January Visitors

I was blessed by two visits this weekend.  The first by my lovely daughter who came up Saturday afternoon and stayed the night.  We took her to dinner for her birthday which is next week and she and I did some errands together.  It's always such a pleasure spending time with her and it still saddens me when we say good bye.  

The second visit came just before she called to say she arrived back at her place safely.  It wasn't a personal visit, but rather a visit to the yard.  I saw the first bluebirds of 2010.  It was raining quite steadily and it's been a little warmer the past day or so and the ground is thawing.  I looked up to the garden around 3 this afternoon and there were birds flying in and out of it.  I haven't seen that much activity up there in months. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw a bluebird light on the font of the nesting box, and another on the fence........ and another on top of the box.  I had the binoculars handy on the counter, but my camera was not there, so you'll have to take my word for it.   I think they were all males - they will stay together in groups in the winter, but prefer their own territory during nesting season. 

It's the beginning of the year and the beginning, hopefully, of the bluebirds returning so I decided to start a bluebird journal.  I dug around in my stash and came up with a spiral bound notebook just the right size.  

In my idea book I came across a drawing I had made of a bird using punches.  The bird quickly became the focal point for my journal.  I embossed the top note panel with some flowers and used my SU pastels to color them.  They represent the purple clematis that surrounds the nesting box during the summer and they are much more vibrant in real life.  I punched out the date with my Big Shot, added a courduroy button to match and here you have it............

I showed HWNSNBP and explained to him that we will make notations in this book when we see the birds and keep track of them throughout the year.   This will go along perfectly with the gift I gave him for Christmas - a nestcam for the box!   He's going to try to set that up within the next couple of weeks.  If it's not too muddy tomorrow we'll start by measuring the distance from the box to the house.  The camera came with 100 feet of cord and we don't know for sure if that will be enough.  We're going to try to set it up with an old tv and vcr that the kids left behind so we can do some serious birdwatching.

I'll be keeping you posted on our little project.