wasn't until I got a close-up look at them that I could tell they were house finches, and not purple finches. The colorful males look very much like purples, until you can see their striped bellies.

And the goldfinches are still here, even after the snow and the cold. The house and goldfinches, and the blue jays are so far the best posers. They bring all 3 of the primary colors—red yellow and blue—to my little neck of the woods. It will be interesting to see what other species show up as the weather gets warmer.

Sorry Sorry I missed the Merry Merry and the Happy Happy

It is true, I have been neglecting my blog readers, whoever they may be...

I trust you all had a nice Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's Eve/Day, and any other holiday you might have been celebrating. And Happy Birthday to all those who have to share their December and January birthdays with all the holiday celebrations. 

We had a few drinks with Don on the Hill for his 84th birthday on Christmas Eve. Because we missed them on Thanksgiving, or maybe just because, we had a wonderful turkey dinner on Christmas Day with the Fabulous Barnwells. The Singing Hohensees invited us for a New Year's Eve song fest and dinner along with a few other Fast Friends. And The Husband got to play some bluegrass with some other singing friends yesterday to round out all of the holiday excitement.

Now it's time to sit back and figure out what to do with all this free time. I know for sure I will have no problem staying only as busy as I want to in retirement. It is when The Husband retires, hopefully in February, that my full-time job will be training him to relax. This is a job I will enjoy, but only if he is willing to learn. :)

Let the snow begin!

There is just enough snow to get me in the Christmas spirit...and to give Husband a practice run with his new John Deere riding snowblower. We fired our regular snowplow guy so that Husband could play with his new toy.

Start practicing mister, my Irish Siri is predicting 18" just before Christmas!

With a lot of help from my Christmas elves, I got the tree up and the lights on. Monkey was the only one who didn't help. 

I still need to decorate the tree, buy some wreaths, and write all the cards.

Mother Nature has taken care of decorating the outdoors. Thank you, Mother.

Sun and moon

Autumn started late and ended early, at least it seemed that way. The warm weather hung on longer than usual, and it left us pretty quickly with just the cold and frosty stuff.

It is not officially winter, but picking up the Christmas cards and Christmas tree yesterday definitely put me in winter mode. And I finally retrieved all my winter clothes from the cedar chest that Grandma gave me back in the 1990s. It still smells like mothballs even though I left it out on the porch opened up for several weeks before I dared put any clothes in there.

Winter is just fine with me, especially on the sunny days like today. Clouds in the sky with the full moon at night are just as pretty.

They told us we would hate the winters up here. 12 years in and I still love them.

All snug in their bed and jingle bells

These 2 are becoming quite the comedy team. When they are not attached at the hip wandering the house, they can often be found snuggling together in the Cadillac dog bed. They have come a long way from when the brave kitten first came down the stairs and was pawed to the floor by a curious WoodMan.

Now that The Husband finally came through with our Christmas card concept, I guess it's time to start thinking about the upcoming holidays. Later this week (I hope) we will make our annual visit to Edmeston to pick up the cards and our tree from Salo's Tree Farm.

To improve my Christmas spirit, Tara invited me to the Fenimore Chamber Orchestra's Festive Strings concert yesterday at the very pretty Christ Church in Cooperstown. Conductor Maciej Żółtowski followed some of the more serious pieces with an encore of Christmas carols, including the one with those jingle bells he was ringing all the way...

A bird obsession: Part 1—The American Goldfinch

I have already talked about the Bird Buddy feeder/camera that I got in October. It forces you to obsess about the visitors you get, because it reminds you every time it takes a pic, or 10.

I think the most frequent visitor currently, is the house finch. I have 253 house finch pics in the gallery, and that's not counting the similar amount that I deleted. After that it is probably the cardinal. 

The blue jay might have been the second most frequent, but someone suggested adding safflower seed to the sunflower seeds, and that did the trick. The blue jays still come by now and then, but they are disappointed when they see the safflower is still in there. They throw them on the ground and carefully pick out the sunflower seeds.

Today's feature is the American Goldfinch. According to the Bird Buddy, they are day fliers, involved parents, and loyal lovebirds. It says they don't like the cold, so will be flying south soon, unless the food supply is tempting enough. I don't think either of these seeds will be enough to keep them through an Upstate winter.

For now we only have a dusting of snow and it's not all that cold. We'll see how long they stick around.
 

A few last nice days before the fun begins

A few sunny days after Thanksgiving gave me some time to play in the backyard with the dogs. I was using that wheelbarrow to move dirt from the patio excavation to places where it might be more useful—like filling in that big hole that Woody has been working on where a garden used to be...

And over the garlic that I finally got planted before the ground was completely frozen...

I probably won't be playing in the backyard again for awhile, unless of course I make a roaring bonfire in the fire pit. Cold, windy and raining here today. This is more typical November, almost December! weather.

Long summer, short fall

The temperatures were in the 60°s (almost 70° on Friday) and then they came crashing down over the weekend. We got about 6" of wet snow overnight on Tuesday. Most of it has melted, but I think summer has finally taken leave.

The Bird Buddy has been doing its job as photographer very well, but my Sibley Guide is much better at identifying bird visitors. Supposedly the BB is "learning" as all of the photos are coming in, but I was really hoping that my Buddy would be the one teaching me.  

The 2 birds who frequent the feeder most often, blue jays and house finches, are usually either misidentified or they ask me to ID them. Oh well, it was still worth it for the cute close up photos of some very alien-looking birdies. Can you say Coneheads?

And I finally caught a short video of the Monkey/Woody parade that happens just about every morning. Not sure why that is fun for them, but it is definitely fun for me. :)

Bird Buddy and the posers: A review

Female cardinal

White-breasted nuthatch

I pitched in some cash to a Kickstarter project about a year and a half ago. I received my Bird Buddy about 2 weeks ago. Overall, I am very happy with this little bird feeder with camera that also identifies the birds for you.

As you can see, most of these pictures are very high quality. When the bird sits in the right spot, just in front of the camera, it takes beautiful photos.

The IDs, however, leave something to be desired. It asks you to identify the birds, unless it is a very clear and obvious picture, so it isn't the best if you are looking to learn which birds are using your feeder. But if you use the close-up photos and a good bird book (like The Sibley Guide to Birds) you will be very happy. 

Blue jay. My most frequent visitor/marauder

The images of all those birds you normally would see are so close up and so damn cute, that it is well worth the exorbitant price you will pay for the little feeder. The fact that you have to charge the battery every day, or maybe every 2 days, is a bit annoying.

In my humble opinion.

Male cardinal

Tufted titmouse scaring off a house finch. It worked.

Black-capped chickadee

American goldfinch

Female house finch

Male house finch

House sparrow: I did not know, until I saw this pic and looked it up, that male house sparrows have yellow beaks, not black, and mostly lose the black spot on their chest, during non-breeding season, September–March. American goldfinch in the feeder. I did know that they lose most of their brilliant yellow coloring in the winter.

 

Friends, birds, and the old retired lady

When good friends swing by on their way back from the Finger Lakes, well we just have to celebrate with a portrait on the front porch. Most of the autumn colors are gone here, but we still had and have some beautiful weather for this time of year.

As mentioned in the last post, I finally received my Bird Buddy feeder which includes a camera that also identifies the birds. Since Saturday, only the bluejays are posing. I have 35 great bluejay photos, and only 2 of what might be a nuthatch. I see plenty of chickadee and goldfinch visitors, but they are too sneaky to be captured on camera.

I finally retired from my job at The Freeman's Journal/Hometown Oneonta. Last night was my last Ugly Tuesday. Even though it's November, there are a few more days of warm weather to spend outside with the bluejays and not have to worry about going into work. But I will miss my other good friends, Tara and Larissa! :)