Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/14/2020
/Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Birds nesting in our neighbor’s eaves. A pair of European Starlings found a way under the eaves of our neighbor’s house and they have nestlings. One came out this morning and looked more like a juvenile Brown-headed Cowbird than a juvenile starling. The cowbirds have been around a lot this spring. Now I don’t seem around the feeder as much so maybe they are moving to new territory.
Grocery delivery. First thing in the morning I made the final tweaks to the list. Is it feeling ‘normal’ to have my groceries delivered? No - I don’t think it ever will. I like to do my own shopping and will get back to it as soon as I can. It took the shopper an hour to find 18 items. It was stressful to stay glued to my phone for that length of time to respond to substitutions; the web page stopped working for a short period of time too. This was the 7th delivery so if it were going to achieve the comfort of ‘new normal’ I think it would have already. It’s been a new shopper every time and maybe that makes it continuously ‘new’ each week.
Mowing the grass. It had been dry for a few days and the temperature was in the 60s…a good day to mow the yard. The south side that had been too wet the last time we mowed so the grass there was getting high. I decided to experiment with making a short video during the first part of the mowing. I used an old larger name tag holder from a conference that was big enough to hold my phone then taped it to myself rather than letting it swing from the lanyard. I started the video, put it in the holder and started mowing. I had put the tape too low on the name tag and the weight of the phone caused it to tilt down a little. The two pictures below are clipped from the video…a part where I was mowing the tallest grass and the lawn mower stalled…I turned off the video. I’ll be refining my technique…but it was a fun experiment.
Two beauties at the bird feeder. As I was starting my day, the bird feeder was active with the woodpeckers and two early birds that seem to be around more often right now: Indigo Bunting and American Goldfinch – both males. Until this spring, seeing an Indigo Buntings were a rare treat but they seem to be enjoying our birdfeeder and we see the males more than the females.
Several years ago, I saw one feeding in the meadow at Howard County Conservancy with a flock of gold finches while I was hiking with a 2nd grade school group in the fall. We all stood and watched the birds until they moved too far away. One little girl commented – “I thought they were butterflies…but they’re birds!” It was a magical moment in nature for me … and the group of children (and chaperone) I had with me.
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
