So much like every morning here . . .

A few more are on the cartoonist's youtube page.

Baby birds today

(Double-click to get a bigger picture)

I discovered the cutest little baby birds tucked into a nest just off the front porch. I didn't want to get too close so the mom-bird wouldn't get nervous. She was constantly bringing food to the nest today. Check out the fuzzy heads--you can best see the fuzzy head on the bird on the right side.

Piedmont Farm Tour - Day 2 Slideshow

On day 2 of the Piedmont Farm Tour last weekend, we visited Timberwood Organics, Fickle Creek Farm,Chapel Hill Creamery, Pickards Mountain Eco Institute and Four Leaf Farm:



If you'd like to see which farms are which, and some captions, you can see the Flickr set here.

Slideshow of Piedmont Farm Tour - Day 1

I previously blogged about the Piedmont Farm Tour, which was held last weekend. I went both days, enjoyed myself thoroughly, and took some pictures. These farms sell flowers, produce, herbs, meat and eggs to our local farmers markets.

Below is the slideshow from the first day (last Saturday) and we visited several farms in northern Orange County: Maple Spring Gardens, Wild Hare Farms, Captain J.S. Pope Farm, Anatoth Community Garden, a farm not on the tour (a friend knew the farmers) and we saw llamas and alpacas there, and the last farm visited was Whitted Bowers Farm, a biodynamic farm.




Tomorrow I'll put up some pictures of the Day 2 of the Farm Tour.

If you'd like to see the captions of the pictures in the slideshow, detailing which farms the pictures are from just click here.

City slicker raccoons

I live close in to city center in Durham. Nevertheless we get plenty wildlife encounters. Bunnies eat my lettuce in my tiny garden down to a nub. Squirrels try to make a home in my attic. A hoot owl makes haunting owl calls far up in the trees late at night. But the raccoons! They practically ring the doorbell and ask for leftovers. Here's a picture my neighbor snapped early one morning of some raccoons near my garbage can:


Cute, yes. But up to something no doubt.

Last week one was banging around trying to--I guess--lift the top of the tall green rolling trash can. That's what it sounded like anyway.

When I came home from work day before yesterday, I found out one had been on my front porch. There are the raccoon tracks, right there in the yellow pollen on my front porch:



A friend suggested maybe with all the pollen, he was looking for Benadryl. Perhaps.

A Berry Breakfast

Outside my kitchen window this morning, a cold, fluffed-up cardinal chows down on berries. The berry tree was in the shade still but I snapped a few pictures anyway. (You can click the pictures to make them larger. )

Got weeds? Hire the Goats!

Instead of firing up the noisy weed-eater and possibly contracting poison ivy and a case of achy arms and shoulders, if you live 'round here, you can invite The Goat Patrol to your garden to handle your weeds and vines and unwanted vegetation. A friend mentioned she'd be witnessing The Goat Patrol taking down some weeds over the weekend and I was intrigued. Here they are in action a few days ago, doing their job and chowing down--not to mention providing entertainment.

You can even meet the herd before they come over to help you out.

Word was that the owner of the yard in the pictures above was very pleased after the job was complete, and that the little ones in the household were thrilled with the goats coming over for the day.


(Photos were provided courtesy of Wendy Evans.)

Fishing at the NC coast

Saturday I went fishing with my dad and nephew at the coast, off Topsail Island. We trolled and also did some bottom fishing. It was a spectacular day. The water was calm, the sky was blue, and the ocean was a beautiful blue-green. We stayed out on the boat for 7 hours and it passed by like 30 minutes it seemed. I took along my camera and here are some pictures (you can click to make them larger):

Sunrise, sound side, Topsail Island. I believe that is a Green Heron on the post:

Headed from the sound side to the ocean at daybreak:

Cannonball jellyfish:

Bottlenose Dolphin in Topsail Bay:

He's got a black sea bass there:

Octopus caught and went back into the water:

Turning bridge at Topsail Island.

Fish fry for dinner! (Thanks Mom & Dad!) Scallops, shrimp, slaw & hushpuppies too:

A Luna Moth!

A big beautiful Luna Moth came to visit on my front porch for a while. So magical, named after the Roman moon goddess.



The Luna Moth also appears in one of my all-time favorite modern novels, Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

Hope you find a bit of magic in your life this week too.

Loggerhead Turtle Nests on Topsail Island

We spent a long weekend on Topsail Island with my family and the weather was beautiful. A lot of the time we were on the beach swimming and playing in the sand and beach-combing and I am happy to report seeing several loggerhead turtle nests roped off just in one small section of coastline. They came complete with with warning signs--penalty up to $100,000 and also criminal prosecution with jail time. Everyone was very respectful of the nests.

One nest even had a little 'runway' dragged into the sand from the nest to the surf by the volunteers who help protect the sea turtles. Evidently the 'runway' means it's close to having the eggs hatch. It takes about 60 days from the time the mother loggerhead turtle lays the eggs until they hatch and the babies make their way out to the ocean. The nests will have volunteer babysitters (nestsitters?) to sit with the nests overnight so no idiot will vandalize the nests at night. An interesting article here from last Saturday about the nests this year: Sea turtles take over Topsail.

Topsail Island has one of the few "sea turtle hospitals" to help injured loggerheads recuperate and get back to the ocean. You can even vist Topsail's Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center. It seems to be a big hit with kids . . . and big kids like me too.

Here are some pictures I took:

A roped off nest near the dunes


The "runway" down to the surf:


The warning sign (click it twice to make it readable):


Here's a youtube video (not mine) of some Topsail Island loggerhead babies making their way to the ocean. And also a very quick video of a mother loggerhead on Topsail crawling back to the water.

Live web stream of a nest of baby robins at Duke

They are so cute! I got the stream to open best using the IE browser, which normally I don't use.

Here's the link:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/duke-university-baby-robins


About the birds from the link:

Two weeks ago, three baby robins hatched in a nest on a ledge outside our office window outside the Office of News and Communications at 615 Chapel Drive on the Duke University campus. Watch as the robins grow and prepare to leave the nest.

The Carolina Parrot

Imagine seeing these beautiful, bright native parrots flying from tree to tree to in your backyard. You very well could have in Durham and not that terribly long ago.


It was the only parrot species native to the eastern United States, and the last one was killed in the wild in 1904, and the last one died in captivity in 1918. In Audubon's time, the now extinct Carolina Parrot was the only common parrot species in the United States, and he captured its likeness as shown above. And this is what he wrote about it and its food, found here:

Doubtless, kind reader, you will say, while looking at the figures of Parakeets represented in the plate, that I spared not my labour. I never do, so anxious am I to promote your pleasure.

These birds are represented feeding on the plant commonly called the Cockle-bur. It is found much too plentifully in every State west of the Alleghanies, and in still greater profusion as you advance towards the Southern Districts. It grows in every field where the soil is good. The low alluvial lands along the Ohio and Mississippi are all supplied with it. Its growth is so measured that it ripens after the crops of grain are usually secured, and in some rich old fields it grows so exceedingly close, that to make one's way through the patches of it, at this late period, is no pleasant task. The burs stick so thickly to the clothes, as to prevent a person from walking with any kind of ease. The wool of sheep is also much injured by them; the tails and manes of horses are converted into such tangled masses, that the hair has to be cut close off, by which the natural beauty of these valuable animals is impaired. To this day, no useful property has been discovered in the cockle-bur, although in time it may prove as valuable either in medicine or chemistry as many other plants that had long been considered of no importance.

Yes! This native bird feasted on those nasty cockleburs that are the bane of anyone who's hiked through brush or undergrowth in these parts. I used to have to pick them out of the shiny coat of my black labrador retriever, one by prickly one, after we'd taken long walks through the fields and woods.

Sadly, part of what contributed to the Carolina Parrots' extinction is that the flock would often fly back to the spot where one of the flock had been felled by a shot, and where of course more would be shot, as described by Audubon:

Should a person shoot at them, as they go, and wound an individual, its cries are sufficient to bring back the whole flock, when the sportsman may kill as many as he pleases.

I'm so thankful that at least Audubon got to see them, describe and depict them for us so that we can at least imagine what it might've been like to catch a flash of bright yellow, green and red in the trees as we hiked down the Eno River. Still makes me angry that they are gone forever.

Cuteness overload

From the Norway Post:

Four lion cubs born in Norway (June 6, 2008)

At the Kristiansand Dyrepark (Zoo) the lioness Sera is the proud mother of four cubs born on Saturday morning, the first ever lion birth in Norway.
First reports had the number at three, but on Sunday a fourth came into view.
The zoo imported two male and two female lions when opened its Africa Theme Park just last year.

They have a really great live-streaming webcam trained on the 4 babies and the mother. It's worth a watch if the floods, crop failures, tornados, and earthquakes are getting to you.

Also a little more on them at the Zoo's site here.

The ol' sneaky dip n' sip

She doesn't care if the coffee is hot, or even if it has cream or milk in it. If you leave it unattended, she will be indulging her coffee habit by dipping her paw in it and licking it off her paw. I cannot tell you how many cups of coffee I've had to pour out over the years (she's 14) because I forgot about the damn cat's addiction. I've had other cats, none were coffee fiends.

First, make sure the coast is relatively clear.

Then stick the paw in the coffee, soaking it. Evidently, concentration is key.

Yummy, a nice robust blend.

Pollen Baskets

Lenore's beautiful picture over at her blog reminded me of a picture I took last month of a bee slurping the nectar out of an azalea bloom at Duke Gardens. Since I know next to nothing about bees, I was perplexed about the gobs of yellow on its legs so I looked it up. I was afraid something was wrong with the bee, but thankfully no. Pollen baskets are what they are called. If I learned that in school in science class at some point, I had completely forgotten it. The picture may have captured a couple of droplets of nectar falling away from the bloom as well. Messy eater?



Happy Springtime, Durham!

The turtle pond & the 36th parallel at Duke Gardens

We recently discovered a small turtle pond tucked away off the beaten path at Duke Gardens in the Native Plants section. Lots of turtles and and if you spinkle some cracked corn on the surface, they come gliding over, sticking their heads up to periodically to assess the situation. (If you want, you can click the pix to make them larger.)




Also, there at the turtle pond while I was taking pictures of the turtles, I was darn near standing on the marker below. I turned around and read it. It says: This is the 36th Parallel of Latitude, 3990 Kilometers, 2480 miles North of the Equator. So to a nerd like me, that was completely cool.

Looks like this Memorial Day weekend is going to be nice weather-wise, so I hope everyone gets out and explores the interesting and beautiful things all around Durham or wherever you find yourself.

I hated to see this on my car.

I got out of my car to pump some gas yesterday, and not only did the price of the gas make me feel like harfing, but a smushed bird egg was on my car. It was light blue and looked like a robin's egg maybe. Sorry mama bird, where ever you are.

Ducklings today at Duke Gardens!

The irises are in full bloom, the peonies are starting to bloom, the allium are terrific looking this week, and we just happened upon some duckings--bonus!

Happy Earth Day

Enjoy a tiny part of our freakish but amazing world:



Disclaimer: not my photography, found on the internerds . . .

Saturday 3.29.08 from 8 to 9pm

It's Earth Hour North America.

Sure it's largely symbolic, but what could it hurt? It's an interesting way to take time to talk to your family & friends about conservation. A way to see that other people care too. A way to ratchet up everyone's awareness.

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.

See also Embrace the Dark Side.

shoutout to Z for this