Zentangle® Tiles for Valentines

I decided to make Valentine themed tiles for my February Zentangle project. I used some heavy pink paper my sister gave me – leftover from her teaching days when she retired. The paper cutter made quick work of cutting 4 tiles from 2 pieces of the 8.5x11 inch sheets (with no waste). I used a black Sharpie Ultra Fine to draw the patterns and various colors of the same type pen to ‘color’…some gel pens to do a bit of highlighting. Enjoy the slideshow of the 8 tiles below!

The is extra printing on some calendar squares…some that are holidays and others that are ‘tradition.’ Some make good prompts for projects and celebration. They are evocative of the same day in other years and are part of the annual cycle. I tend to like them as signposts of a longer rhythm than a month, a week, or a day.    

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 13, 2021

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Self-controlled children tend to be healthier middle-aged adults -- ScienceDaily – Benefits include younger brains and bodies, better outlook in the years ahead. This finding is from a study done in New Zealand with 1,000 people tracked from age 3 to 45 (i.e. they were born in 1972 and 1973). Hopefully they will continue to be tracked as they get older….to determine if they remain healthier as they age. The finding makes sense to me based on my observations of my own life and people I have known over many years.

An Invasive Wild Edible Winter Rose – Natural History Society of Maryland – Multiflora rose…it’s a plant that takes over – climbing over everything around it…and it is prickly. One redeeming quality might be the RoseHips that can be used to make tea. Birds eat them too and that propagates the plant – so maybe more harvesting by humans would reduce this invasive!

College campuses are COVID-19 superspreaders, new study suggests -- ScienceDaily – My daughter and son-in-law are very aware that this could happen at the university where they teach and have research teams. They are offering blended classes so that students can be in person or virtual…and providing higher quality masks for their themselves and their research teams.

The 'megascale' structures that humans could one day build - BBC Future – Some history and observations…the realization that there are existing ‘megascale’ structures: terracing of parts of Southeast Asia, land reclamation from the sea by the Netherlands, the internet, the US Interstate Highway system.

SolarEV City concept: Building the next urban power and mobility systems: Unlocking the potentials of EV batteries with roof-top PVs for urban decarbonization -- ScienceDaily – Calculations done for 9 Japanese urban areas…CO2 emissions in these urban areas could be reduced by 53-95%!

The state of the climate in 2021 - BBC Future – Looking at CO2, record heat, Arctic ice, permafrost, and forests. We need to make progress toward drawdown rather than continuing actions that cause the upward ramp of planetary warming.

Are monarchs in trouble? | Science – In my area of Maryland…the decline has been dramatic.

A Tweak to Immune Cells Reverses Aging in Mice | The Scientist Magazine® - Interesting but so far has not be translated into humans. Evidently a drug to specifically block the EP2 receptor is not easily developed.

Tiny hard drives that are alive — and multiplying : Research Highlights – Experiments with data encoding in the E. coli genome. Evidently the data is protected from degradation in the presence of dirt and other contaminants…but what about changes that would occur over many replications?

Top 25 birds of the week: February 2021 – A grand finale to the gleanings….bird photographs!

American Museum of Natural History in 1953

The 1953 volume of the Magazine of the American Museum of Natural History is available from Internet Archive (here is the link for whole collection list). I am featuring the volume of magazines published the year I was born this week. There were two items that resonated…that reminded me of other years in my life.

The first was an article about Bandelier National Monument.

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I’ve been to the place at least 4 times: Spring 1971, August 1980, September 1981, and March 2005. The first time was for a picnic during a high school trip. In 1980 and 1981 my husband and I camped there. We hiked to the lower falls in 1981….and took our best pictures of the place.

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The sideshow below is a mix of pictures from the 1980 and 1981 trips. Based on the pictures, we took longer hikes in 1981. My husband did all the photography. I scanned the slides years later.

In 2005, it was a wet day. It was a bit larger group with my parents, husband and daughter. We only walked around near the visitor center. It is a place to visualize how people lived long ago….and the juxtaposition of more modern history of the world in nearby Los Alamos, the lab at the forefront of creating the first atomic bombs.

The second item was a picture of horsetails.

I remember reading about the plant in a textbook when I was in college in the mid70s…and then being thrilled to see and recognize a stand growing in Platt National Park when we visited a few months later. I had probably seen them before but overlooked them…didn’t realize that these are remnants of primitive plants that used to be the understory of the giant forests that eventually formed coal deposits. The genus (Equisetaceae) was eaten by dinosaurs!

I like finding publications from meaningful times in my life ….it’s a tangible connection to history. It’s also fun to see places I have seen more recently and to think about how they’ve changed … how they’ve remained the same.

11 months in COVID-19 pandemic

It’s been 11 months since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic. The US appears to be through the peak of cases and deaths that resulted from the late 2020 holiday celebrations but there is a lot of concern about more contagious variants of the virus that have been detected in the country. We could be nearing a low and then see another peak before enough people are vaccinated to bring it down again (assuming the vaccine still is effective with the variant). Vaccinations offer tremendous hope, but they are still in relatively short supply with only around 10% of people vaccinated. The administration of vaccines is still confusing – with a maze of sign-up processes and locations to navigate. There are times I think that the vaccine is going to people that are gaming the system rather than the intended groups.

The news stories about the COVID-19 variants have prompted several actions in our household:

• Curbside grocery pickup. I decided to switch from early morning grocery shopping in the store to curbside pickup. We’ve done it twice now and I like it better than delivery to the house. There do not appear to be shortages like there were last spring and I include a bouquet of cut flowers on my list. I submit the order so that it is one of the first orders of the day for the shopper and have gotten an experienced shopper both times (judging from how fast they pull the order together). They also package the order in paper bags which I like much better than the plastic.

• New masks. I ordered some new masks that had wires to help them fit better over the nose…thinking I would double mask from now on. Then we decided that we needed some better masks for the inner layer and my husband ordered some KN95 and the KF94. The KF94s are what my daughter and son-in-law are wearing when they teach…the university is still trying to continue in-person classes. The key is to have a mask that fits snuggly but does not muffle speech. My daughter said that the KF94s fit her the best – and her glasses did not fog at all!

• My sisters and I have started a sisters zoom session every other week. I’m not sure why we didn’t do it before. I guess we thought the sisters text messages were enough. The zoom meeting is a positive addition to our routine.

My plan was to restart some mini-road trips, but I only managed one to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant to photograph skunk cabbage. It worked out well since there were few enough people around that it was a solitary hike. I wore 2 masks….appreciating their warmth! It’s good to drive my car again and I’ll plan so more as the weather improves – either purely a driving activity or to a place I expect there to be very few other people.

There were lots of webinars over the month. The birding festivals are a lot of webinars over a short time…the others an hour or less at a time. I like the variety of topics and places. They are my best substitute for travel right now.

• Finishing up the Virtual Celebration of Cranes from Tennessee

• Natural History Society of Maryland hosted a Snow Crystal Photomicrography session which reminded me to keep my gear ready for every snowfall…with limited success so far. We have some colder temperatures this week that might make for excellent snowflake photography.

• Capital Nature hosted The Secret Life and Folklore of Winter Trees

• Missouri State University Foundation hosted 2 sessions about the Jordan Valley Innovation Center

• Brookside Gardens is hosting Friday lunch and learns. The first one was a video tour of the conservatories that are closed because of COVID-19. It was good to see the staff faces again. I miss seeing them and the ramp up for the butterfly exhibit that usually starts in April.

My big purchase of the month was a new Swopper chair. My previous one was 10+ years old and when it broke, it was an internal part….couldn’t get to it positioned again to reattach it to the base to it is currently acting as a stool rather than a bouncy chairs. The new one is at my desk…by back feels great again! I am so glad we can get items like this delivered to our front porch.

Of course – I still spend considerable time on various photography and Zentangle projects…browsing books…enjoying meal prep as much as eating.

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My husband has started a project to photograph birds every day using his camera on a tripod on our deck and his phone to control the shutter from inside where it is warm!

There is quite a lot that could happen over the next month:

• I am full of anticipation about getting a vaccination, but our county hasn’t started my group yet (maybe in a few weeks).

• There is a glut of birding festival webinars on the Valentine’s weekend from 3 places: Niagara Falls (New York and Ontario), Laredo (Texas), and Bosque del Apache (New Mexico). The forecast is for very cold weather here in Maryland so we’re planning a fire in the fireplace and hot foods (except for snow ice cream if the snow is deep enough and the right consistency).

We are staying at home except for curbside pickups at this point….but continuing to add projects to our routine. It’s not a boring time at all. Our outlook is more positive than it has been since last year this time….because of the vaccine and the transition of power away from a stress inducing national leader. I’m hoping to be able to see my family in Texas sometime in 2021!

30 years ago – February 1991

I couldn’t find any pictures we took in February 1991. As I looked back through my notes, I found references to us have bad colds/flu – daughter first (with an ear infection) and then me…my husband last. I was busy at work trying to write a proposal while I was sick. I was worried about my parents having trouble buying the house they wanted because of an easement issue, one of my sisters needing surgery, and the sister-in-law that I had never met/that my husband hadn’t seen in almost 20 years communicating sporadically while she was getting rounds of cancer treatment; it was all happening very far away from Maryland but the worries were always there while I did everything else.

On a happier note – we discovered that our 17-month-old daughter had picked up some counting skills (maybe Sesame Street or at day care). Her dad was playing with her one evening dropping disks into a can with a slot…he picked up several and counted…one, two, three, four…as he dropped disks into the slot. She picked up one and dropped it into the slot and said ‘five’…and another and said ‘six.’ We were both so surprised that there was a little pause before we celebrated her accomplishment!

It seems that I always find some nuggets when I look back at notes and pictures from 30 years ago There are events – like the counting skills surprise – that my notes indicate I thought would be something we would always remember…but I didn’t. I’m so glad I have the notes and can savor the surprise again!

Red-Shouldered Hawk

Sometimes the more frequent handwashing results in a surprise observation through the window above my kitchen sink. After putting away some groceries last week…just as I was finishing up the soap and water routine, I glanced at the sycamore tree and saw a larger bird that I expected there. It was a red-shouldered hawk! I alerted my husband and he grabbed his camera to try to get a picture. I went upstairs to my office because all my cameras were there. I got three pictures from my office window before it flew down into the chaos garden at the base of the sycamore…not visible from my vantage point upstairs.

My husband got a picture too, but he groused that the window had too much glare.

It was the most exciting minute of our day!

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There are two virtual birding festivals coming up this weekend…visual treats for the Valentines weekend:

The Niagara birding festival is free – Feb 12-14 - http://www.birdsontheniagara.org/ - 19 species of gulls….sometimes arctic species like snowy owls.

The Laredo birding festival is $25 – Feb 13 – this is the one we went to last year just as the pandemic was beginning – not sure how much will be virtual local field trips but that area is very unique with lots of tropical and subtropical birds…I got the best look ever of a great horned owl there….and road runners…and an Audubon’s oriole and white pelicans feeding together (like a ballet, all dipping their heads to feed in unison) https://riograndeinternationalstudycenter.formstack.com/forms/9th_virtual_laredo_birding_festival

I like the little surprise of seeing a bird I don’t expect to see in our backyard…gives a little serendipity to the day. It’s also a good feeling to realize that I am learning to recognize birds that I didn’t a few years ago. The pandemic has given us all a time out….and an extreme ‘learning experience.’ I am choosing to focus on the positive lessons.

The Coffee Toed Cat

Descriptive naming is something we all learn. Often those names are temporary nick names. They have value beyond simple description…they are fun too. One example that I heard recently was my daughter saying her cat had coffee toes. Do you see them in the picture? And the coffee toes are symmetrical too!

When I first started working in the computer industry in the 1970s, I realized that creating names was a skill I needed to develop. Naming of variables, lines of control language, and file names required a huge uptick in that kind of thinking for me and many others as well. Some of the abbreviations we use today (like using 4 instead of FOR or 2 for TO/TOO/TWO) was one of the techniques I learned in the 1970s since many of the names then were limited to 8 characters and couldn’t have spaces or special characters. The numbers were a kind of punctuation as well as a ‘word!’

Unfortunately - there is a dark side to the naming skill - when it is derogatory or bullying. It would be great if the public discourse could reverse the uptick in that kind of naming over the past decade….develop a trend toward fun and descriptive names like ‘the coffee toed cat.’

Moon Set

Late in January, we had some clear nights, and I noticed the light streaming in from the full moon when I first got up…well before sunrise. At first the moon was still high enough that it was clear of the treetops. I used the ‘night scene’ setting on my camera to get some reasonable handheld pictures.

A bit later, the moon was down in the upper branches of the tulip poplars and the pines – depending on which window of the house I was photographing through.

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The next morning, I photographed it again while the moon was still above the treetops. Look at the lower left of the orb…notice the edges are not smooth: the craters of the moon.

The natural world is full of things to notice – even in the cold of winter through a window. Somehow starting off the day noticing something like the moon setting, the sun rising, the frost on the rooftops, a breeze moving a pine branch….fills me with joy in the moment and anticipation of the day to come.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 6, 2021

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Human egg cells are imperfect surprisingly often -- ScienceDaily – More than 7% of human oocytes contain at least one exchangeless chromosome pair…and the frequency is not affected by maternal age. Our species is hardwired to have significant numbers of miscarriages and babies with extra or missing chromosomes. The finding is interesting, but I immediately thought of some questions…has this changed over the past 100 years (i.e. have we changed our environment enough that we are impacting our reproductive success) and how does this frequency compare to other mammals?

Why our pursuit of happiness may be flawed - BBC Future – A thought provoking piece about how seeking ‘happiness’ often sets the stage for disappointment…rather than contentment.

Pollution from cooking remains in atmosphere for longer -- ScienceDaily – Eating deep-fat fried foods is not just unhealthy…the cooking of foods that way contributes to air pollution. In London, 10% of the PM2.5 particles are from deep fat frying….in Hong Kong 39%!

2nd Annual Threatened And Endangered Parks: Natural Darkness And Sounds – My husband and I are looking forward to more dark sky opportunities in national parks. So far – the ‘star parties’ we’ve been to have been at state parks and hosted by amateur astronomy clubs in the area. The dark sky venue requires a bit of infrastructure to support a field full of camping amateur astronomers with their telescopes (electricity for telescopes/computers and bath rooms with red tented windows).

Top 25 birds of the week: Colouration! - Wild Bird Revolution – Lots of color in this post to break up mostly brown and white winter color outside my window! 

U.S. Breaks Record for Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters in 2020 | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Not a good record to be breaking…and they happened during a pandemic year too. There were 22 disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damages across America in 2020.

Q&A: Global Insect Declines Due to "Death by a Thousand Cuts" | The Scientist Magazine® - In every case researched….it’s not just one thing that caused the decline…it a cluster of primary factors (6 or more) and then other factors that are difficult to quantify.

Texas Wind Power Dominates Coal In Crossover Year – Hurray! Hopefully, the coal plants will begin to phase out in Texas and across the country as they become less and less competitive with renewable sources of power.

On the road to invisible solar panels: How tomorrow's windows will generate electricity -- ScienceDaily – I am always reluctant to consider replacement windows….but if they were cost effective solar panels…that would tip the decision toward ‘buy’!

Caligula's Gardens, Long Hidden Beneath Italian Apartment Building, to Go on View | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – A subterranean museum beneath the streets of Rome to open this spring.

eBotanical Prints – January 2021

22 new books for the botanical prints list in January – all from Internet Archive. 7 are a continuation from December: the annual publication from the Georgia Botanical Society (Tipularia).  I started through the magazines of the Arnold Arboretum (Arnoldia) toward the end of the month. There are a lot of them still go…fodder for the browsing in February and maybe beyond.

The dates for the publications range from 1822 to 2018…close to 200 years but not as broad as some recent months. There is one image for each of the 22 new books; click an any sample images below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the January eBotanical Prints! The whole list of 2063 eBooks can be accessed here.

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Tipularia - 1993 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1993

Tipularia - 1992 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1992

Tipularia - 1991 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1991

Tipularia - 1990 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1990

Tipularia - 1989 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1989

Tipularia - 1988 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1988

Tipularia - 1987 * Georgia Botanical Society * sample image * 1987

The fern portfolio. All the species of British ferns are included in this volume * Heath, Francis George * sample image * 1885

Our woodland trees * Heath, Francis George * sample image * 1878

Autumnal leaves * Heath, Francis George * sample image * 1885

Garden Rockery: How to make, plant, and manage it * Heath, Francis George * sample image * 1908

The Fern World * Heath, Francis George * sample image * 1877

Monographie des prêles * Kornfeld, Albert (editor) * sample image * 1822

Phillipine Hoya species: a monograph * Kloppenburg, Dale * sample image * 1991

Flora and ecology of the Santa Monica Mountains * Southern California Botanists * sample image * 2007

Arnoldia -  v.48:no.1-4 (1988) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 1988

Arnoldia -  v.76:no.1 (2018) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2018

Arnoldia -  v.76:no.2 (2018) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2018

Arnoldia -  v.75:no.1 (2017) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2017

Arnoldia -  v.75:no.2 (2017) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2017

Arnoldia -  v.75:no.3 (2017) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2017

Arnoldia -  v.75:no.4 (2017) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2017

3 Days of Snow

Today our forecast is mostly cloudy…after three days of cloudy skies and snow. The streets are already clear, and the driveway has some clear patches without us ever shoveling. We enjoyed our snow days but are glad to see a bit more sun!

On the first day we had a lot of webinars from the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife which we were watching on the biggest screen in the house (the television) and had a fire going in the fireplace. We had a power failure a little before 8 AM for a few seconds and the cable/internet was out for about an hour afterward. It’s a good thing the first festival session of the day was recorded so we could watch it later!

I tried some snowflake photography twice during the day. I used my phone with a clip-on lens that included a light and a red glass plate to catch the snowflakes. The temperature was about 30 degrees which is on the warm side for good snowflake photography.

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The flakes during the first session about 8AM were clumping although there was one that seems to look like a pyramid with a hexagonal base! Even though I had cooled down the plate and lens for over an hour, there was still some melting.

During the second session shortly after noon, it was easier to see individual snowflakes, but they were heavily encrusted with tiny ice spheres.

I tried to capture some scenes from our back and front yard over the course of the day. Our deck and bird feeder still drew the birds even while it was snowing.

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I made snow ice cream in the afternoon – after enough snow had accumulated. We ate the whole big bowl!

Overnight there was freezing rain so there was an icy crust on everything the second day.

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I cracked the ice of the top of the snow on the deck and made snow ice cream again. It was too icy, but we ate most of it anyway.

It snowed more overnight than we though it would so the third day had snow on top of ice. I worried that it might be too heavy for some of the trees because there was some wind as well….but we didn’t hear or see any breakage.  I took pictures of scenes through several windows.

Two of my favorite pictures of the day were taken through the windows on the side of the front door. The vertical ice and snow covered thread in the azalea is an old spider web that’s been there since last fall! The seed pod with a hat of ice and snow is a black-eyed Susan from last summer.

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Our plum tree was so full of snow that it obscured the evergreens across the street. The view through the skylights was different too; one had patches of ice partially obscuring the branches of the sycamore in the background.

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As always – the view from my office window was the best in the house.

Red-Bellied Woodpecker and House Sparrow

My husband has started setting up his camera and tripod out on the deck pointed focused on the birdfeeder at times we anticipate high in bird activity. The most interesting interaction he has captured so far is between a House Sparrow and our resident female Red-bellied Woodpecker. The sparrow was there first;  when the woodpecker arrives, it threatens the sparrow. The sparrow moves to the other side of the feeder. The woodpecker moves and threatens again…driving off the sparrow completely. Enjoy the slideshow action! (Use the arrows to move between frames to see the encounter.)

The woodpecker is the top bird at the feeder as far as I can tell. It even drives starlings away! The smaller birds like finches and chickadees scatter when the woodpecker swoopes toward the feeder. The White-breasted Nuthatch often trades off with the woodpecker and may be the next up in the order although it is sometimes willing to share the feeder with a smaller bird. Fortunately, the woodpecker has other sources of food so the rest of the birds get a turn.

Zentangle® – January 2021

One of the outcomes of the pandemic is my increased production of Zentangle tiles. There are so many that picking per day is quite a challenge! I decided to count the Large Zentangle Tile as a project and posted about it separately back on the 17th. That still left 66 other tiles to choose the 31 to show in this post.

My favorite is one I didn’t like as much until I colored and highlighted the pattern. That seems to happen to me a lot.

The square tiles had a variety of light weight cardboard made into 3.5 inch tiles with a paper cutter – the white boxes that tend to be slicker, the brown light weight cardboard, the green file folder. I’ve included the triangular tiles at the end of this group; they are the only ones that are not recycled materials! I tried to pick tiles that had a uniqueness about them – pattern, color, or highlighting. Some of these are old tiles that I colored/highlighted this month.

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The rectangular tiles are all produced on cat foot box dividers – the smaller side is 3.5 inches. This is my favorite tile size. The cardboard absorbs the ink very well and has a slight texture. The size provides more room for the ‘magic’ of the patterns to emerge. It is thick enough use on both sizes – maybe that will be something to start doing in February.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Zooming – January 2021

We had some sunny days….and then ice and snow twice during January. One is still happening as I write this post on the last day of the month. The forecast says it will extend into February. The second snow was after some colder days, so it began to stick to the street almost immediately.

The only picture not of my yard was the skunk cabbage at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant.

Enjoy the January 2021 slideshow!

Ten Little Celebrations – January 2021

And 2021 is off to a roaring start. Even with the jarring events of Jan. 6 and the pandemic still raging, there were plenty of reasons to celebrate in January 2021.

Bluebirds at our bird feeder –I celebrate when a bluebird group comes to our deck since it doesn’t happen very often. They seem to show up most frequently when there is snow and ice!

Piliated woodpecker in our forest – They don’t come to our deck…but are in our forest. I see them a few times each the winter when the leaves aren’t in the way. Their red heads are like flames. I think I saw a bald eagle a few times too this January. Even the fleeting sight of these birds is a celebration.

Amanda Gordan and the transition to a new President – A young poet and a shift toward hope for our troubled country toward a ‘forming a more perfect union’

Tennessee Crane Festival (virtual) – Lots of good webinars….dreaming about going to the place in January 2022. Celebrating learning about the place this year…and anticipating a visit.

Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival (virtual) – We went in 2019…hope to go to Florida again in January 2022. Celebrating the virtual version this year.

Success making a cheese omelet – I tend to make scrambled eggs but have omelet pans to cook them.  This month I opted to try making an omelet – perfect on the first try…celebrated the accomplishment (and the meal)!

Steak lunch – Our January days have been pretty cold, but my husband grilled on one of the warmer sunny days. A special lunch.

Carrot – coconut – chicken salad – I’ve discovered that if I layer a spoonful of orange marmalade, carrots, canned chicken, and coconut in a bowl….microwave it for a minute…stir…it makes a warm version of a favorite salad to enjoy in winter. Celebrating warm salads!

Howard County Sustainability Legislative Breakfast – Getting an update of what is happening locally re sustainability. I celebrated that good things are being worked at both the county and state level!

Tree trunk macros – It was a short project that I enjoyed a lot. The color and texture of winter tree trunks in our yard were celebration worthy!

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Gleanings of the Week Ending January 30, 2021

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

I am featuring videos this week….including the newest baby panda in the US and historic houses. I discovered that a lot of house-type museums have increased their virtual content during the pandemic. The historic houses I picked for this post are ones I have visited in the past. Some I have visited more than once (Mount Vernon and Monticello, for example). It’s fun to savor them virtually!

Panda Cub’s virtual debut – From the National Zoo…video is just over 2 minutes

Virtual visits to the Newport Mansions -  3D tours From the Preservation Society of Newport County. Includes The Elms, Marble House, Hunter House, Isaac Bell House, Chateau-ser-Mer, Chepstow, and Kingscote.

The Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT – 3D tour

Mount Vernon – George Washington’s house. 3D of the gardens and mansion

Lyndhurst – Several 3D views….including at Christmas and Halloween

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens – Florida. 3D with links to historic photos of the same area

Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s house. 3D tour. There is also a Google Arts and Culture tour with video/photos.

Olana’s Historic Landscape Video Tour – Frederic  and Isabel Church home.

Val-Kill tour – Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site from Google Arts and Culture

Wilderstein – Online exhibit, aerial tour, and landscape tour. The house was the Suckley residence for 3 generations from 1852 to 1991.

The Royal Natural History from the late 1800s

The Royal Natural History series was published in the mid-1890s by Frederick Warne & Co. – the publisher of Beatrix Potter’s books a few years later in the early 1900s.

These natural history books were edited by Richard Lydekker with a long list of illustrators. I enjoyed browsing through 5 of the volumes back in November: one, two, four, five and six. Two sample images from each volume are below.

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As I was looking at these volumes again for this post, I discovered that there were a lot more books to look at. They were published as 6 volumes, 12 sections….many of the ‘volumes’ are multiple books! So – I’ve bookmarked the Internet Archive list again…planning to go back to look at the books I missed on the first pass!

Bluebirds Visit

On the 26th – we had bluebirds at our birdfeeder! I heard a lot of chatter coming from the birdfeeder so got up to look. There was quite a crowd around the feeder with birds jostling for a perch. It was a cold icy day too. I took a few pictures from my office window then went downstairs where I took pictures through the panes of the French door in the breakfast area. The birds were moving so quickly I didn’t get a good count…but there were probably 6-8 birds…maybe only one male (he is the one that has the brighter blue feathers).

The birds that were not on the feeder were often directly below looking up!

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I was using my new camera and took advantage of the zoom and vantage point of our first floor to capture some bluebird portraits…all females (not sure where the male went….the birds were very active).

I looked at the All About Birds entry for Eastern Bluebird – and found that the birds usually don’t come to feeders because they eat primarily insects and fruits. These birds must have been hungry! One of the foods they like is raisins so I’ve put some on my list for the next grocery pick-up!

Back in January 2016, I posted about bluebirds coming to our birdbath. It was a similar kind of day from a weather perspective. There were about the same number of birds in that group. There are many nesting boxes in our area which helps support the birds’ nesting. But we probably need to have more native bushes that have berries for our birds in winter; something to consider for an upcoming landscaping project.

Through my Office Window – January 2021

I seemed to be busy with other things during January…so I was a little surprised that there were enough pictures to make a ‘through my office window’ post this month. This time of year, the heated bird bath is popular with many birds. I managed to get pictures of blue jays, Carolina chickadees, and a mourning dove there.

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 Both the male and female northern cardinals are coming to the deck and feeder. The male prefers the seed under the feeder, but the female takes her time there…stays on the feeder perch of minutes rather than seconds.

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The gold finches come to the feeder in small flocks. There are often 2 or 3 of them at a time.

The white breasted nuthatch comes to the feeder but has started checking around the shingles of the covered part of the deck. I wonder if the bird stores seed there or there is something else the bird is looking for there.

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I photographed the red-bellied woodpecker at the feeder but also in the maple tree. There is one in this series where the bird is getting ready to take off from the maple to make a run at the feeder. We only have a female around right now. I hope a male shows up by the spring.

Deer come through our yard frequently. Their route is always on the south side of our house – either heading to or coming from the forest. Sometimes they seem to be looking right at the camera. I saw two males butting heads at dusk, but the light was too poor to get a picture.

There is a small flock of house finches in our area. They enjoyed nibbling the red maple buds on a warm afternoon, but they are often at the feeder this time of year as well.

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My favorite pictures this month were of a group of crows finding tasty things in the back yard. They were digging down into the leaf mulch and grass; note that one of them has dirt on his beak! Also – one has white feather.

Mini Road Trip: Mt Pleasant for Skunk Cabbage

I am realizing that I haven’t driven very much in the last 6 months. There are at least 2 problems with that: the almost full tank of gas is about 6 months old and I’m getting out of practice when it comes to driving. If my plan is to make some road trips after I get vaccinated and the pandemic begins to fade, I need to keep my car operationally sound and my skills honed. My solution for now is to start making some mini road trips. The first was to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant to see if the skunk cabbage was blooming yet.

There were cars in the parking area when I got there…but no people around. I put on my masks and gloves and set out toward the Community Garden…turning into the path through the forest

Toward Hodge Podge Lodge. It’s gotten some fresh paint on the trim and curtains on the inside.

I crossed the bridge to continue toward the largest stand of skunk cabbage in previous years – taking a picture of the small stream below with some ferns on the banks. The water made pleasant trickling sounds. I noticed some areas of lighter sediment through the water– cleared of the darker colored debris.

I always look for shelf fungus. The two prettiest I found had green markings. Is that the fungus or a partner organism?

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As I walked along the path, I checked the stream periodically and soon found some cones of sprouting skunk cabbage.

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Once I got closer to the marshy area, there were a lot more plants. The reddish cones will eventually have the flowers inside them (they look like golf balls). I didn’t see any that were that far along. Right now, the plants are growing slowly – speeding up with it is warmer, slowing down and sometimes pulling themselves down into the muck when its cold.

I’ll make another mini road trip to see them again next month.

I hiked back toward the parking lot and made a stop at the witch hazel near the drive to the farmhouse. The flowers haven’t opened yet, but the buds are large. I’ll check them again too since the tree typically blooms in late winter…or very early spring.