Thank You, Emily

When I went to Serbia to see long-eared owls, on the way I visited my niece in Switzerland. Fortunately the first weekend, my other niece came down from Sweden to see me, and she introduced me to the two-pants v one-pant day. What a wonderful concept. They had offered to translate the temps from Celsius to Fahrenheit, but since I have no idea what to wear at anything under 70°, that was useless. So each morning, Emily would tell me, “ Aunt Pam, today is a _____ pant day.” What a help. Of course, looking at owls in Serbia was always a two-pants day, plus long down coat, scarf, gloves, boots, etc.

Today I got up today at 3:00 AM to participate in my first Christmas Bird Count, I knew it was a two-pant day here in central Florida. I was to meet Wes at the MacDonalds in Mount Dora at 4:00. We would drive to a wooded area and look for barred owls and any other type owl until 6:00, when we would head back to Mickie D’s for breakfast. I planned to skin down to one pair of pants in the bathroom. 

At our first stop, Wes hooted, and two barred owls swooped low over our heads, but no screech or barred owls appeared. We stood around in the dark for a while. We gave up when the mosquitoes swarmed. As the sun came up, a cold front came through. I was happy in my double layers; Wes, in shorts, was not. We drove to designated sites in our assigned 15-mile diameter zone as the weather turned grayer, colder, and wetter. Other than the usual birds on lakes, some palm warblers, and a few crows, nothing was moving. Those bird brains were smart enough to hunker down and stay warm. Here I was my first birding with one of the top birders in Florida, and there wasn’t a little bird in sight. When we got to the cemetery, usually a good spot, even the palm warblers abandoned us. Such is birding. We called it a day at 2:00 PM.

Now I’m trying to send Wes the eBird checklists I created for each site we canvassed. He will collate them and turn in our species and head counts. Five out of eight lists will share; the others just are unresponsive. Just as uncooperative as those dang birds. At least I was warm. Definitely a two pants day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Month of Garden Club

Image
April seemed to be all garden club, all the time. I started with the zone leader’ walkthrough for Spring Fever on Friday, the 5th, then 2 whole days of that event. Whew. April 11th was the Windermere Garden Club’s monthly meeting, a field trip to Southern Hill Farm, a you-pick and wholesale blueberry farm. We were inspire to add blueberries to our garden. Friday, April 12th, I was the speaker at Bloom and Grow’s monthly luncheon, touting the value of becoming a citizen scientist, specifically, downloading the iNaturalist app and participating in the City Nature Challenge 2024: Orange County. I was pleased with my talk, the first one I’ve given in person in 5 years. I still attend EarlyBird Toastmasters, but we’ve been on Zoom since early 2020. Before that, we’d moved to Key Biscayne for a year, and I didn’t drive up to Fort Lauderdale often. On the 21st, we toured Jeanne’s almost-all native, completely grassless yard, a B&G social with the mandatory wine and lovely appetizers and d...
Read more

Relief

Image
I have been wild and exhausted with anxiety. Grant’s passport was stuck in limbo at the US passport agency, and there didn’t seem to be any way to break it loose. We had applied for renewal of our passports back in October, using a new online process: create an account at MyTravel.gov, fill in the form, upload a headshot from our iPhone, and pay $130 by credit card. Easy peasy. I finished mine October 15th, and got an email notification the next day my application had been received. Grant could not create an account at MyTravel.gov. I’m still not clear why, but after several days of his being very frustrated by numerous attempts to use his normal email address, he just couldn’t seem to make it work. I suggested a different email address. I ended up creating it for him using my address at Yahoo. Not really a big deal, except I don’t use that one much, and I can’t remember the password. Fortunately, I have it open on my cellphone, so I could check for any emails that came in.  On Oct...
Read more

Mindfulness

Image
Potato Vines   Using my preferred technique of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, I’ve gotten back to my ab workout now that I pulled my lower back while weeding. One would think that by the time one were 70, one would know that to keep one’s back from hurting, one’s abs need continual strength training, but one would be wrong. Two days of drugs and rest got me through the worst part, but not the frustration and embarrassment. Now, two weeks later, I’m in the habit of daily early morning ab exercise. What has made it easy is RPM, or Rise, Pee, Meditate. A benefit of our continued no-contact world is being able to attend the mindfulness-based stress reduction program presented by a couple from our former congregation. They had offered it previously but my schedule didn’t fit their timetable. Now...my schedule is more flexible. In addition to attending 8 weekly meetings and an all-day workshop, they ask us to meditate daily and listen to their guided body scans. ...
Read more