This, also that

Feb 26, 2011 14:52

Oh, the non-bird list things I could write about if only I wasn't aware of the insistently ticking clock. Damn, damn, damn.

Last night we went to see Seattle Shakespeare Company's performance of The Threepenny Opera. I have to confess that while I've known of the play for ages, I really had no idea what the actual show was. What it is, it turns out, is good. It's on a short-run but well worth trying to see. Tickets are cheapish; it's a fine plucky local production; there's singing and, well, not dancing so much.

Unfortunately, en route to the show, Eli and I elected to display our youthful high spirits by cutting across the International Fountain at Seattle Center, rather than staidly walking around it. Which would have been fine had Bully and her date not decided to show how much quicker it was to go around by running a bit. Which would still have been fine had we not noticed their treachery and decided to run as well. I feel we had reached a pretty smart pace when, sadly, I failed to notice the lip on the fountain and wrenched my ankle as I fell. It's rather swollen now, and a little painful. It looks like I'll be favoring a loose boot for the AAC dinner this evening.

Which is the source of my stress today. It's a work event, sort of, since I'll be the guest of a couple of authors and also sitting with the TMB publisher. So I'll need to be on good behavior, watch my liquor intake (which may be easy after last night's excesses), and also watch my mouth (never easy). And it's a chunk wrenched from my weekend. Oh, I'm sure it will be fine, really, but I think it will be one of those 'better in retrospect' experiences. Honestly, I'd so much prefer to stay home.

Where, of course, once it gets dark I might be able to stop obsessing on the birds. (Three paragraphs, Imaginary Reader, without seriously bringing up birds. That's a record, possibly.) They've been very active--and very hungry--during the recent cold snap. We definitely have five (and possibly more) resident yellow-rumped warblers which pleases me to no end and more goldfinches than I can count. Dozens, anyway. That's been the case for Quite Some Time, of course, but I'm setting up the photos to come, see? In fact, let's cut to the visuals:



This is as many goldfinches as I could fit in the frame, not as many as there were on the tree.



Both gold and house finches in the neighboring tree, taken on one of the snowy mornings this week



PSA: Birds need sources of fresh water, especially when natural sources may be frozen.



Another PSA: The Male Bushtit has a solid black eye (no, not from a fight).



While the female of the species is, well, a little more beady-eyed. (Unless I have that backwards.)



No bird! This is one of the four hellebores I bought and planted before the latest cold snap. It seems to be bearing up quite well.

And the list:
American goldfinches
Anna’s hummingbird
bald eagle
Barrow’s goldeneye (three couples sailing majestically along. Until they realized I was looking at them and then they scarpered.)
Bewick’s wren
black-capped chickadees
bushtits
common goldeneye
cormorants (ten or more ranged on the dock the last few days)
crows
dark-eyed juncos
great blue heron (at Longfellow Creek!)
gulls
house finches
house sparrows
northern flicker
peregrine falcons
pigeons
song sparrow
starlings
yellow-rumped warblers

Book
West of Here (page 42; I'm not yet really caught up in the action but maybe I'll have a decent stretch of reading time tomorrow)

precious photos, life, work, birds

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