Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/7/2020
/Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Grocery delivery. We have settled into a weekly rhythm for the grocery delivery but it’s still true that each one is a little different and a learning experience. This week the part of the app that allows approval of substitutions didn’t work so I had to do approvals via texts. The shopper started a little earlier than I expected but I noticed right away. Only one item was out of stock although there were substitutions for some things. I was surprised that all the meat items on the list were available because of the stories about potential meat shortages. The whole process including delivery took about an hour (an indicator that the shopper was experienced).
Browsing Life Magazines from 1956 – the year one of my sisters was born. There were picture stories about Grace Kelly, the convention/election for Eisenhower’s second term, Princess Margaret visiting Africa, and the University of Mexico. The ads were interesting too – electric skillets, Carnation evaporated milk and Lady Borden ice cream!
Finishing Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:
Photographing the nictitating membrane of a male red-bellied woodpecker. The bird was enjoying breakfast at our feeder and one of my pictures happened to catch the blink!
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
And now - a Nuthatch Pause….
Last week a white-breasted nuthatch sat on the railing of our deck…very still. Its eyes were alert and it sometimes moved its head slightly. Usually the nuthatches come to the feeder and quickly get their seed and fly off. They seem hyper. This bird was just opposite. Then it suddenly turned its body by 90 degrees…and went back to normal behavior with quick, purposeful movements…flying off to the woods.
I remembered that I’d seen a downy woodpecker in the almost the same location a few days before and wondered if there is something different about the scene from between those two knots in the wood that causes birds to be wary/stay still.