I found another roosting sparrow (left) at the convention center, this female wasn't as sound a sleeper as the other dude.
Somehow, a whirlwind kicked in on Thursday and I got swept up. It's unusual for me not to have time for the blog, but I got completely caught up at the Sports Show and at The Raptor Center Open House on Sunday. Whew. I'm kind of dreading the email inbox. I haven't checked it on a daily basis the last four days and I know it is practically overflowing at this point.
I'm feeling a strong need to go out and watch birds, last night I had a dream that I found the first state record of a phainopepla in Minnesota. If you are having dreams about watching birds, you better get out and do it. Actually, with all the talk of woodcocks at the Thompson and Zickefoose household, I think I might take a trip woodcocking tonight or tomorrow. I have a mountain of laundry to do and I save the woodcocks as my goal. I can't go see woodcocks until I've done three loads of darks and one load of whites.
We had a minor trauma for me in the kitchen. Thursday night I made a couple of mugs of hot chocolate to unwind. Friday morning a spider had moved in and webbed out in the spout of our electric kettle. So much for heating up water for the French press coffee pot. I like spiders in my house, they serve a useful purpose. I just really don't want to know about them in my home. Part of it is, that I can swell to Popeye proportions when bitten by certain species of spider. The other part is that they move in such a weird way, it freaks me out. I called Non Birding Bill at work and alerted him to the situation of the spider in the kettle.
NBB: Clean out the kettle.
Birdchick: That's not the purpose of this call. I'll be at the convention center when you get home from work, so in case you want to make yourself some tea, I thought you might want to know about the spider.
NBB: Why don't you just wipe out the spider and clean the kettle?
Birdchick: You know, I think I'm going to just have coffee at the convention center--it's Starbucks and cheaper than the water there.
NBB (laughing): It's just s spider. Wipe it out.
Birdchick: That's not the purpose of this call. Again, I just thought you might find this information useful for when you get home.
NBB: Well, I can clean the itsy bitsy spider out, but it's just going to crawl up the spout again (laughing uncontrollably).
I don't know what happened, but he kettle was cleaned out and ready for use on Saturday morning.