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~My Family Circa the 70's~In the midst of all the moving/not moving/moving/not moving drama that's taken place this week I found an envelope from my mom containing some pictures from my childhood.  In this one we were about to go to my cousin's wedding where I was to perform my flower girl duties.  I remember two distinct things about that day:  I hated my hair (which coincidentally I fought desperately...

Indian hill mynaOn a recent quick trip to South Florida, I was shown two new, but currently uncountable, life birds. The Indian hill myna, and the chestnut-fronted macaw are established exotics here in SoFla. We saw them nesting and making babies, so we know they are establishing their North American populations, however neither species is currently on the North American Bird List as an accepted, countable species.Chestnut-fronted...

Guess what?  My landlord is on my last nerve.  He danced all over that mother on Saturday causing me to seriously consider if I even want to live at Chez Carrie anymore - a place that has been my home for almost 6 years.  Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, shred, shred, shred.  I'm trying to calm my nerves and clear my mind in order to make a decision, but it seems that's easier said than done.  It's...

Isn't it interesting how on Monday morning Friday seems so far away?  On Tuesday it's almost even worse.  Yet here we are at Friday and I caught myself thinking, "bugger only 3 more days and it's Monday again."  I'm really trying to change that mentality and be content in the moment, whatever the day is and whatever I'm facing, including Jillian Michaels and her 30 Day Shred.  Day 3 down only 27...

Once upon a time, when a bird watcher flipped through the raptor pages of his or her field guide, the image of the peregrine falcon probably engendered wistful and wishful feelings. Despite the fact that the peregrine is one of the most widely distributed raptors worldwide, in North America it has been an endangered species for as long as most of can remember. This was due to the lingering effects of DDT and other chemical...

It happened so fast I'm not even exactly sure how it went down.  Monday was barreling by:  I finished up an email to a colleague, started packing up for class, glanced at twitter and saw Katie mention she'd started the 30 Day Shred.  The next thing I knew Monday must have run off with my sanity because I offered to partner with her for the sake of motivation aka whining.  Cut to twitter scene and...

I found further proof, thanks to today's balmy weather, that writing about birds is much easier when you can write with the windows open, bird song floating in on the gentle breeze. Spring!However there is this caveat: Spring in mid-March (at least here in southeastern Ohio) is a teasing vixen. She'll let you glimpse her rapturous beauty and catch a whiff of her sweet perfume, but reach out for her expectantly and she'll...

As it turns out Michael Jackson is not the only one with a child named Blanket.  I now have one, too.  Only mine really is a blanket.  But I'm still thinking of it kind of like my child and have not left it unattended since it arrived last week.  You know - a similar set up to the high school kids who have to look after an egg like their baby and not let it smash.  Only I'm not giving this one...

I'm back, I'm alive and I'm grateful.  If you've been keeping up on twitter or facebook then you've heard brief blurbs here and there, but this is the first real moment I've had to sit down and put a post together since my parents left this morning.  So much and yet so little has gone on in the six brief days they spent with me in Southern California.  I guess I'll start at the beginning.Last wednesday...

"How can we know for certain," I asked the old oak, "that those are your branches reaching up to scratch the sky? And not your roots, in some weird, inverted universe?"The sky and snow-covered ground look to be one and the same to my early morning eyes."But then my acorns—here's one plonking your head now—would be falling upward, would they not?" answered the oak."True. But let me see your roots, then, just to be sure,"...

Dawn breaks over Harbor Springs, Michigan.After spending the night inside my wrapped Christmas-present box of a motel room, I got up early, put on every piece of clothing from my duffel bag, and loaded up The Back Breaker for another day of looking for our target bird (also known as tilting at windmills). We thought we'd get on the road by 5:45 am, grab an early breakfast at a local diner by 6 am, and probably nail...

The unrelenting winter was slowly turning my mind space to slush and mush when I realized, in a rare moment of clarity, that the perfect curative prescription was adding a life bird to Ye Olde Life List. You may recall, gentle blog readers and lurkers, that I have previously broached the subject of the life list.I'd recently broken my self-imposed ban on list-serves dealing with bird sightings and the two that I subscribed...