Another Addition to the Backyard Bird List

Well I have obviously fallen short on my 2009 resolution to write at least one blog post a week, having let two months slide by since my last post. Yikes! So this is going to be something of a compilation.

Yesterday afternoon I stepped outside and noticed what I took to be a flock of geese flying overhead at first glance. But they were awfully low and their wings looked odd. It dawned on my they were gulls. At least three dozen, of them, in fact, flying in formation. A quick call to birding guru, Mark McKellar, at the Backyard Bird Center, helped me identify them as Franklin's Gulls. Mark says that Franklin's are the type that fly in formation like geese.

They were gone in an instant, so needless to say, no picture. Here, however, is a picture I took at 6:09 am on September 16 from our backyard showing a conjunction of the moon with Venus in the eastern sky.


This is actually a handheld image. I didn't even use a tripod. These digital point and shoot cameras are amazing. (Mine is a Canon S2 IS.) The trick for something like this is to set the ISO speed at something reasonably fast, 200 or 400 ISO, and then significantly underexpose the image.

Here is a fun picture I took of bees on a flower in our neighbor's yard a few days after the conjunction. We sort of skipped October and zoomed right into November in Kansas City, this fall, with temps quickly following into the 40s during the day. Not too many opportunities for fall flower pictures now!


Here is a picture of Basie and me taken in the last few weeks -- on Elly's birthday camping trip to Pomme de Terre state park. Pomme de Terre has become our favorite state park this year (the Pittsburgh side!), followed closely by Arrow Rock state park.


The sunsets were beautiful during our visit.


Here is Basie, enjoying the sunset in his preferred snoozing orientation...

Easter Sunday

Elly, Basie, and I had a wonderful Easter Sunday. A few weeks ago I put up a new Spiral Feeder from backyard bird and the finches just love it. It's about 3 feet tall. They really like being able to slip along the spiral perches from hole to hole. So much so that our older finch feeder, with individual perches, only serves as a backup feeder now -- the birds spend 90% of their time on the new one. I took this picture Sunday afternoon.

We decided to spend the day at home (a typical holiday choice for us) cooking a multi-course dinner. Elly had the clever idea to listen to choral masses. We have a good-sized collection of classical CDs, both instrumental and vocal, but haven't listened to them much over the past few years. We listened to three Tallis Scholars CDs -- Palestrina Masses, Allegri Miserere, and a Josquin CD with Missa Pange lingua and Missa La sol fa re mi. We also listened to Dvorak's Stabat Mater.

Basie seemed to think it was good napping background music.


I started off making biscuits, following a recipe from the Cook's Illustrated Baking book. These turned out marvelously. I won't tell how many Elly ate. My first adventure in making biscuits.


Elly made a Gruyere and leek tart, combining multiple recipes, which turned out quite nicely.


And also a puff pastry with an asparagus and shitaki mushroom filling that was another triumph.


I took charge of dessert, making a parfait with layers of strawberries, lemon mousse, and white chocolate mousse. I used some more of the lemons from Dick Harshaw's yard in Phoenix.


Here is one of the parfaits. They weren't quite a photogenic as the Bon Apetite version, but they were delicious.


We enjoyed a terrific bottle of 2005 Treana Red supplied by my sister and brother-in-law (Karen and Tom) with our dinner and ate leftovers for days.

Snow Day

The weather forecast called for maybe an inch of snow. Instead, we got a good six inches on Saturday, which was a great way to end out the month of February. Nothing is more fun and relaxing than to spend a snowy day in the kitchen, reading, cooking, watching birds, and, now, thanks to the new addition to our family, watching Basie play in the snow.




Basie loves snow, which isn't a big surprise. He loves to play in the backyard, loves cold weather, and loves to explore. He is 11 weeks old now and growing fast.


My two new journals -- the green one is for birdwatching and the tan one is my kitchen journal. Among other things, this is great for remembering what cookbook a particularly good recipe came from.


Elly was busy making a Cauliflower Cheese Pie from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. We substitute a regular pie crust for the grated potato crust called for in the original recipe. This is awesome with white cheddar cheese, BTW.


I've been on something of a baking binge since trying a Ciabatta recipe in the March/April 2009 Cooks Illustrated which turned out marvelously. Then I came across Suzanne Dunaway's No Need to Knead cookbook at the library. This is one cookbook that seriously needs a second edition. It was published in 1999 and is not readily available on the used book market. It is one of the best cookbooks I have found, even including original watercolor illustrations by Dunaway. I made Apricot Focaccia following her recipe exactly and the result was divine. Easy too. It is suprising what great bread you can make without kneading. Seriously. If you are interested in baking at all and can find a copy of Dunaway's book at your local library, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Some more birds. I can't seem to stop snapping pictures of birds in our backyard. Believe me this is a tiny sample of my total image haul. :-)


Lots of activity at the niger feeder. Goldfinches give larger birds like Grackles a very wide birth, but they aren't afraid to mix it up with birds their own size like house finches and juncos.



The quintessential snow birds in our backyard are cardials and dark-eyed juncos. These are a couple of nice junco pictures. They stay with us from October through April, traveling north into Canada to breed and next in the spring and summer.


Bluejays simply can't resist peanuts in the shell, even if they have to do a little snow removal to uncover them.


Starlings are widely reviled by birders because they are an invasive species and force out many lovely native birds. Well, at least in urban areas. I have to confess that I enjoy watching the. They are handsome, fiesty, and often hilarious.

Here are a couple more pictures of Basie, for his many blog-stalking fans...


Playing in the snow can wear a puppy out!