Bird Feeding

 Trish and I love to feed the birds.  We have nine bird feeders that we can watch out our kitchen window.  When it is warm enough to sit on the screen porch we will also begin feeding on the other side of the house.

We have a large population of mourning doves around our yard and they love the big open feeders where they have room for their large bodies without trying to keep from falling off.

There are many many red-winged blackbirds who eat with us.  I have counted more than forty at one time.  They eat from the feeders but also eat up what the other birds scatter on the ground.  We appreciate that.  We also have an occasional incursion of grackles that we do not especially appreciate.

There is a new feeder attached directly to the window above the kitchen sink.  There we are face to face with the birds.  The smaller ones seem to like this feeder, but, this morning I had a wonderful extended close-up visit with a male cardinal.  He was enjoying peanuts!  

These little animals add joy to our hearts, especially when the weather is fine for them but too bad for us to be outdoors.

Spring!

 Springtime is beginning to show its head on the island.  Normally the spring season here is a bit like a roller coaster.  Our weather is driven by the meeting of the predominant weather flow that crosses up through the south from southwest to northeast and its meeting here with the warmer Gulf Stream.  Added is an occasional Northeaster backflow that we never welcome. It is a rollercoaster season with a few days of 70’s and a few days of 40’s alternating.

But, more good weather is coming!  The emerging blooms bear their witness.  Our daffodils are in full glory and lots of plants, both set out and native, are showing their colors.  We look forward to the gradual coming to life of the whole island as warmer weather brings not only flowers but our welcome tourists once again.

Opportunist!

 On our recent trip to LaGrange, we spent a night in Durham at our usual stop-over Hilton.  We like this place to stop because it is right across from our car dealer if we need any of the cars serviced, and, because the hotel is attached to a Ruth’s Chris Steak House.  The food is good and the wait staff is friendly and charming.

On this visit, after we had spent the night, we were getting ready to go the next morning when I looked out the window to check on the weather. Our room happened to be located directly above the trash bins behind the steak house...where all of their discards and meal remnants must end up.

Seated happily on the enclosure and celebrating the bounty of his find was perched a turkey buzzard. He had probably sniffed out a feast much tastier than road kill.  We laughed and wished him bon appetit and will think of him again next time we eat there.

Coming Back to Life?

 This past weekend was a very important time.  After a full year without standing in front of a live audience for storytelling, it happened!  It was very controlled and safe, but it felt wonderful.

This year should have been the 25th Anniversary year for the Azalea Storytelling Festival in LaGrange, Georgia.  When it became obvious, due to COVID, that the normal 25th could not happen, another plan was put in place.

The scheduled tellers were rescheduled for next year and a plan was made to have year 24 1/2 this year.

Trish and I drove down to LaGrange where I had two performances, one afternoon and one evening, on the normal Saturday of the festival.  We were in the recently renovated Wesley Hall of First United Methodist Church for their first event there since renovation which included new HVAC filtration.

There was planned spacing with mask wearing.  As each ticket party arrived they were escorted to their assigned spaced seats and instructed to remain there through the program and until they were escorted out.  I did not have contact with anyone except from the distance of the stage.  It was also possible to buy live-streaming tickets for the event and we had a large audience of home viewers.

This event felt so good, and, it kept the Azalea Festival alive and in people’s minds until the real 25th can happen next year.  One wonderful feature of Saturday was that my part was framed by beautiful pre-filmed cameos by the other tellers for next year: Ed Stivender, Kevin Kling, and Josh Goforth.  We were also uplifted by Carol Cain’s marvelous emcee care.

I hope that you will start planning now the the 25th Annual Azalea Storytelling Festival the first full weekend in March of 2022 in LaGrange, Georgia.

Another Ship Finished!

 My return to an old hobby of building model wooden ships has been a wonderful thing during this long COVID season.  I recently finished another ship model and have already laid the keel for its successor.

The ship that I finished is a fifteenth century Iberian Caravel.  This is the most dominant ship of Spanish and Portuguese sailors for nearly three hundred years.

This was the type ship used by explorers like Bartolemo Diaz and Vasco da Gama.  Also, the Pinta and Nina of Columbus were Caravels like this one.

The ship would have been fifty feet long and carried a crew of about twenty-four.  

The Caravel could be rigged in two different ways.  I built this one rigged with Lateen sails.  These triangular sails could go against the wind and also made the ship very maneuverable in sailing along coastlines and in and out of ports for trading.  It could, however, also be rigged with square sails.  This was not as maneuverable but produced more speed for long travel.  The Columbus ships were square sailed.

One of the things you don’t see with the finished model is that it is double-planked on the hull.  There is an under layer of planking that gives the hull shape and strength and then the outer planking that is the finished hull.  You also cannot see some of the things below deck that disappear as the ship is finished.

Building these ships as we live on the island reminds us of the history of where we live.

Living in Birdland

 One of the nice things about living on a barrier island is that we are home to two totally different kinds of bird populations.  In our yard and at our bird feeders we have a variety of songbirds: cardinals, doves, mockingbirds, various finches and others.

In addition, since we are by the ocean, we have a large variety of shore birds. These range from great blue herons to brown pelicans to a variety of different gulls.

This week we looked down the street and saw a large number of medium sized white birds that seemed to be feeding.  We had had a lot of rain and there was standing water in a large grassy lot that has no house in it.  We slipped quietly down there and discovered fifteen American White Ibises searching for food through the shallow water.

Sometimes we see one of these birds at a time, but we had never seen fifteen at one time at one place and that being our own little street.

They live from Virginia south and eat insects and small things like fish and crayfish.  They we feeling through the shallow water for insects and they paid no attention to us. We stood and watched then for quite a while and when we left they were still there. 

The individual birds weigh from two to three pounds and have pink legs and orange-pink down-curved beaks.  They cannot see their food but feel for it with these specialized beaks.  We feel lucky to live in a place that is so rich with healthy birds.

Vaccination!

 We were in Florida when the first Moderna vaccine arrived on the island, so I missed out on the initial round of shots.  But, just when we got home, there was a new call from Mandy at the Ocracoke Health Center.

“We are getting ten more doses on vaccine on Wednesday or Thursday, so, I will call you when the vaccine is actually here and make an appointment for your shot.”

On Thursday the call came and all of the appointments for those ten doses were being lined up on the following Monday.

My appointment was set for 1:45 on Monday.  The instructions were to drive up to the clinic parking lot and wait in the car.  

As soon as Trish and I arrived in the parking lot, Lucy O’Neal, one of our RNs, came out to the car gloved and masked and carrying all of her needed equipment.  I rolled down the window and signed the paperwork, then got the Moderna shot.  Lucy then gave us a walkie-talkie and told us to wait for fifteen minutes in the car.  If I had any adverse reactions, we were simply to call them on the walkie-talkie.  In fifteen minutes she returned, reclaimed the little device, and we headed home.

I had no reaction to the shot that day or the following day.  The day after that I felt a little punky all day (may have been because it had been raining for days) but the following day all seemed normal.  My second dose is scheduled for March 8.

We are so very fortunate on the island to have the Health Center.  The staff is led by Dr. Erin Baker, who is an absolutely thorough and caregiving primary care physician.  She is backed up by two RN’s, a phlebotomist, and additional clinic staff. 

Almost all of our needs are handled here.  In case of more dire needs, we can be sent by ambulance to the Outer Banks Hospital or by helicopter to Pitt Memorial in Greenville, home of the East Carolina Medical School.  The clinic here is about one-fourth mile from our house.