I had a good day today visiting our middle school, booktalking a bunch of great teen books to 7th and 8th graders of varying degrees of enthusiasm and attentiveness. :-) This was the first of my new monthly visits to the school. Hoping to become a more regular presence there than my previous annual visits in spring for summer booktalks. It was gratifying to be greeted by several students during the course of the day, "Hey I know you!" or "You came here last year!" so at least I'm a semi-familiar face.

Last weekend my niece had her sixth birthday party: so cute! She's lost her first tooth, that is quite the big milestone.




I uploaded a bunch of photos from a trip I took last year to Breyerfest--I'd forgotten that I never uploaded the rest of them, nor blogged about the other cool things I saw and did on the trip. Argh argh, too many photos, not enough time. The Gypsy/circus stunt riders were amazing:

They did all kinds of riding tricks on horses that galloped around the ring, like moving themselves from one side of the horse to the other, from in the saddle, all the way under the horse and back up again in a circle--as the horse never faltered. It was incredibly exciting to watch. So were the demonstrations of various breeds at the Horse Park, such as this Friesian:

Click on the photo for more photos of gypsy riders upside down and all over the place.

And as I walked around the horse park I came across a lone Great Blue Heron, who was enjoying the pond life. I am just fascinated by these birds, and I always love a chance to get a close up of one.




That's it for now--looking forward to a visit by an out-of-state friend this weekend, and getting to see author Neil Gaiman in person! Woo-hoo!

I had a fantastic Friday indeed! My friend Diana and I took our minds off the current library budget crisis by driving to our friend Chrissy's house (she used to work with us at our library) to spend the afternoon picnicking and playing with Chrissy's beautiful daughter Katie and her handsome well-behaved stoic dog Carl. (Anyone know the great picture books, "Good Dog Carl" etc by Alexandra Day? That Carl is a Rottweiler but this Carl has a similar wonderful personality and is great with kids, and he's named after the storybook dog.) This Carl is half Doberman Pinscher and half Rhodesian Ridgeback.

We had a wonderful time. Three-year-old temper tantrums aside, Katie is perfectly charming and so.darn.cute. (OK loyal Auntie Christina has to say she' s not as cute as my niece Mira, but it's a close thing!! Grin) Here she's on her trampoline. We played games and had chicken and potato salad outside in the not-quite-too-hot yard. Saw their fantastic acreage, pond, toads hopping about, nice idyllic place to raise kids. (and let a dog run about!) Then we ended with a visit to Chrissy's library, which is a very nice small town library with a great collection, friendlyl staff, and this cool statue outside.

I'm always up for a visit to a library, and I hadn't been to the Newton Falls library since Chrissy began working there. I saw a couple of things that I found new and interesting and filed away to maybe implement at my library someday, which often happens when I go on busman's holidays like that. I just hope that the impending budget axe doesn't hit this library too hard.

I returned home in time to see our killdeer have returned and raised a pair of young again--only this time I was able to see them and take photos! yay! Last year I never did get to see the babies.

We were concerned that moving the horses in from the paddock might result in killdeer roadkill, since the birds were running around the ring where the horses must pass through, so we were careful not to go near them. I had to go feed in the barn so I didn't see how it went, but I'm sure the birds were fast enough to get out of the way. We have another horse show on Sunday so there's lots of mowing and weedwhacking and maintenance going on; those birds had best take a holiday for a while.

Saturday morning on the way to a horse show, I had to stop and take photos of this huge group of buzzards (turkey vultures) all perched on a high tension wire pylon. It was kinda creepy... They're fascinating birds, and I've never seen so many in one place before! We figured they were eyeing the delicious fresh roadkill that was on the road right next to the tower.



They might also have been having their daily morning roll call or something. "Okay, Hank, today you patrol over by the school dumpsters, they've had some good stuff thrown out lately, and Merv, you aim for Rte. 261, find us some runover squirrels..." Tee Hee.

Here I go with more bird photos--I think I am really turning into a birdwatcher! This past week or so we have been amused by a pair of killdeer who laid eggs in the grass along our gravel driveway. I thought it was the worst possible place to nest, as it's not your usual driveway with one or two cars driving in once or twice a day. Oh no, we have lots of cars from boarders and the farm owners and the gas truck and the delivery trucks and also frequent golf carts of farm personnel coming and going, plus tractors and stuff. But I've been reading up on killdeer and apparently they are not fazed by human activity at all. However, a lone human walking past their nesting area at the crack of dawn, THAT is worthy of a red alert! Because every morning when I walked down the drive to get the newspaper, sometimes accompanied by Callie the barn cat but sometimes not, I'd be accosted by these birds. They start up cheeping, first, in their distinctive cry that is supposed to sound like "killdeer" but to me just sounded like a high-pitched cheep, and both parents work in tandem. You could hear them in alternating stereo as they chirped back and forth, one running ahead of me and the other off in another direction.


They were quite comical, running around very fast, then suddenly flying up to take up another position.
The one in front would start the big ploy, fluffing out his feathers and faking an injured wing, in hopes of getting the big bad predator to follow him and ignore the nest.


But I also felt bad for them as they kept this up for many minutes while I hunted around the ground for the nest and took their picture; I was worried I was giving them heart attacks! I never did find the "nest' (it is usually just a depression in the ground), nor did I see the first baby chick, which really irked me because my neighbor Sandy saw it a few times, running after Mom or Dad and looking like a little fluffball version of them. She also showed the chick to friends, but it was never around when I was home to see it. Sigh. We even got our boss to avoid mowing the grass in that strip, in hopes of keeping the chicks safe til they were ready to move on. It was fun while it lasted; I don't think I'd ever seen killdeer before, or at least had not known what I was looking at. They're pretty cool!

Tonight while riding a short ride through the neighborhood I encountered two wild birds, which I have seen before but never been able to identify. I thought they were "peahens" but upon looking that up discovered it was female peacocks, and these weren't them. They are gray and round, with short necks, white underbellies. The one time I didn't ride with my camera in my bike bag, darn it. (If you look at this cell phone picture on Flickr you'll see the Note I put on it, a box around the bird--it's on the driveway) Somewhere in my disorganized apartment I have a proper photo of one from a few years ago, that I saw walking on the side of the road every day while I was driving to work and finally captured on film. But I have no idea how to locate that picture right now. Saturday at work I'll try looking through some proper bird books to see what it is. I don't think it's a grouse, quail or a pheasant either. Grrr. It's going to bother me all night! Oh Red, queen of all things zoological, might you know off the top of your head? :-)

During our break time at the Youth Services Symposium (see previous post), a friend and I went walking on the nature trail that is adjacent to the golf course at the resort. I've been attending this conference since probably 1994 or 95, and in all the times it has been held at Sawmill Creek I never knew this place existed! I had only hung out inside the conference center. Turns out there is a Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve right there. It was fantastic. In only half an hour or so, we spotted at least seven vastly different species of birds, from egrets to red-winged blackbirds, and saw a beaver (or muskrat? You be the judge!) in the water. I really wanted to take the trail all the way to Lake Erie, its end point, but we didn't have enough time for that long of a walk. (Especially with me stopping every yard or so to snap a dozen photos!) I also wanted to go at sunset, but that was right during dinner, and believe me, you don't miss out on a Sawmill Creek Lodge dinner, they're very good. So, the following are some of the nature shots I got from that short walk. I was having fun being Marlin Perkins... (anybody remember him from the old Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom show? :-)

I think this is a Downy Woodpecker, but I didn't see any red on the back of the head, so if that's correct then it is a female. (I never used to be much of a birdwatcher, but as I find I enjoy taking photos of them, I am learning a lot more about them!)



Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam... okay okay I won't go on and force you to get that song stuck in your head. This might be a beaver, I couldn't tell from the quick glimpse we had of it as the sun was setting and it swam speedily by. I never saw the tail, flat or round. It seemed smaller than a beaver, but I haven't seen one of those up close in ages. I also did not see any dams or lodges nearby, and the fact that it was carrying reeds or leaves, and not sticks, all made me think muskrat. But who knows really. He was cute whatever he was.

One more:


The Red-winged Blackbird. Very common, but this is the first time I've ever gotten a really good photo of one, and he's singing, too! I was just tickled...
There's more on the flickr stream, shots of the marsh as a whole, but you can explore those on your own. Thanks for reading this far.