Yard Cleaning

With all the snow and rain I've been quite lazy about cleaning up after the dogs. I spent an hour or so this morning filling 5 trash bags. I'll probably need to fill two more before I consider it done. This cleaning led to my first fungus photo of the year.

Daily Photo - Clouds

Today had some very nice clouds before the snow rolled in, too bad I was stuck places with power lines the whole time. I did finally get a new cell phone, well, new to me. I set it up using an eBay guide I found and didn't even have to talk to Verizon. It seems to work great and I didn't have to go into the store or talk to an actual person.

Daily Photo - I Saw the Sun

for a little while this morning anyway. It's been raining for 3 days now...everyone else nearby is getting snow.

Daily Photo - Woo Hoo

The bird should be fine and best of all no more medicating. The vet said her leg looks 100% better and I did excellent with the medicating (thanks mom!) That means it's time to rebuild some trust as she was getting mighty tired of getting that stuff put on her leg. She liked the oral antibiotic though.

Daily Photo - Sunset

From a few weeks ago.

Daily Photo - Pretty Kitty

I didn't get the photo I was trying for, but I rather liked this one.

Max is Mad

I'm about halfway through medicating Max, and she is getting mighty tired of it. Apparently the oral antibiotic tastes good, so other than getting it all over her face she likes that one. The stuff to go on her foot though, that she could do without. I've had to start using a towel so her foot is easily reachable. It looks so much better though.

Disposable Electronics

I killed my cell phone. It has been in not so nice shape since last July when the anchor screw in the back disappeared and dropping that metal clamp on it a few months ago just made it worse. I finally dropped it and appear to have severed its ability to communicate with its top half meaning the buttons light up but it appears to do nothing to the screen. But I can still turn it on and off, so possibly just the display portion of the connection is dead. It brings to mind my annoyance with he disposable electronics industry. My phone was originally my sister's but it "broke" on her and she had to upgrade. It sat around for a while until I finally got a cell phone. It has worked reliably well since then even with being in a condition of maybe 1 out of 10 cosmetically. All of the rubber bumpers have worn off and the screen has imprints of all the buttons. The metallic finish on the battery is almost all worn off, and most of the side buttons only work when they want to. yet it still worked fine for texting and phone calls. I rather like the build quality. It was new in 2004. All my relatives have gone though phones, like having them for two years is impossible, they just keep breaking. As it is now undeniably dead I'm going to need to get a new one. I've been thinking of just buying another one of my current phone on eBay and irritating the Verizon people who will activate it. All the new free phones I've seen are tiny pieces of junk. My mothers new phone, only a few weeks old drops calls all the time due to an idiotic placement of the antenna exactly where anyone using it will have to put fingers. My painfully old phone didn't do that. It also put up with a lot of punishment. I'll be seeing if anything can be retrieved from my phone, but I'm not holding out much hope. edit: The phone is dead, guess I have to ask people to call or text me when I get the next one so I have all their numbers again.

Daily Photo - My Smallest Snake

I keep seeing this guy wandering around his cage and I think wow that one's getting bigger, then I pull it out and it is barely long enough to wrap around my hand... at least it's very friendly.

Daily Photo - Dimetrodon

Skull Pic from Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge MA. It wasn't a bad museum for being so tiny. Some of the stuffed animals are showing their age though.

Entering A Contest

This text was written on Jan. 28 before submitting photos. I didn't place, though I haven't seen the ones that won yet. Back in December I noticed a link on Mass Audubon for a photo contest at Daniel Webster. The big requirement was for the photos to have been taken at Daniel Webster. I'm entering 3 photos. One of frost and frozen dew and the two below. Even though I've been watching this contest for a while, I only just got my act together but the photos are now printed. They're in their frames and my info is on the back. The photos will all be on display February 26 – March 19 at North River Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield MA.

Daily Photo - I Got Lazy

Here's another house sparrow from last weekend. I think it's even the same bird.

Bird Vet

Until today this band has been around my cockatiel Max's leg. A few days ago I noticed her leg was swollen. Yesterday I caught her and found that the band could not be rotated around her leg. Off to the vet we went today. It took about 45 minutes for them to get the band loosened enough to try to cut it off. Underneath the band area she has a nasty wound. Now I get to medicate a very irritated cockatiel for the next week (at least 3 times a day.) However she should be fine and the vet fit me in the same day I called, which is much better than the reptile vet I tried a few weeks ago. I'll freely admit that critters smaller than cats do not go to a vet every year. They go when they present with an injury or issue. It had been at least 6 years since Max had seen a vet. The nice part was she was much better behaved this time. She didn't have to be toweled for the first exam, just when they started fiddling with the foot. I found the vet nicer as well. So far it's all worked out as well as can be expected.

Daily Photo - Snowy Tree Branches

From yesterday.

Daily Photo - Checking for Dinner

My Kenyan Sand Boa ifs the only snake who gets fed in his cage. I leave a plastic deli cup cover in there at all times and his food gets dropped on it twice a week (to cut down on him maybe eating his bedding). He starts checking the cover a few days before he's scheduled to be fed. Turns out last night he was right.

Daily Photo - More Parking Lot Clouds

Lazy diy and House Reorganizing

I meant to post this yesterday and got lazy.

I again got frustrated with my reptile room. I have one rule I try to live by, no cages on the floor. If I don't have a stand for them I likely have too many of them. Since a few weeks ago when I upgraded the corn snakes on has been on the floor. Cages on the floor somehow breed other cages on the floor and one of the crested gecko cages has been stacked on top of it. It's been driving me nuts. I of course have an obsessive plan of a huge stand system but most of the bits don't fit in my car. I've been too lazy to do anything about that either. Yesterday, I took another look around the house and found a solution. I was/am a bit of a fish nut and collected all sorts of stuff. one thing was a huge metal stand I had absolutely no use for at the time. Turns out it was the perfect size to replace a set of cabinets with, and fit the snake cage across the bottom so I could still have the plants across the top. I just had to go buy a board as a new top. I'm probably going to pull my last metal stand out of the basement for the cricket cage to go on the bottom, then add a board to the top and have an empty flat surface. I normally fail at empty, but I need something to stack the feeding snakes on that isn't the floor (cat annoys them) or the other cages (annoys me.)

There were very nice clouds at Home Depot.

I decided to solve one of my other issues at the same time. I fiddled around with my bedroom a few weeks ago and found I wanted a bigger desk. I didn't want to buy a new desk though (I'm picky about desks, I've had three of them in the last 7 or so years, all sold on craigslist when I bought a new one.) I had been thinking of just buying a board at ikea and cutting it to fit. Turns out if I was stuck with 4 feet long anyway HD was a better deal. I bought the edging stuff too but likely will return it as too much work. The melamine board fits right over the old desktop, due to some very painful cutting with a jigsaw. I had a productive if boring Sunday. I also fiddled a bit with the blog settings but it probably isn't too noticeable.

Daily Photo - Snake Caging

This would be why any snake should ALWAYS have cage clips on their cage. They have nothing to do but plan to escape. (No Mom I'm not missing anyone.)

Obsessive Tendencies

I'll be the first to admit that I have a bit of an organization problem. I am either perfectly organized or scatterbrained to the extreme. This is my current little obsessive organizational thing. I got a map of Massachusetts (Rhode Island and Connecticut were bonuses) and I'm putting pins into all the state parks, state forests, national wildlife reserves, Audubon sanctuaries, trustees of reservations properties and anything else I might want to hike through. I hope it's worth it. And yes, I'm color coding the pins...

Daily Photo - Moon Rise

From Thursday morning.

Daily Photo - House Sparrow

With direct sunlight, a very light background and a flash I can almost get the quality I want out of my 55-250 lens.

Found A Better Photo For Today

I went out to clear off the bird feeders after the snow and found this.

Out of the wind and full of food what else could a bird want. He flew away when I went to clean off the feeder so he certainly wasn't stuck.

Daily Photo - Snow Plow

We got snow, but not much more than 4 inches.

Daily Photo - Waiting For Snow

It's just starting to snow now.

Daily Photo - Snow

I should be getting 6-12 inches tomorrow. I was so disappointed last weekend when DC got buried and we got a bare dusting. I want to use my snowshoes at least once more this year.

Daily Photo - Powder Puff

Flower from Magic Wings.

I Went to Magic Wings Again

I would label them but the id chart I found cleaning my bedroom last week has since disappeared again. (edit: found the chart) (Cairns Birdwing - ornithoptera priamus) I think this was a new one. (Gray Cracker - Hamadryas februa) So was this one. (Indian Leaf - Kallima paralekta) (no id) Some kind of swallowtail, also new. (Giant Swallowtail - Papilio thoas) The Blue Morpho that I hauled around on my pants for a while before I noticed it. (Blue Morpho - Morpho peleides) (Zebra Longwing - Heliconius charitonia) This guy was just getting mobbed by the common zebras. (no id) Glasswings, my personal favorite. (Glasswing - Greta oto) (Cairns Birdwing - ornithoptera priamus) (Heliconius sp.) My mother's favorite. (Cairns Birdwing - ornithoptera priamus)

Daily Photo - More Ice

From Moose Hill.

Broadmoor Footprints and Ice

It was cold and clear Thursday morning this week and I managed to finally go two places in a week. A light snow fell Wednesday. A nice shallow sticky snow, so I found lots of nice footprints Thursday.

Fox Track

Confusing Bird tracks

Raccoon Tracks, there were tons of these all across the Charles River crisscrossing back and forth. I really liked the patterns of snow over the roots. The sunlight coming from behind was just a bonus. I have no idea what these are the tracks of, but they were maybe the size of my fingertips. There weren't many around the rock, so I'm not really sure where the critter came from but they really liked this rock. Most of the trails had a light cover of snow but under that was a sheet of ice in many places. The locations of the ice were kind of random, so there was plenty of sudden slipping. In the field around the wildlife pond I keep seeing red tailed hawks overlooking the pond. Thursday there was only one, often I've seen two. Most of the time they get chased off by blue jays before I get close enough to even really see them. I'm still deciding what my next lens will be. The above is as close as I could get to a hawk. I expect I'm not going to be getting much closer to one. The above was fully zoomed with my 250 mm lens. The hawk still looks like a little white smear. Even if I get a new 200 mm zoom, that would be able to take pics at f/4, rather than having to stop down to f/8 to get good shots, getting close would still be a problem. If I can't get closer to the subject a better lens won't help. The waterfalls are nicely frozen. One is now frozen completely over. It didn't occur to me for a few hours that I completely forgot to use my polarizer for the water. I had plenty of fun, though I didn't actually see many critters.