Saturday was a rainy day, so we thought it might be a good day for birdwatching. Travalon and I went to Stricker Pond again, and we saw this boat-tailed grackle.
Look how much smaller the killdeer is than the mallards.
This mama wood duck has at least twenty-five babies!
We also saw a great blue heron.
Now that the female mallards all have babies, the males hang around in stag parties.
This fungus is so interesting-looking, and I think it might have been an edible kind.
Here is a wood duck mama with only seven babies that are a lot bigger.
We went to a 66th birthday party, so the theme was Route 66. That was a lot of fun. I kept running into people who looked kind of familiar, so we'd start talking and realize how we knew each other. Travalon was happy to see Cecil Markovitch there. After the party, we went to Tiedeman's Pond, and as we were walking down the path, we passed a goose family. Travalon went by first, then I didn't realize he took a picture of me edging by the geese as they hissed at me. Yikes!
This little rabbit wasn't nearly as hostile to us.
And we saw another great blue heron.
In the evening we went to the new Downton Abbey movie, which we liked even better than the first movie. In this one, some people are making a movie at Downton Abbey, and suddenly it has to change from silent to a talkie. Meanwhile, half the family are at a villa in the south of France which was mysteriously willed to the dowager. When we got home, I did DuoLingo and got my sticker for this month. It is DuoLingo's 10th birthday this month, so I guess DuoLingo is a Gemini...?
This is out of order, but on Friday while I was talking to Tiffy, Travalon must have gone down to our dock and taken photos. I really like this one of the Betty Lou Cruise coming in at sunset.
Sunday Travalon and I went to Holy Hill for Pentecost. I really loved the homily because the priest talked about each line of the sequence. I guess he loves it as much as I do! I really liked this picture in their program because it's a dove, but when I first looked at it, I saw a very happy creature with long ears. See? Now you can't unsee it. It's an optical illusion.
In the afternoon I had a workshop with an All-Ireland fiddle champion at the Lakeside Coffee House. Hardingfele, an 11-year-old girl, and I were the only ones there. I brought the mandolin but then was wishing I'd brought my violin, so I borrowed Hardingfele's a couple of times. That was humbling! I'm not as quick at picking up tunes as I was in my younger days, but is this because I've been playing chords instead of melody for years? After the workshop Hardingfele, Travalon (who had gone fishing while we were at it), and I walked to the Chinese bakery on Park Street, which also has really good food (I had curry chicken with rice noodles), then we came back for a concert of our teacher with another All-Ireland champion on the uilleann pipes. They were so good!
Today my neighbor told me she went to lunch at a place called Breakwater and they had really good wings, so Travalon and I went there for dinner tonight. It was the place near my old apartment on Pirate Island, and we sat out on the balcony overlooking the river. Because of the dreary weather and the fact that it was Monday, no other people were outside, so I hoped we might see some birds. We did! We saw this white duck hanging out with some mallards.
And we saw a blue heron fly right by us! Who knew we needed the good camera for a weeknight dinner? Our waitress said she also sees pelicans. What a great dinner spot! And Travalon said the wings were good, just as our neighbor had promised. I had the very spicy jambalaya. So delicious!
I had a clever title for this blog post and told Travalon it would be way better than just "Stricker and Tiedeman's Ponds," but now it's late and I can't remember it. Another blog post title I had pondered was "Bally-a-Cleeya," which is a sort of phonetic spelling of the Irish name for Dublin. My original Irish teacher was one of the organizers of the concert we went to, so I did speak a little Irish this weekend.
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