Saturday, December 29, 2012

A beginning Twitcher

       Yesterday we went out to do a bit of birdwatching. I am quite new to this, so while I recognize black ducks and Canada geese (and there were plenty of them!) I am not so good on the bufflehead or the goldeneye. However, there were plenty of these as well! It was not ideal for the pursuit in that it was raining from time to time, and there was fog, or at least evaporating snow.

      We began at the National Park, starting at Dalvey Lake. Unfortunately it is frozen over, so no birds, but we could hear the surf from the beach so we went there next. Just gulls there, of course, but the surf was spectacular. The moon is full, so the tide was quite high already, and some stiff Easterlies in the past few days had churned up the water quite well. It was not cold at all, so the surf looked like you could just dive in. Except for the snow cakes on the beach. There's been a lot of sand blown around, as the dunes aren't frozen yet.

Afterward, we went to Covehead harbour, where we saw a whole flock of common redpolls, playing around the lobster traps, eating weed seeds, and bathing in a puddle. There were about 30-35 of them, the first we've seen this season.  We went on to Oyster Bed Bridge, and saw mergansers, buffleheads and goldeneyes. A busy day!

Sunday, December 23, 2012

The Festive Season

Well! I just lost 4 paragraphs of text. Gotta love Blogger.

It's blustery out, with a bit of snow and a lot of wind. We went to see The Hobbit, and when we came out of the theatre it was storming. The same thing happened last week after Skyfall. Coincidence? I think not. All skiiers should apply to me, with theatre tickets.

We're approaching being ready for Christmas, with the tree up and decorated, and cleaning happening.

I have a few more things to produce in "Santa's Workshop", and a couple of things to bake, including the annual attempt to make meatless meat pie for the Veggie. We are going to to make Nigel Slater's nut loaf instead of tofu loaf, just for a change. It looked terrific in the "12 Tastes of Christmas"  show we watched this week. We may make the Gammon for Boxing Day as well.

This year's multi gifts include Christmas fabric trivets and small boxy bags, with a strap I invented myself (to save trouble), I am having fun matching insides to outsides, and I have enough zippers to make quite a few before I have to invest at the fabric store.

Speaking of which, I work tomorrow, and on Saturday, but then I have 3 days off in a row so we can go to Halifax and take Katie back. As our friendly neighbourhood parasitologist would say, "Fleas Navidad!"