You may remember me talking some time ago about the Great Blue Heron. I even painted one and talked about the one in my background image on this site.
But while my images are fine, the Great Blue Heron photos posted on 10,000 Birds yesterday are magnificent.
Meanwhile, I’m off to bird banding. I’ll probably see some GB Herons, but we don’t band them. We don’t even want them in the nets – our nets would be shredded by such a large bird. But they’re still wonderful to watch.
Despite my cruel and unusual neglect of my tropical fish over the past few months, amazingly all of them and the plants have survived. I only lost one of my two snails. They all should feel much better now, though, since I finally exchanged their water and pruned out all the dead leaves. In a couple days I’ll go buy a new bulb for the aquarium top and will be able to post better pictures.
My Two Blue Gouramis
As you may remember, I bought a BirdCam when my husband and I discovered that an American Robin had built a nest literally right outside the window of one of our spare rooms. Then, while trying to figure out the best way to mount it over the nest, we didn’t see any more activity at the nest and assumed it was abandoned. I set the camera up to take photos of the feeders on the deck.
Then next time we glanced out, there were eggs in the nest. That sneaky Robin had faked us out! I didn’t move the BirdCam, however, because I didn’t want to spook the Robin and cause her to abandon the eggs. So I used my Canon to get shots through the window, which accounts for the fuzziness of the images. (I’ve never washed the outside of these windows, therefore there’s at least a decade’s worth of dust or whatever collects on windows.)
Nest on April 10, 2012. Three blue eggs. They looked just exactly like Easter candy.
Nest on April 16, 2012. Two of the eggs have hatched.
Nest on April 25, 2012. All three of the eggs hatched and all the nestlings appear to be strong and growing.
Nest on April 29, 2012. This is the last pictures of the babies in the nest. After this, they were gone. We can only assume they went out into the world to successfully make their way.
My last class for this semester was last Thursday, May 3rd. I cannot tell you how relieved I am. I still have a final exam tomorrow, and another one next Tuesday, and I have two papers due on Friday and Monday, but I don’t have to go to campus and sit through tedious classes wishing I were elsewhere anymore. So that’s good.
Plus, I only have 1 more class and I’ll be done with the BA in Biology altogether. I’m scheduled to take that class in July and August. Then I’ll get my diploma and move on to other educational opportunities. Like a master’s degree in Resource Interpretation.
This makes it sounds as if I don’t like school. It’s more complicated than that. I love learning. I’ve learned a lot in the last 3 years. And I appreciate being able to go back to a university at my age and study things that interest me. What I’m tired of, however, is…..
There’s more, but that plenty to get my point across.
I’ve reapplied for the summer position with the National Park Service to be a park guide and visitor’s assistant at Prince William Forest Park. I’m just waiting to hear if and when I’ll be able to get on full-time again.
That’s all my news, I think.
I haven’t posted anything in the last 10 days because I haven’t felt like I had any solid ideas of things to blog about nor any time to devote to sorting it all out. As my last full-time semester of classes winds-down, I’m having to wind myself up to finish my commitments and meet those deadlines. It’s taking an extra effort because that’s not at all what I’d like to be doing.
I’d like to be bird banding more days per week. Or out birding in general. Or riding my bike more. Or hiking and photographing things.
Or clearing out months of neglected and piled clutter before my house resembles those on the TV show Hoarders, which it is beginning to already.
Or painting some new pictures. Or working on blogs, the revision of my novel, or any other writing that doesn’t involve citations to peer-reviewed journals.
There’s only a few more weeks of classes. Less than 30 days. I have several presentations, two research papers, and two final exams that have to be completed. I’m just focused on the finish line, trying to get to the end.
In other news….
We set up the BirdCam to monitor the hummingbird, oriole, and platform feeders on the deck.
So far, the BirdCam has only caught a few squirrels.
Then we discovered that the Robin has laid 3 eggs in the nest and is sitting on them. I got some still shots with my Canon, but we’re afraid that rigging up the BirdCam there now will disturb Mrs. Robin too much and she may abandon the nest. So I have to monitor that one myself now.
Mrs Robin on her nest. (Only two of three eggs are visible; one is hidden behind her tail) Blurriness is due to dirty window.
The coolest thing about it is that the eggs actually look exactly like the Robin Egg Candies that they sell for Easter every year. And they’re so tiny!
Like I didn’t have enough to juggle. Oh well. It is very cool that we’ll get to see baby robins in a week or so.
Just this week, my husband and I were watching an American Robin in our front yard as it picked up grass in its bill. We watched, amused, and wondering how much it could possibly carry and how much more it would try to pick up. Finally, it took to wing and flew… right into the hedge outside the window of our spare bedroom. It landed on something that looked like a nest.
We hurried to the spare bedroom and looked out. There was a nest. Not only one nest, but a total of three nests, although only one was close enough to see clearly. The other two were obscured by foliage.
So I broke down and ordered a Wingscapes WSCA02 BirdCam 2.0 with Flash
Now we have the complication of how to mount it in the window at an angle that gives us a good view. I’ve designed a simple hinged board thing that we’ll probably put together this weekend and I’ll post photos of it after that, as well as whatever images the BirdCam captures.
I’m a bit concerned now, however, because we haven’t seen any activity at the nest at all since then, so it may be a moot point. If the camera doesn’t catch any activity after we have been monitoring it for a while, I’ll just move it around to the back yard and watch Pancho and Inez, my bluebird couple who may have moved into one of my bird houses.
In the meantime, enjoy this live camera feed of Great Blue Herons At the Cornell Lab in Ithaca, NY. They also have a live camera feed on a Red-Tailed Hawk.
First, updates to last Saturday’s status report.
Gluing the shells to the shell inlay box never happened. I never felt I had enough time to get it all done at once.
I did finish painting the very pink shadowbox, and set it aside to dry, and haven’t touched it since. So it’s time to start the decorating phase.
I completely finished my sunflower. Here is it. I took a lot of photos along the way, so there will probably be a step-by-step demo sometime in the future. Including my misstarts.
Sunflower
In place of the sunflower, I now have on my easel….
(I painted Great Blue Heron #1 back in December 2011.)
I take a lot of photos of Great Blue Herons, not only because they are fairly common birds around here year-round, but because I find them fascinating. They’re large, for one thing, and they allow the on-looker to get quite close sometimes. And they have a long curvy neck that is almost as much fun to draw as it is watch them fold it into a compact S to fly or stretch it out like a yardstick to peer at a fish beneath the water’s surface. And they have these huge beautiful wings that at first seem awkward and impossible, but then are so graceful and serene in the air.
Great Blue Heron Flying, Fri 24 Feb 2012, at Occoquan Bay NWR
(I’m saving the flying photo for a future painting, perhaps Great Blue Heron #3).
And finally, I also like these birds because – although they’re called ‘blue’ – they aren’t really blue at all. They’re some type of slate blue or slate gray or bluish gray that I find satisfyingly challenging to recreate in my painting.
And painting in all the ripples in the water is fun too.
Here’s my underpainting for Great Blue Heron #2, which I did last night.
Great Blue Heron #2 Underpainting
And you may have noticed I changed my background image again. I took this image yesterday at Occoquan Bay NWR. And if you scroll the post box all the way up, you’ll notice a great blue heron standing in the water, center stage.