Author: Steve

The kids are in England and Ireland and we’re helping them identify birds.  A virtual birding tour for Judy and me!  The pictures are all forwarded from cellphones so they can be a little scratchy.

It looks like most of the ducks are mallards.

One that looks like a Swedish Blue.

They look like this.

(From the internet.)

Canada Goose.  Mute Swan.

Rock Pigeon.  (Like ours in the states.)

A gull.

I’m going to guess an off-season black-headed gull.  That’s not something we see here.

A Rook.

Looks like a big Raven.  Definitely don’t see that here.

And a White Wagtail.

(From the internet.)  Another bird we’ve never seen.

Every morning has been in the eighties for our morning coffee on the deck.  Suddenly, we’re seeing seventies.  Once, even low seventies!  We’ve been enjoying the long hot summer.  Not sure I’m ready for it to cool off yet.

Got our new improved covid boosters yesterday.  Left today open in case we felt terrible after.  Not so much.  A sore shoulder and crazy dreams last night.  I think that’s about it.

I found some grilled chicken thighs in the fridge to eat for lunch today.  It didn’t taste quite right.  As after-the-fact advice, Judy told me “No.  Don’t eat that.  It’s too old!”  I volunteered that dogs eat old stuff out of the trash all the time and it doesn’t bother them, so I should be fine.  That prompted her to admonish me that if I threw up on the carpet then, that I would have to be the one to clean it up.    🙁

Highs in the mid-nineties instead of high nineties.  A sure sign of changing seasons.

It’s the fall hummingbird migration.    Little ruby-throated hummers are passing through on their way to Central America.  We move the hummingbird feeders up to the deck for this.

Most of the time they look like this; really dark head and neck.

Then they turn and flash that ruby red throat!

There should be a flow of them every day for two or three weeks, then they’ll be gone.  This is a spectacle of the Americas.  Hummingbirds don’t live anywhere else on the planet!

Not Judy and me.  We’re at home.  Not Becky and Brian.  They’re planted in York.  Christie and Andy.  They’re working their way clockwise around Ireland!

1964.  I had been away from home for almost two years, and overseas for more than one.  Judy’s 16^th birthday present from her family was a three-minute, person to person, very expensive, phone call to me.  Three minutes.  That’s a lot of pressure to make it count.  Otherwise, our only contact was handwritten letters, which could take a week or two each way.

2022.  England.  Ireland.  Texas.  York, Cork, and Edinburg.  Five thousand miles, six time-zones apart.  The weekly zoom visit with the girls carried off without a hitch.

An I-pad, a computer, and a telephone.  An hour-long visit?  No problem.  No pressure.  Real-time video and verbal communication.  What a charming time we live in.