by Kimberly
I thought we might stop it with the birds for a minute and talk a bit about other stuff that goes on around here. I mentioned in the first post that gardening is one of the things we do here. Well, it's January, so there's not so much of that going on right now. Although there's probably more of it happening here in TX than in most of the country. We have garlic, collards, brussel sprouts, and broccoli growing right now, but only the collards are ready to eat. Everything else has months to go, but Michael did discover that three of the broccoli plants actually have baby broccolis on them! We've done broccoli before, but without much luck. They're in a new spot this time, though, and I think it might be helping. Yipee! That's all there is to say about the garden really. We actually ate some cherry tomatoes in our salad tonight that Michael pulled off the plant today. Texas is C-R-A-Z-Y ya'll. Some of the cherry tomato plants look like they might live through the winter. Nutso. Likewise, our lantana is happier than it ever was in the summer, and the morning glory vines might make it to spring as well. But man do they look sad right now. We still get the occasional bloom off of them, but they're kind of an eye sore. But the drought has been so bad here, that we figure the plants will do better if we let them try to hang on and maintain their root system so they don't have to start over in the spring.
The main other thing happening here is that the semester is about to start. This is likely to be the last semester for both of us here, and while we're both looking forward to moving on to the next chapter of our lives (cliche alert) we have no idea where that next chapter might be, and that's freaking me out. The job market for academics is really terrible right now, and I'm not having a lot of luck on the job market. I'm starting to swirl around ideas for alternative jobs in case we find ourselves out of work come summer time. Keeping those under my hat for now though.
I usually feel hopeful about each new semester, but the fall was just so brutal. I'm feeling more anxious than hopeful this time. We both have some syllabus finalizing to do before classes start next week, so it looks like the break is over (*weep*).
Nothing to do but get to it. Or maybe I'll watch Top Chef. :-D
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Bird is the Word
by Kimberly & Michael
Now that you have that song stuck in your head (hehehehe) let's do a run down (should that be hyphenated? No, right? No amount of degrees in English will help me to know when a word should be hyphenated) of the birds we've seen so far this year. Although the list is so far pretty modest, we've both added some birds to our life list (that means it's a bird we've never seen before) so we're feeling pretty good about it.
Since I'm the one writing this post (K), I'm going to put my list (with pictures of some of my favorites) and let Michael add any birds to it that I don't have.
Kimberly's Birds 2012
1/1/12:
1. Rock Dove (for all you non-birders out there, that's a pigeon)
2. Great-tailed Grackle
3. American Kestrel:
(photo from here: http://www.naturefocused.com/photo-gallery-8.html)
4. American Coot
5. Ring-billed Gull
6. Green-winged Teal
7. Kildeer
8. Northern Shoveler
9. Lesser Yellowlegs
10. Savannah Sparrow
11. Ruddy Duck
12. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
13. Blue-wined Teal
14. Yellow-rumped Warbler
15. American Robin
16. Eastern Phoebe
17. Brown Creeper (These guys are really cool; as you can see in the picture they're tiny, and they blend in really well with the bark on trees, but the really neat thing is how they feed. They start toward a bottom of a tree and then they hop up it going around the trunk in a spiral as they peck for food. Once they get toward the top, they hover down to a neighboring tree and start again. The first time I saw one, it was pointed out by the ecocritic Dana Phillips at Washington-on the Brazos. How weird is that, I went bird watching with the chair of my dissertation and a famous ecocritic (or at least what counts as famous for ecocritics) --Michael's note). Here's a picture:
(photo from here: http://tinyurl.com/7qpm3mr) 18. Northern Cardinal
19. American Wigeon
20. Carolina Chickadee
21. Hermit Thrush
22. Tufted Titmouse
23. Carolina Wren
24. Black Vulture
25. Northern Mockingbird
1/3/12
26. American Crow
27. Blue Jay
28. European Starling
29. House Sparrow
30. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
31. Gadwall
32. White-throated Sparrow
33. House Finch
34. Red-bellied Woodpecker (We have a couple of these around the house. They seem to like the pecan trees and in the warmer months they jackhammer on our neighbors tin roof.)
35. Turkey Vulture
1/5/12 (These were seen in Seattle, WA)
36. Mallard
37. Bufflehead:
(photo from here: http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/bufflehead)
38. Red-winged Black bird
39. Common Goldeneye:
(photo from here: http://tinyurl.com/7paae6s)
40. Canada Goose
1/8/12 (In Seattle, WA)
41. Bald Eagle
1/11/12 (back in TX)
42. Ring-necked Duck
43. Great Blue Heron
44. Eurasian Collared Dove
45. Great Egret
In future posts we'll give you more details about the birds and bird watching. The bird stuff will be less boring in the future. :-D
Now that you have that song stuck in your head (hehehehe) let's do a run down (should that be hyphenated? No, right? No amount of degrees in English will help me to know when a word should be hyphenated) of the birds we've seen so far this year. Although the list is so far pretty modest, we've both added some birds to our life list (that means it's a bird we've never seen before) so we're feeling pretty good about it.
Since I'm the one writing this post (K), I'm going to put my list (with pictures of some of my favorites) and let Michael add any birds to it that I don't have.
Kimberly's Birds 2012
1/1/12:
1. Rock Dove (for all you non-birders out there, that's a pigeon)
2. Great-tailed Grackle
3. American Kestrel:
4. American Coot
5. Ring-billed Gull
6. Green-winged Teal
7. Kildeer
8. Northern Shoveler
9. Lesser Yellowlegs
10. Savannah Sparrow
11. Ruddy Duck
12. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
13. Blue-wined Teal
14. Yellow-rumped Warbler
15. American Robin
16. Eastern Phoebe
17. Brown Creeper (These guys are really cool; as you can see in the picture they're tiny, and they blend in really well with the bark on trees, but the really neat thing is how they feed. They start toward a bottom of a tree and then they hop up it going around the trunk in a spiral as they peck for food. Once they get toward the top, they hover down to a neighboring tree and start again. The first time I saw one, it was pointed out by the ecocritic Dana Phillips at Washington-on the Brazos. How weird is that, I went bird watching with the chair of my dissertation and a famous ecocritic (or at least what counts as famous for ecocritics) --Michael's note). Here's a picture:
19. American Wigeon
20. Carolina Chickadee
21. Hermit Thrush
22. Tufted Titmouse
23. Carolina Wren
24. Black Vulture
25. Northern Mockingbird
1/3/12
26. American Crow
27. Blue Jay
28. European Starling
29. House Sparrow
30. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
31. Gadwall
32. White-throated Sparrow
33. House Finch
34. Red-bellied Woodpecker (We have a couple of these around the house. They seem to like the pecan trees and in the warmer months they jackhammer on our neighbors tin roof.)
35. Turkey Vulture
1/5/12 (These were seen in Seattle, WA)
36. Mallard
37. Bufflehead:
38. Red-winged Black bird
39. Common Goldeneye:
40. Canada Goose
1/8/12 (In Seattle, WA)
41. Bald Eagle
1/11/12 (back in TX)
42. Ring-necked Duck
43. Great Blue Heron
44. Eurasian Collared Dove
45. Great Egret
In future posts we'll give you more details about the birds and bird watching. The bird stuff will be less boring in the future. :-D
Monday, January 9, 2012
Well, hello!
by Kimberly & Michael
We're so glad you've come over to read our blog. This is a new endeavor for both of us and we hope it will be a lot of fun.
Before we get started, a bit about what this blog will be:
First, there are two of us here, Kimberly and Michael, and we'll each be posting individually as we find the time and might occasionally post something jointly written. That's the plan anyway. Since we haven't done this before, we'll have to see how it goes. As of now, there isn't any kind of schedule for the posts, but I hope they will be more frequent than not. I love a blog that posts every day, but I doubt we'll be able to do that. We both have lots of other things going on.
Second, this blog will be the repository for a number of things.
One of those things is birds. Wait! Don't leave! We admit it, we're dorks this way, but we suspect, and actually know, that some of you are too. Both of us are bird nerds (birders, or even twiggers for you Brits out there. Silly Brits), and have decided to make a concerted effort to see as many birds as we can this year. We are each keeping a record of the birds that we see (two separate lists because Michael doesn't like to share), and Michael is entering his on e-bird, a website sponsored by the Cornell Bird Lab. It's pretty damn cool for those of you who are into that kind of thing. So, this blog will be a space for us to keep you informed (since some of you care) of the birds we are seeing. This is the "Bird" part of our title.We hope to do more than just report lists of birds, so we'll try to provide some commentary on our bird watching excursions and the things we see along the way.
This will also be a space for general accounts of what we're up to. This is the "Bower" part of the title. Since we are nerds in more ways than one, I'll give you part of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) discussion of the word bower:
"A dwelling, habitation, abode. In early use lit. A cottage; in later use a poetical word for ‘abode’."
Since we are both literary types (by the end of the summer we'll both have PhD's in English) we especially like that bower is a "poetical word." Awesome. It is also likely related to the German word "Bauer" which means gardener. Gardening is another thing we do around here, and Michael is of German descent so double points for that.
Much of the inspiration for the title came from my absolute fascination with bower birds. Do you know these birds? They're amazing. They make houses and decorate them with collections of different colored objects they find in the forest and they spend their lives keeping their space tidy and beautiful in hopes of enchanting a female bower bird. Here's a picture of a bower. Isn't it cool???
(image from here: http://www.duskyswondersite.com/animals/bower-birds/)
Check out this youtube video with David Attenborough:
The BBC series Planet Earth has some great segments on bower birds, but I couldn't find a video.
In our next post we'll give you the details on the birds we've seen so far.
Later gators!
We're so glad you've come over to read our blog. This is a new endeavor for both of us and we hope it will be a lot of fun.
Before we get started, a bit about what this blog will be:
First, there are two of us here, Kimberly and Michael, and we'll each be posting individually as we find the time and might occasionally post something jointly written. That's the plan anyway. Since we haven't done this before, we'll have to see how it goes. As of now, there isn't any kind of schedule for the posts, but I hope they will be more frequent than not. I love a blog that posts every day, but I doubt we'll be able to do that. We both have lots of other things going on.
Second, this blog will be the repository for a number of things.
One of those things is birds. Wait! Don't leave! We admit it, we're dorks this way, but we suspect, and actually know, that some of you are too. Both of us are bird nerds (birders, or even twiggers for you Brits out there. Silly Brits), and have decided to make a concerted effort to see as many birds as we can this year. We are each keeping a record of the birds that we see (two separate lists because Michael doesn't like to share), and Michael is entering his on e-bird, a website sponsored by the Cornell Bird Lab. It's pretty damn cool for those of you who are into that kind of thing. So, this blog will be a space for us to keep you informed (since some of you care) of the birds we are seeing. This is the "Bird" part of our title.We hope to do more than just report lists of birds, so we'll try to provide some commentary on our bird watching excursions and the things we see along the way.
This will also be a space for general accounts of what we're up to. This is the "Bower" part of the title. Since we are nerds in more ways than one, I'll give you part of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) discussion of the word bower:
"A dwelling, habitation, abode. In early use lit. A cottage; in later use a poetical word for ‘abode’."
Since we are both literary types (by the end of the summer we'll both have PhD's in English) we especially like that bower is a "poetical word." Awesome. It is also likely related to the German word "Bauer" which means gardener. Gardening is another thing we do around here, and Michael is of German descent so double points for that.
Much of the inspiration for the title came from my absolute fascination with bower birds. Do you know these birds? They're amazing. They make houses and decorate them with collections of different colored objects they find in the forest and they spend their lives keeping their space tidy and beautiful in hopes of enchanting a female bower bird. Here's a picture of a bower. Isn't it cool???
Check out this youtube video with David Attenborough:
The BBC series Planet Earth has some great segments on bower birds, but I couldn't find a video.
In our next post we'll give you the details on the birds we've seen so far.
Later gators!
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