I am on the road again. This time I am traveling to Master Dragon Digiscoping Academy which is secretly known as the backyard of the Shaolin Monestary by the 18 Brass Men. Seriously, I am in Rhode Island and hopefully by the end of this weekend I will have a better grip on the art of digiscoping. Good grief, Rhode Island! How many states have I been to this year?
I had a layover in Philadelphia today. My, was it festive! I want to say for the record that I am in favor of this trend of putting rocking chairs in airports. It rocks--literally and figuratively. What really adds to this scene which you cannot see is a man with a karaoke machine singing South of the Border behind the column. Karaoke lounge singers in airports--who knew? I had heard that airports were hiring musicians and magicians to walk around and sooth the savage crowd during the Holiday Season, but was not expecting the karaoke, it's not as much fun if you can't jump in line to sing a song yourself. The Minneapolis airport has a piano player. Philadelphia has a professional karaoke singer. Compare. Contrast. In fairness, he did really work it when he sang Feliz Navidad.
On to Birds:
I’m pretty picky when it comes to the latest craze of bird seed ornaments. Some of them are very cute, but some are so full of filler seeds that I’m not quite sure even a squirrel would eat them. Of course, if you want a cute ornament made out of seed that won’t be devoured in ten seconds, perhaps using millet and milo for a $40 bird ornament is the way to go after all.
I did find this cool pine cone at Ed and Angie’s shop the other day. I grabbed it for Mr. Neil. I was impressed because it’s a giant pinecone and it’s covered with mostly fine sunflower chips. I believe the seed is held on with some sort of gelatin. As a matter of fact, after I too this photo, and walked back about five feet, a black-capped chickadee immediately landed on the cone and began to feed. If you have a hardcore bird feeding friend, this would be a good hostess gift. They will be impressed at you finding an ornament with fine sunflower chips.
It’s been kind of a bummer up here with all the harsh cold temperatures and no snow crunching uner your feed. We’re getting a few flurries, but it’s just not sticking. While at Mr. Neil’s one heck of a flurry blew in and just made everything light and beautiful. I love those big fluffy flakes.
I set the Wingscapes camera on the ground and got some photos of the juncos. Whoot.
Speaking of snow birds, I got an email from Joe who is fun guy I just run into all over the place--bird trips, fairs, festivals, etc. He also loves to visit The Raptor Center. He was at Lake Phalen the other day and captured a photo of some cute looking snow buntings. Joe is Japanese so it’s natural to me that he captured them looking especially cute. They just look like little jelly bowls.
I'm tired, I think that concludes my jet lagged, disjointed post.