Photos and Surgery

Going in one week to get a medically necessary eyelid lift done to help improve my vision.  In the meantime the battery charger for my NEW Canon Rebel EOS XSi arrived today so I can finally get down to REALLY taking pictures.  My professional photographer friends at the forum at birdersworld.com have been a TREMENDOUS help in teaching me about how to use my new camera.  My pictures are astounding and are getting better all the time.  I am doing bird, insect, plant, and flower pics by the hundreds!  Can’t wait till the Bird Banding days this year.  They capture birds in nets and put a permanent band on their leg with a serial number to help in tracking their life histories and behavior.  You get to get absolutely IDEAL photographs of many species of birds while they are held in the bander’s hand.  It’s a great way to learn bird Physiology.

Memoirs of the legless man.

Welp, trimming the evergreen tree i my backyard I felt a sharp pain in the front of my calf and looked down to see that a branch stob had evulsed a half-inch strip of skin, six inches long from the front of my leg.  Having peripheral vascular disease and neuropathy in my lwer legs I don’t notice injuries as well as I used to.  These conditions make the skin very thin and fragile and ANY nd ALL wounds take months or YEARS to heal.  So I am now on TWO antibiotics and NO pain medicine even though it hurts viciously.  Hospital ER’s in my area have greatly tightened their policies about giving out pain medicine so I guess we have to suffer.  I stay off my feet and keep my leg elevated for a few months and it might heal someday.

AM finding quite a few bird nests in and around my yard and am submitting them to Nest Watch, a relatively new online birding site run by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY.  I have submitted Three active nests so far although two of those have since been abandoned.  I still have an active American Robin nest at the end of our driveway.  I suspect the location of two or three more active nests but haven’t pinpointed them yet.  My daughter returns from Scotland next week and should come here the week after that.  Then a couple of weeks later her friend from Scotland will be coming here for a visit.

 

Cardinal Nest Update

Howdy folks! (If anyone is out there)  Went out to check my Northern Cardinal Nest this morning and found this!

[IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a327/Thornius/NorthernCardinalNestWithFirstEgg.jpg[/IMG]

In other news have just found the BEST rock Group.  They are called, Funeral.  They are from Norway and are Dark Metal.  Their songs deal with loneliness, despair and death, but that is to be expected from a group that comes from a country where the sun is not visible 24/7 for 6 months a year.  But their arrangement and musical experimentation is EXQUISITE!.  They, to me, are like a mixture of Metallica and King Crimson.  give them a listen.

 

Maternity

They’re Heeeeeeerrrrreee!

Been waiting for a month for this, and now Both Chimney Swifts AND Barn Swallows have arrived at my yard.  They rode in on the winds on the backside of a line of MASSIVE thunderstorms that passed through on Friday.  Now, although Hummingbirds have been reported in my area, AND I have FIVE Hummer feeders out, I haven’t gotten a single Hummer, YET.  Any day now I think one will come.  Next on the Ag-end, is the arrival of Cedar Waxwings to strip My Mulberry Trees clean,  That should start happening in two to three weeks.  Mourning Doves are building a nest in my Willow tree at eye level, five feet from the edge of my porch, making for EXCELLENT Photography.  Also a pair of Northern Cardinals have been seriously eyeballing the Eastern Red Cedar in front of my front windows so I may end up with a nest there, too.  Must get BOSS this week for the Doves to eat as well as other birds, and my suet feeders are empty, too. 

I won a Bronze Award on picli.com for a picture of a Starling I took in my willow tree.  The Starling was about 3 feet from the Dove nest, in the same tree.  I Have also had two other bird pictures on the front page of Picli.com.  One is a male Eastern Bluebird on the roof of a picnic shelter and the other is a very EMO Blue Jay at my platform feeder, which again, is about five feet from my Dove nest.

The Possum at the end of the Universe.

Lucky, my Catahoula Leopard dog was acting strange a few minutes ago and I figured he had to go out to potty.  I opened the door and there sat a Possum just two feet away.  Lucky, who is a breed of hunting dog went crazy lunging and howling an eerie, unearthly howl.  I let him drag me to his chain, got him hooked up and left him barking his head off.  Now 20 minutes later he, and perhaps the Possum, are snoozing peacefully.

Through a Glass Darkly

Today my oldest grandson and I built a bicycle for my youngest Grandson.  We took a bike I found in the trash, took it completely apart, cleaned it, spray painted ALL the parts Flat Black, lubricated all the parts that needed it and reassembled the bike back.  Voila! We converted an OLD  girl’s bike into a COMPLETELY refurbished boy’s bike for less than $10.00.   And it works GREAT, too!

Youth is wasted

My oldest Grandson came by tonight. He will be 13 next month. He and I had a delightful evening of verbally abusing each other. He is SOOOO funny. I’m starting to really enjoy being with him. He is a Sk8ter punk who listens to Heavy Metal. I am a music connoiseur who LOVES rock. We have this in common

In the Beginning……

My first ACTUAL post.  My wife and I spent the weekend in the Emergency Room of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she was to be admitted for celulitis.  After 38 hours on the ER stretcher she was finally able to get a bed.  I tried to sleep sitting in a hard, metal and plastic chair without much success.  On the plus side, the food was pretty good and VERY plentiful, and in the end my wife’s treatments were higfhly successful.  Then home on the city bus after feeding the squirrels by hand and some REAL sleep in our REAL bed.  Am feeling quite a bit better today but I think that now I am coming down with Strep Throat.  Oh well.  C’est la Vie.

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