Award, and 7 random things about moi

I was recently presented with an award from a fellow blogger (thanks Frank!), for which I am very grateful. There are always rules that go along with such awards. You should link to the blogger who gave you the award and then nominate x-number of other blogs for said award. I'm afraid I'm going to bow out on the nomination portion of it because it's just too difficult to come up with a small group of blogs to pass recognition on to (and hopefully I won't be chastised for being a party pooper!). However, an unusual "rule" for the Kreativ Blogger award from Frank is to "list 7 things about yourself that others might find interesting." Turns out, I'm in a mood for sharing some info about myself. Here goes!

1. I loved school as a kid, and I was fortunate to have many great teachers in my life, many whom I loved dearly. I was valedictorian of my class in high school. College, however, was more difficult. As I progress further in life, I realize that it wasn't necessarily school that I loved, but the learning that came with it. That sticks with me to this day, and will always be a huge part of my life.

2. I have a wicked sense of smell. This is especially handy in the kitchen, where I can tell when the cookies are done before the timer goes off!

3. I started college as a journalism major, but graduated with a degree in French. I studied and worked in France for 5 months during my junior year in college, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Sadly, my fluency in the language has all but vanished due to lack of use. I still feel a deep connection to the country, though, and will someday go back to visit.

4. I am a horrible liar. I wear all my emotion on my face and my heart on my sleeve, two things which make it hard to tell a convincing lie.

5. I met my husband at work. My parents also met at their place of employment. Hmmmmm....!

6. I played trumpet in middle school and high school. I have also dabbled with guitar and piano, but I don't want to commit the time to practicing either right now. Blogging and photography take up most of my spare time!

7. I love puzzles - Jigsaw puzzles, number puzzles (sudoku, anyone?), word puzzles... one of my long-standing traditions is to get a new puzzle book of some sort right before going on vacation.

BONUS FACT: I am quite an introvert, so the fact that I do this blogging thing is still a bit of an mystery to me!!



P.S. I anticipate making layout changes to HOTH within the next few weeks. It's time to try a different template, something that has a "stretch" option so I can have a bit more room for my photos. Just warnin' ya.

Lunchtime nature walk

Almost every day on my lunch hour I make a short pilgrimage to my favorite local coffee house to get a fancy caffeine fix. It's a short walk, about 30 minutes round trip, unless I happen to get distracted by the local flora and fauna along the way. I know many of you out there reading this are also fond of "taking in" nature during lunch breaks and after work, so I'm sure you can relate.

I've walked this route for several years now, so I know when to look for certain things (like keeping an eye out for the blooming of the huge Catalpa tree in spring, and then the Mimosa tree in summer), but there are also many things still to discover.

I took my camera along during a couple of recent walks to capture some of what I see.

One of the main things I wanted to photograph was the beautiful flowers of the Catalpa tree. Very often these flowers are pretty high up in the air, and it's hard to see all the amazing detail contained in them. Luckily there is a Catalpa along my route that has some shoots that grow very low to the ground.

The leaves are huge!

A progression of flowers

Not only are the leaves huge, but the tree itself is huge. And the bean pods that they produce in the fall? You got it, huge (10" long maybe?)!

On to the flowers... (The street I travel is largely filled with student rentals, so no well-kept lawns here. Makes for good "weed" watching!)

I'm guessing this is something in the Morning Glory family, but I can't pin down an ID.

Yellow Stonecrop

Yellow sweet clover. Red clover and white clover grow in abundance along here as well.

Bittersweet Nightshade

This one is a stumper! I'm quite sure it's a member of the Geranium family, and the closest thing I can come up with is Herb Robert, but I know that's NOT what this is. The whole thing seems to start off green (with the little white flowers), but then...

Things start to turn red and black. If anyone can pinpoint an ID on this one, I would appreciate it, because it's unlike anything I've ever seen!




Clockwise from upper left: Field Garlic, Grapevine leaves, and two unknown beauties.




Chicory

A 15-foot (approximate) section of "wildness" along the side of the road that so many walk and drive by every day, without so much as a thought to the diversity of life contained within. Probably at least 25 different species of flowers, who knows how many species of grasses and sedges, lots of trees and shrubs, countless bugs (most noteably, snails galore!), not to mention micro-organisms.... And I can't help but wonder how many of the flower species are edible by humans.

And then... the destination for my fancy coffee fix, Donkey Coffee and Espresso. I love this place, and I love the employees. They serve only fair trade coffee, awesome sweets and pastries made by local bakers, and they're even trying to make the "fancy" stuff like syrups good for us, with no high fructose corn syrup and light on the sugar. If you're ever in Athens, be sure to stop by 17-1/2 W. Washington St!

Creatures of the night

All kinds of interesting creatures live in our woods, but I would imagine we do not see, or know about the existence of, many of them because they only come out at night.

One of said creatures is the flying squirrel. When it comes to eating bird seed, these little buggers pick up where their larger non-flying cousins leave off during the day! Note that none of these photos are cropped. I'm always surprised at how close I'm able to get to them, and they really just don't seem to care. They seem pretty fearless of humans, from my experience.

"I'll be leaving now. I have to save some seed for later tonight!"

Preparing to launch off into the dark of night. Unfortunately I've never captured any images of them in flight.

"Gimme a kiss!"

We got lots of different moths at night, as I'm sure most of you do. I noticed this one clinging to the screen door the other night, but he got spooked as I opened the door and landed on the deck. This is a male Polyphemus moth.

I had to nudge him a little to get him to open his beautiful wings.

Either he was tired, or didn't feel threatened enough, because he still didn't show the big "eyes" in his wings.

A gentle stroke on his back got a little more of reaction. Isn't he fantastic looking? The wing span on this guy was probably 5" at the widest point.

These very large, fluffy antenna are what mark this as a male. They would be less pronounced on the female.

This close-up shows how fuzzy he looks.

And here's a cropped shot to show off those antenna.

A crop of the large "eye" in the wing. One of nature's finer examples of perfect beauty.

One website I came across when I Googled "Polyphemus moth" was Butterflies and Moths of North America, which is very similar to the Bird Guide on the Cornell Lab site in that it has occurrence maps, species accounts, checklists, and photographs. I checked out the range map for this moth in Ohio, and it does not show any record of Polyphemus moths in Athens County. As a result, I will be emailing the coordinator of such information for the state of Ohio to let him know of this sighting. This will be my first contribution to moth/butterfly citizen science! Cool!

Eastern Phoebe perching (BPW)

Way back at the beginning of spring I posted some pictures and videos of the Eastern Phoebe nest that we have on the side of our house. I was remiss in that I did not post many updates about the nest's progress. I am happy to report that 5 (presumably) healthy babies fledged from that nest. And now, our Phoebe pair is in the midst of rearing their second brood, once again of 5 nestlings.

Phoebes might be one of the easier birds to photograph because they tend to perch for long periods of time in one spot. And, if you're lucky to have them nesting on your house, you will soon learn their favorite perching spots that are on the path to and from the nest.

Unfortunately, it has becoming increasingly difficult for me to get decent photos of these birds now that the trees are fully leafed out. Our woods are very dense and filled with shadows, so I have to wait for them to come out to a perch that is in more direct light. They have become very fond of sitting on various shepherd's hooks in the garden, and on a spud bar that is standing up in our driveway, which is where this handsome bird is perched.

Here are some videos we captured of the previous brood.

This first video is of the 5 very large fledglings trying to rearrange themselves in the nest. I call it playing musical chairs. It's quite a precarious venture to move around in there!


This is the video of 3 of the 5 fledging from the nest (1 had already fledged previous to this video). One lone baby remains at the end, too scared to make the leap with everyone else! It seems baby #5 departed within 30 minutes of his other nest mates.


I do worry that once this second brood has flown the coop that we won't hear or see much of the whole family for the rest of the season, which will be a sad thing. I hope they come back and visit from time to time.

This post was for Bird Photography Weekly #42. For more Bird Photography Weekly, go here: