It would appear that there has been a real love fest going on in my garden of late, everyone is having babies and of course said babies are now fledging and visiting the feeders in their own right. First up is a baby female cardinal, she has about moulted into her adult colors but her beak is still brownish showing that she is still a teenager.



Her brother (I assume) is moulting into his colors but he looks a little like a patchwork quilt right now, and just like a teenage boy, an absolute hellion. Just look at that tude....



Here's a baby mourning dove (you will notice that it has no neck markings which the adults have)



and a baby blue jay, doing what baby blue jays do, hanging around looking for large amounts of peanuts.



I have already posted shots of my baby red-bellied woodpeckers and here are some more woodpecker babies, this time a downy woodpecker, this one was following his mom hoping to get fed



I also have baby chickadees, baby tufted titmouse and even, heaven help me baby grackles, they must like my garden

The bald eagle has been de-listed. I know that will mean absolutely nothing to most of you, it is a mere blip on the headlines of Paris Hilton's however manyth day in jail, but in the wildlife world it is significant. The Bald Eagle is no longer on the endangered species list. A magnificent recovery that can only have happened as a result of the complete eradication of DDT. For more information go here

[[LINK:http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?ContentID=6539]]

A moment in time when human beings did the right thing, we saw a problem and we fixed it, and it worked.

It has come to my attention (thank you Elizabeth) that I have neglected to introduce you to the newest member of my menagerie. Peaches was a kitten found under a car at Coastal Carolina Community College by Elizabeth (thank you Elizabeth:)) not even old enough to be weaned really, full of fleas and starving. Elizabeth was kind enough to de-flea her and then presented her to me. She is obviously feral, which means she is, not to put too fine a point on it, mean. SHe bites, and bites on a regular basis, my husband and I both look like we have scabies or something due to the bite and scratch marks on our hands and arms. Still, she is now bonding with my other cats (slowly, she is not doing the best job of trying to bond with them seeing as her approach appears to be "jump on their head with all four sets of claws extended") As we speak she is sleeping quietly on my lap having been out "climbing trees and judging distance (as my daddy used to say)" earlier in the evening (you know the kitten thing, when they run up a tree for absolutely no apparent reason and then run down again). She is a really nice kitten when she is sleeping, when she is awake it is another story. Still, she has already embedded herself onto my husband's heart and she is now officially "his" cat. What that means I am not sure but he now considers her "his". I am hoping that her social skills will improve, or at least she will stop jumping on peoples heads. Here she is the first day I got her, playing in my office.



She has already "bonded" with the boxers, which is a good thing, here she is sleeping with Cueball.

I have been busy of late printing and framing photographs for the band. As can be expected there were many people wanting copies both from the final concert and from the trip so that has been taking up my time. As an aside today is graduation so to all the seniors I offer you the following: (My thanks to Rod Stewart of all people)

May the good lord be with you
Down every road you roam
And may sunshine and happiness
Surround you when you're far from home
And may you grow to be proud
Dignified and true
And do unto others
As you'd have done to you
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you'll always stay
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young

May good fortune be with you
May your guiding light be strong
Build a stairway to heaven
With a prince or a vagabond

And may you never love in vain
And in my heart you will remain
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young
Forever young
Forever young

And when you finally fly away
I'll be hoping that I served you well
For all the wisdom of a lifetime
No one can ever tell

But whatever road you choose
I'm right behind you, win or lose
Forever young, forever young
Forever young ,forever young
Forever young, forever young
For, forever young, forever young

Good luck guys, in whatever it is you choose to do.

I took some time on Sunday to take some photographs of my beautiful asiatic lilies which are currently blooming. As spectacular as they look unfortunately they have no scent, for that I will have to wait for the Oriental lilies whose scent is so overpowering that you can smell the ones blooming by my living room window when you pull into the driveway. I decided to get creative yesterday though and instead of just taking standard shots on a black background as I usually do I took all the rest of my background boards out there. So I wandered out into the front garden armed to the teeth with my huge mug of tea, my cigarettes (of course) my tripod, my spray bottle and an arm full of posterboard, not forgetting of course my camera (now that would be silly). It was mid morning and the sun had not yet reached its peak and the heat index was still quite tolerable, (having said that at various times while I was taking shots I could feel the sweat running down the end of my nose). I set about getting shots of the beautiful yellow lily in the front flower bed first, so I set up my tripod and my black backboard and commenced to taking shots. I got some strange looks from the neighbor's as you can imagine but I figure that they will get used to me eventually, (by the end of the summer at least). Once I had got the shots I wanted with the black background I grabbed the electric blue. There is just something about the combination of electric blue and yellow that just makes me salivate and when I saw the lily against the blue I knew I had made the right choice. I took lots and lots of these shots just to make sure that I got some good ones to frame. Here is an example.



This is the same lily on a black background (and from a different perspective)



Next I moved on to the polka dot one that was happily taking a nap on the lawn (having leaned over from the flower bed to do so). Once I had staked it up and put it into a nice position I also took shots with the black background but they were not working too well due to the dappled sunlight that was present.



Then I used the blue background and by doing that I actually got a nice effect with the dappled light. (Well I liked it anyway).



I then moved on to the group of white lilies that were nestled by my alien in the rose bed. This proved more of a challenge seeing as I had to try and position the back board in between the lilies and the alien's head, without damaging the lilies in the process. Unfortunately by this time the sun was much stronger so I basically had to stand around like cheese at fourpence waiting for clouds to roll by before I could even hope to get a shot where the white's were not all blown out (as they say in photography).



All in all it was a very pleasant couple of hours shooting. The birds were singing, and visiting the feeders despite my presence in their territory. There are babies galore around right now from Cardinals to grackles all pestering their parents to be fed. As I was sat on the lawn waiting for a cloud to arrive I noticed the male red bellied woodpecker stuffing his face with suet as opposed to eating it. I soon figured out why, he had a baby to feed. (Please excuse the quality of this shot it was literally a "snapshot" I had no time to focus or compose.) You can barely see the baby, he is so well camouflaged, luckily daddy had no trouble finding him.



A good day, but soon the laundry and the printing and framing called me back into the house. Still I have the photographs to remind me of a very pleasant morning.

So I gave in to the masses and downloaded it today, it is so much fun! What struck me, and what continues to strike me is that England is still so green, you click on a city in England and whereas the center of the city maybe concentrated with homes and businesses and stuff around it there are nothing but green fields. Even around London. England really is still a "green and pleasant land". If you look at my original home town "Holme" (I was born in the hospital in Lancaster but Holme was my original home) you will see that it is still a tiny village surrounded by fields. It is wonderful.