Feathered Family Photos

One of the side benefits of the Great Monarch Relocation Project (which will be described in another post) was that the sandhill cranes came to take advantage of our progress. 

The extra special bonus was that, for the first time ever, the pair we've been seeing for a number of years was successful at raising a youngster!

So, of course, I had to take a bunch of family photos!

As an amateur portrait photographer, it's always fun to catch a candid moment with parent and child.

Not to mention the child's studio portrait that's inevitably shared with doting aunts, uncles and grandparents. 

Sorry, I got carried away there for a moment. It just struck me as funny that I had done the classic family photography session with these delightful birds! I hope you enjoyed getting to see them as much as I did. 

Also, many thanks to everyone who made the opening of the new Stampeaz.com website a success! I have the very best customers in the world. :)

A Garden of Delights

Before the weather started getting too crisp and autumnal, Baloo and I took a hike in a lovely area that used to be part of the state's mental hospital system. It's been renovated and the old buildings have been turned into shops, restaurants, and some senior apartments and assisted living quarters. Behind all this, though, there is a large wooded area with miles of trails to wander.

Last year, they added a beautiful pollinator garden at one of our favorite entrances to the woods and on this particular day, it was full of bees and butterflies taking advantage of the blooms before hunkering down for the winter or migrating to warmer climes. (There are at least four butterflies in the picture above.) 

Constant fluttering of brilliant wings made an already outstanding collection of colors and textures an absolute feast for the eyes.  

Incidentally, does anybody know what this tall purple-tufted flower is? It was the hands-down favorite with the butterflies and I would love to get some for my back yard!  Also, in the picture above, I managed to catch a monarch in flight - without it being totally blurred. That always makes me smile. 

This picture has a painted lady butterfly in the foreground and a monarch in the background - I didn't notice immediately, since they're both orange beauties. 

I liked the subtlety of the folded wings as these two fed quietly on that same (obviously delicious) purple flower. I've done some research and I think it *might* be a meadow blazing star, but I'm not an expert gardener, by any stretch of the imagination, so if you have a definitive identification, I'd love to hear it. :)

They had also planted an unusual type of mint that was absolutely humming with honeybees, but I didn't get any very striking pictures of that. I was just glad to see a bunch of happy honeybees, since this didn't seem to be a particularly prolific year for them.  Most of the bees I saw this year were of the bumble (or yellow jacket) persuasion. 

The Last Pieces of the Puzzle

Were you wondering when the last pieces of the puzzle would finally be put into place? Well, I think we're finally there. You can see that there are a lot of little parts that had to be sorted out and, while they looked a lot alike, they were actually different species. Not a perfect metaphor, but it was a fun way to think about progress. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the testing phase, though. I had asked a few intrepid souls who needed to order things anyway to put the new site through its paces to see what they might think of it. I only wanted a couple of people to test it, because there are always bumps and wrinkles when moving anything from building to testing to production. So, I turned the site on and told my few testers it was live for them to play with yesterday afternoon. 

What happened next was a big surprise for me. One of my testers got a little enthusiastic and posted on Facebook that the site was live! You can sort of imagine the chaos that ensued. There were, indeed, some bumps and wrinkles and I had to scramble a bit to get my hosting site to fix synchronization problems, figure out why a number of things weren't working quite as I was told they should and otherwise learn the administration side of the site under pressure. But, in the end, I think everybody's going to get what they wanted and, while I still have the iron handy for any persistent wrinkly spots, things are going really quite well. They'd have to be or I wouldn't be posting this, would I??  :)

If you want to see what you think, you can try it yourself (https://stampeaz.com) and let me know how everything works for you!!

Counting Crows - and an Update

Crows, ravens and magpies have often been considered birds that are prophetic, depending on how many you see at one time. There are a number of old nursery rhymes and poems to unravel their messages. 

When I see one crow, I always look around to find another one because it's supposed to be an omen of sorrow to see a single crow. Happily, they're social birds, so there's almost always another one in the area. I also always think of my grandmother, since she had a lot of superstitions that guided her life. :)

My favorite version of the old rhyme goes like this: 

One for sorrow, 

Two for mirth,

Three for a wedding, 

Four for a birth. 

(these four were wondering how to get at the ripening grapes)

Five for silver, 

Six for gold, 

Seven for a secret not to be told. 

Eight for Heaven, 

Nine for Hell, 

And ten is for the Devil's own self!

Since the collective noun for a group of ten or more crows is called a "murder", I suppose thinking of that number as the embodiment of evil isn't too much of a stretch. 

Every night, a flock of crows gathers along the beach to await a favorable wind (or the dying down of the wind as the sun sets) to help them fly across to the island in the middle of the bay where they have a rookery. They frequently get a little raucous and it's always enjoyable to see them stream across toward their home. 

Speaking of counting, the inventory is finished and entered into the new database and I only have a few more pieces of the new Stampeaz website to put in place before going live with it.  The biggest piece is that I'm still wrestling with finding the best solution for the shipping part of the site. Other than that, it's a bunch of little things (of course, those little things always take longer than I expect). 

So, it will be soon! Very soon! 

Thanks to all of you for your patience and you can still let me know if you need something in the meantime!