Cowbirds

Every spring, I get a chance to try and right the balance of nature in one small way. Brown Headed cowbirds seem to flock to my feeders just as all of the leaves are exploding onto the trees and the myriad small birds in the neighborhood are building nests and starting families.



Brown Headed Cowbird Male

Cowbirds which are native to the American Great Plains, are birds which lay their eggs in a host bird's nest and allow the host to raise their young. Often, the cowbird chick is larger and more aggressive than the host and either out competes the host chick or simply pushes them out of the nest. Their favorite target is the various migratory tropical species that love to nest around my house, species that are already under real pressure due to habitat destruction, etc.



Cowbird egg in host nest

Cowbirds are not native to this part of North Carolina. They have moved in as deforestation has occurred and we resemble their native prairie. As they have moved in, their ways have decimated many of the afore mentioned species. I try to help them by shooting the female birds around my feeders. The females are easily recognizable by their gray color.




Female Cowbird

I use a pellet gun and am able to get them about half the time without disturbing the other birds too much. By this time of the year, there is a decided shift to more males than females around my feeders. Cowbirds are not particularly cautious! Hopefully I can save a few of our rare birds from this interloper.

Deer in the Yard

I haven't made a post in forever, but there was just an update of my blogging tool, Scribefire. I just wanted to give it a spin, especially to see if the picture posting function would work. It sure seems to work well and is slick.



Anyhow, this is a picture from a month or so ago of a deer (there were many of them) in our yard. They have no fear! It looks as if none were shot this year, but I know that that is not so. They come out at least twice a day to eat at the corn feeder. Maybe we will get a few next year. No chance that I will be able to have a garden this year!

The Old Man and the Sea

As all may know, we went to Ocracoke this past September for one of the family rituals that we have nurtured through the years (along with the fair in October, Texas in July, Badin Lake in March etc). Chubby and Sallie came in from Texas and Brittney breezed in from UNC the last couple of days. Well, our trip is old news, but suffice it to say that we had a great time. If it weren't for the mosquitoes that nearly carried us away, I believe it might have been even better.

Chubby saved his money and wanted us to go out on a charter boat and catch a "big fish". We chartered a boat and went out on Thursday morning, which turned out to be the first day of the week with threatening weather. Still, we made it to the wreck without difficulty. We did have some waves which made it easy to get a little queezy (just ask Hunter). Once on the wreck, we started fishing and almost immediately started hanging fish. The first several cut the lines but eventually, we started hooking some that stayed on. This one was the biggest of the day, an Amberjack weighing 46#. We caught two others greater than 25 pounds.

Hunter caught a bunch of Vermilion snappers, but wasn't quite able to bring in the Amberjacks. I believe he did help us though by his frequent "chumming" of the waters :-)

Hunter and Dad's Mountain Tour

Hunter and I just got back from a two day trip to the North Carolina northern mountains. Hunter had wanted to go and we couldn't have picked a better time. The weather was phenomenal - mid 70's while down in the lowland it was the high 90's!
We started out on Wednesday morning in the truck and headed west. I always like to go different ways when I have time, so we went through all the odd towns. Albermarle, Granite Quarry, Salisbury, Statesville, Taylorsville, Lenoir. And then, the mountain. Hunter wanted to go all the back roads, so of course we went up the mountain on mostly gravel roads. It took a long time, but it really was fun. Twisting and turning, switchbacks to get up the steepest parts. The road followed the creeks, so there were frequent pull offs where you could walk to the creek and hop from rock to rock. We saw only one or two cars the whole way up the mountain. The road and all the bridges were one lane. Along the way, we met the man that grades this road. He was on an old road grader that had no seat. Talk about a nerve racking job! Having to go around all those curves with the grader. One wheel off the edge and down you go!
When we finally got to the top, we came out in the small town of Linville. It was late in the day, but we wanted to try and make it to the Linville Caverns before they closed. We got there just in time for the last tour. Not the most extensive caverns I have ever seen, but interesting. Hunter got to ask a bunch of questions and saw a few bats roosting in the cave. We also got to experience "total darkness" and a real scary story about a couple of 15 year olds that dropped their only lantern in the water when exploring the cave. Said that they finally made it out after two days by following the flow of the water.
Later that night, we got to Boone and went to the show "Horn in the West". It was supposed to last 2 1/2 hours, but we got rained out at the intermission. The show was about Dan'l Boone and the early pioneers that came through the area.
We spent the night in a Boone hotel and next morning, we headed north for a day of backroad driving, geocaching, and exploring small towns and tourist shops. We went through Todd (and it's general store), Trout, Jefferson, and Sparta. We found a couple of caches in the high mountains, one on the New River and one in a park in Jefferson. All beautiful places. On the way home from Sparta, we took a much faster road. Came down through Roaring Gap on 21 to Elkin. Once we got to 421, it was smooth riding all the way home. It was an awakening to get down the mountain where it was hot again. Now we are just waiting to do it again!

Hunter and Dad's Eastern NC Trip

Hunter and I made a trip "down east" to the Aurora Fossil museum (among other places). We are trying to go somewhere every month at least this summer while Hunter is out of school and I am on a stretch off of work. Aurora has always been a destination that I have wanted to go to as we pass the ferry going there every year while traveling to Ocracoke. Of course, then we have no time!

We left fairly early in the morning on Thursday. Our plan was to make the trip east while stopping frequently in the areas we were traveling through to geocache. My new GPSr has a mapping feature, so as you travel, it will show geocaches in the area. If one is convenient, we would look it up on my pda (yes, I do paperless geocaching now - what a geek!) and if it looked interesting, we would stop to find it. Although this does not make for fast traveling, it does add a lot of interesting stops along the way.

We got to Aurora middle of the afternoon, and it was hot. The museum in Aurora is very nice with lots of fossil displays. We spent the first of our time in Aurora looking through the museum. It was air conditioned! Later, we were in the pilings out front looking for some fossils of our own. The pile that we looked through had lots of sharks teeth, coral pieces and other small fossils. No big ones would ever be found, as this material had been pumped through a sludge pump. To find the really nice, larger teeth and bones, it is necessary to go into the phosphate mine itself, and this requires forsight and cash. You have to apply and pay a membership fee.

After a couple hours there, we left to go towards New Bern. After stopping at Charlie's restaurant to have a bite, we got into New Bern about dark. I did my normal routine - drove into a neighborhood and found some wireless access, looked up local motels on google and started calling. Within a few minutes, I had us a room at the Comfort Inn on the waterfront. We got in our room and took a walk in Federal Park on the waterfront. Lots of history there. This is on the point overlooking the river and the site of the Union takeover in the War of Northern Aggression.

Next morning, Hunter and I went to Tryon Palace, paid the fees and started touring the grounds. Hot and dry! We were there on a day that was not busy. We got to meet a family dressed in period clothes and on the tour of the palace, we got to meet Governor Tryon himself! Hunter had a few questions for him. The palace grounds have lots of gardens. Some of them were suffering from the heat and drought, but overall, very pretty.

After seeing the palace, we left New Bern and began the trip towards Wilmington. We still had some geocaching to do, as well as a trip to Hammock's Beach State Park. I would recommend it to anyone with half a day or more to spare. A very beautiful beach, and lightly used. The sea turtles had laid eggs in the dunes the night before. We almost got stranded on the island (you have to take a boat to the island), but we caught the last boat off just as a thunderstorm was approaching. We got back to the car, found a couple more geocaches on our trip towards Wilmington, and ate pizza at a small pizza joint on the way. Got to Steve's place just after dark. Joy and the rest of the family were on there way, but had not gotten there yet. They did arrive very late that night.

The next morning, Joy, Walker and I went out to the yard sales, something we do a lot of Saturday mornings. We didn't find any interesting steals however, so we went back to the house. The rest of the day was spent between the pier, in the kayak and the deck on the house where we set up Walker's kiddy pool. He had a great time in the pool! Next day after lunch, we began the trip back. Took it kind of slow and got back late in the day. Glad to be home, but all in all, a great trip!

Visit to NC Museum of Natural History

Hunter and I took a trip to Raleigh on Tuesday to vist the museum. What prodded us to go was a display of Todd Pusser's photography there, but as all know, I can get lost in any museum, particularly natural history.

When we got into town, our first challenge was finding a parking space. I had come to town with no cash, so I could not put money in a parking meter nor could I pay the attendent in the parking lots. I had to drive around to find a teller, then we had to go back downtown and find a lot with vacancies. All in all, it took awhile.

The museum tour was nice. Hunter and I both got an audio tourguide that told us about the exhibits as we went. We probably spent too much time there, at least according to Hunter. I believe that we were there at least 4 hours!

I got Hunter's picture (above) at the entrance to the museum on our way out. It really was a beautiful day! We left Raleigh on our way to Streets of Southpoint to see the exhibition (Bodies: the exhibition). I really thought it was incredible. Every organ and system in the body was seen from virtually every angle. If you have not seen it, you should go. It is expensive ($25), but if you are interested in this sort of thing, it is well worth it. I saw a comment from someone saying it made them appreciate and want to take care of their body. It made me feel that way too. Once again, I believe I probably enjoyed it more than Hunter, but it was good for us both.

Afterward, we ate at the California Pizza factory (way overpriced and over hyped) and on our way home.

Next week, Hunter and I are going to Aurora to look for marine fossils! Look for more to come then!

New Blogger Google Widget for Macs

Well, it is the middle of the night and I am at work.  Things are running smoothly, so I found this google widget to do blog postings on our blogger website.  You may remember that I have tried "Performancing", which is a Firefox addon that you can use to post to blogger with. Performancing has been nice but spotty.  Also, you cannot post pictures directly to blogger using it.  If you have the pictures hosted on another site, you can post links to them.  I believe this google widget will have that limitation as well, but at least it will probably work each time you try to use it.  It does make it a lot easier to post an entry if you do not have to go to the site, log in, etc etc.  

Well, that is it for tonight.