A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

In which commences a series of random shots showing the various activities of a bird nerd/educator during the late fall and early winter months in a remote western town on the high plains.

Part I: Birds. Specifically, bird shots taken on the Audubon waterfowl birding day. And a few other birds shots taken at other times.

The Western Meadowlark or Nebraska's State Bird. Not to be confused with his close cousin the
Eastern Meadowlark. Fortunately the Eastern doesn't live this far west so I'm spared the challenge
of learning two different meadowlark songs.

Kingfisher. Of the belted variety. I know, I know, it's a far away shot, but we were birding by car. Fortunately with kingfishers, that head gives their identity away no matter how hard they try to blend in.

Red-Tailed Hawk. I think my camera must have been on a low resolution setting as the picture gets very grainy when I zoom in. I'll readily admit that I don't know half of the things my camera is capable of...it's on my to-do list.

Coots! We saw thousands of coots on the birding day...this was the smallest flock (flotilla?) of the entire trip.

A flock of sandhill cranes, flying high and fast, heading south. Actually, they really only headed to the Grand Island, NE area and have been hanging out in wetlands there since the middle of October. They must know about the drought in Texas and decided there was more food here.

Ok fine, so they aren't all photos of living birds. The dead ones are important too you know. This juvenile gull was lying on our doorstep at work. I arrived one morning to find him lying exactly so, with no indications as to how he got there. As it turns out, one of our office-mates had left him for us for educational uses.

So I promptly and respectfully commandeered his wings for educational purposes. It's nice to have wings I can pass around and know that if they get damaged it's not that big of a deal. Those Trumpeter Swan wings I have are another story entirely. Hmmm...perhaps it's time for a post on the education animals that live in my office...

Part II: The Inland Lighthouse.

The lighthouse at Lake Minatare in western Nebraska is one of seven inland lighthouses built during the Great Depression to provide work for those seeking jobs. This particular lighthouse has never held a light for guiding ships to safety, although one of the Audubon members told me a story of when she was a teenager living here. She, her brother and a few friends were out at the lake after graduation and her brother had some flares in his truck. So, for a brief time at least, the Lake Minatare Lighthouse did in fact have a light.

It's a lovely, well-built little lighthouse, even if it serves no real practical purpose except as a bird-watching tower.


See? We do get color changes in the leaves here too. Just not as many as back east because we mostly have cottonwoods. But the grasses, shrubs and forbs go up in glorious golden browns.

The stairs to the top of the lighthouse are very narrow and rather dark, with most
of the light provided by these small windows set into the walls.

Fun with shadows.

The golden browns of dying grasses. Ok, so this photo is actually mostly of seed corn fields, but you get the idea.

Part III: Wanderings out to the Pacific Northwest. Or, "How I failed to take any photos of Eli and Rochelle's wedding or in Portland at all, but do manage to take a few around Seattle."

Time spent on trains and airplanes calls for knitting projects and good books. And stopping in the
middle of a stairway up to the Pike Place Market to pick up dropped stitches from said project.

Cool light fixtures on that same stairway up to the Market. I definitely took photos of almost every single one that I saw, but I will only inflict two of them on all of you. Aren't they cool though???

Here's another one of the light fixtures. Others were upside down, sideways, nearly any way that a person could be.

Sculpture outside of John's physics building at UW. I have no idea what this is supposed to be.
Neither does John. Anyone want to make a guess?

I have no idea what equation this is. Clearly something to do with physics. But I am not a physicist so all I see are funny symbols that, when multiplied and added together equal zero. I do at least understand the math symbols in there. But I thought it was pretty neat to have equations carved into the stone of the physics building. You know, in case of lost English majors or musicians.

Part IV: Tis the season for snow, celebrating, baking and knitting.

This is what I woke up to Saturday morning. We only got an inch or so, but it was lovely. I was quite tickled to discover that Scottsbluff also has and employs those nifty little sidewalk plows that Keene has.

Tracks outside the office door. Bird tracks is as far as I've gotten.

Almost inverted looking tracks also outside the office door. I'm pretty sure these belong to a rabbit as there are a few cottontails hanging around looking cold. Even a fur coat doesn't entirely cut out the chill of an 18 degree day!

The cold weather outside makes it feel even more like Christmas, even if it was likely not this cold near Bethlehem. Shepherds definitely do not watch their flocks by night out here. Or if they do, they watch them inside the barn.

The three wisemen traveling from 'afar', aka the small hanging shelf. They've got a ways to go before they arrive on Epiphany...it's a long trek around the living room after all. The camels are on strike this year, so naturally the wisemen are traveling by pig, elephant and purple violin-playing owl.

Mmmm....holiday baking. This is what is left of the cranberry apple pie I made over the weekend. My apples were beginning to wrinkle rather badly, and I threw in some cranberries (after saucing them) because why not? More baking photos to come...

I told you to keep an eye on the pile of squash, didn't I? It's slowly growing larger, despite my
baking many pumpkin/squash things. Oh, and that one that looks hairy and pointy and decidedly
not tasty? That's a sugar beet. Yup, I told you they were big.


Maybe you've heard about the newest member of my little family, and maybe you haven't. This is Squirt. She is a Barred Tiger Salamander, a native to these parts. She'll probably grow to twice this size eventually-more quickly if I keep feeding her giant nightcrawlers. She lives in a nice little box of Sphagnum moss with a few things to hide under.

This is Squirt on her first-ever school program trip. She behaved so well! :) She came along for one of our PEEP programs for the animal exploration segment and was the only live animal featured that day. Our usual round of live critters were out of town for a co-worker's wedding.

I give you, The Sock!!! There's a mate to this one out there somewhere, still happily wound in a ball.

This is how knitted projects get blocked in my apartment. That will soon be a scarf, but at the moment it's still drying. Also, please ignore the running clothes that are drying on the bicycles.

Part V: The wonder cat.

Because I can't end my post without giving you all at least one picture of my little ball of fur, I give you this one. The day Pavlov turned his back side green. Because he's just that good.