I and the Bird anniversary

It's the four-year anniversary of I and the Bird! Go visit the special-edition post Four Years Young. Nice job, Corey.

Search terms

Further down, there are fifteen other variations on the yellow fuzzy caterpillar theme, and even more versions with misspellings of caterpillar or yellow.

This topic came up the other night at the Blount County Blogger dinner... what is the top search term for your blog? Mine tends to vary seasonally, but year in and year out, the overall winner is always... yellow fuzzy caterpillar.

Blue snake usually comes in second.

I used to look at my stats compulsively, but these days I tend to forget for weeks at a time. So if anyone's sent me a rash of traffic, I apologize for not thanking you properly. The stats roll over after about a day, since I'm cheap and don't pay for the extended version.

We also talked about answering comments, and I admitted that I'd been kind of slack in that regard, especially lately. If I've ignored your comment, it wasn't on purpose. I just tend to put things off, or get started doing something else, and then forget. I wish there were a pill for that.

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Who else was at the dinner?
countrypeapie
Edifice Rex
The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
and a friend who I'm trying to convince to blog.

The Country Experience couldn't make it this time, but we hope to see her next week, as well as mountainmelody and WhoKnowsWhat.

Bobwhite

Colinus virginianus

Growing up, I knew this bird as "a Quail". Since there's only one type of quail in Alabama, there's no confusion. I also heard them called Bobwhites, and some people put both together: Bobwhite quail. The standard name is Northern Bobwhite, but you'll be considered an egghead if you go around calling it that.

Our place was so manicured when we first moved here, that we never heard Bobwhites. A few years of "the natural look" was more to their liking, and now it's not unusual to hear them singing. It never fails to make me a little happier, every time I hear one.

Yesterday my husband discovered one walking down our driveway. Between a fogged lens and zero cover between us and the quail, I never thought to get a photo, let alone one this close. But this bedraggled individual seemed almost as curious about us as we were about him, allowing us closer than almost any wild bird I've ever encountered. He wasn't stupid though - he walked off into the brush just as we reached him.

Bobwhites are in decline, and I suspect that their numbers here are probably hurt by the huge increase in armadillos in recent years. (They're ground-nesting birds.)

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Click here to hear a Bobwhite calling. We got close enough yesterday to hear an endearing little quiet chirping noise that he was making.

Visit the Friday Ark.

Indecisive cropping

I'm growing Zinnias for Hospice again this year. They're perfect for me: varied, easy, prolific, and forgiving. And, good for Hospice: long vase life.



I'm growing the same types as before, but their behavior this year (when not totally drought-stricken) is wildly different. The large varieties are doing so much better that I'd think they were different plants. (They're actually from the same batch of seeds.) We watered them last year, but apparently, that doesn't compare to actual rain.



The only problem I'm having...



... besides Japanese beetles...



... is indecisive cropping.



Can't decide which looks best.



I have that problem a lot.



Gave up after one try on this Peppermint Stick variety.

Gray day swallows

Flighty flibbertigibbets.

Chickens love watermelon

Chickens love watermelon, with a passion. These were just our leftover rinds, with only a bit of red. Last year we bought an over-mushy melon by mistake, and they ate the whole thing: chicken heaven.

I had figured that the black and white chickens were Dominiques, but now I'm not so sure. Dominiques (or Domineckers, as they are called here) have a rose comb, and these don't appear to be headed in that direction. The female on the right as a lot of whitish feathers on her front, but the others don't. The feathers on the back of their necks seem to be changing from black-and-white to brown-and-white.

My husband says they're probably all just mutt chickens. The three remaining excess cockerels haven't made it to the stew pot yet. They're not fighting, or even crowing, so far, but it's just a matter of time. For now though, they are helping decrease the insect population in the yard. This little flock roams further afield than others we've had.

I hate the fact that after the cockerels are culled, we'll have one tiny flock of two chickens and another tiny flock of three. "Can't we all just get along" is not a sentiment that's shared by chickens, apparently. The older birds just won't have anything to do with the younger ones. They treat them as if they were another species entirely. I wonder, if one of the older ones dies... will the remaining one prefer to spend her time alone, or will she try to join the younger flock? I'm guessing the latter.

The one on the right is lowest in the pecking order. The other chickens chase her from the food at times. But I've taken a tip from some people and started offering bugs that I find in the garden to the chickens. This gal is the one who comes running the fastest, for her caterpillar treat. Now she runs to me, expecting bugs, every time she sees me. I'm tempted to buy mealworms to keep in my pocket, so I won't be such a continual disappointment to her.

Bad picture of a good fish

We walked in the creek. Apparently it's become our warm-weather holiday tradition. We spotted these fish, that I photographed poorly, and one other cool long-skinny-stripey one that I missed altogether.

Hubby said he thinks this is a sunfish. I looked online but couldn't find anything that matches exactly. (I'm hoping one of you will enlighten me.)

The weather was hot, the water was cool. The gnats were horrible. The mosquitoes, surprisingly, weren't unbearable. I did get an interesting bite that looked like it might have come from a 6-inch-tall vampire. It's still a little swollen, but I've experienced no bloodlust so far.

It hasn't rained in over three weeks. Most of the county got a nice downpour last weekend, but not here. The grass makes sad crunchy sounds. Hubby put in drip irrigation in most of the garden again this year, so I fired it up for a good soaking this week... and forgot to turn it off. For a long time. A looooong time. An "I'm embarrassed to tell my husband exactly how long" long time. The plants didn't seem to mind.

Daylily garden

I knew, in a theoretical kind of way, that there were a lot of varieties of Daylilies. It didn't really prevent my non-stop gaping at a Daylily garden, though.



One of our wildflower group couples gave us a tour of their garden this week.



Their main focus is Daylilies -- they have hundreds of them.



I doubt I'll ever be as dedicated a gardener.



But I'm lucky to have friends who are.



All the types were labeled, but non-dedicated non-gardener that I am, I didn't take down any names.



If you're dying to know about any particular one, I can probably find out.

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Daylilies are Hemerocallis sp. The name in Greek is a combination of Hemera (day) and Kallos (beautiful).

I wrote about words using Kallos before, when talking about Beautyberry. Every time I come across it in a botanical name, I still crack up, remembering that comment about a track team and their cry of "Callipygious!"

Bird's Nest fungus

I know I'm living up to the most common descriptive written in my old yearbooks ("weird") when my first reaction to finding Bird's Nest fungus is, "Oh, I've been wanting to see those!"



But it's true. If I'd had a Most Wanted list for fungi, this one would've been near the top. I should have prepped myself a bit better though - I didn't realize that they were so tiny. (That green towering thing on the left is an onion.)

It's apparently very much a fungus of bark or wood mulch. The "eggs" contain the spores, which are splashed out by rain. So I'm thinking that our mulch probably already contained the spores when we bought it.

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Key to the Bird's Nest fungi. I believe this one is Cyathus striatus.

Other Most Wanted?
Dead Man's fingers!
Any variety of Stinkhorn fungus!

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Hmm, there's a blog carnival/festival/circus for everything else in the world, but not one for fungi? Or am I just missing it?

Soap meeting

I always have so much fun at our Alabama Soapmaker meetings, and this was our largest ever: 101 attendees. At least a third of them were from out of state this year. There were so many new people that I didn't get to meet them all.



To inspire creativity, we participate in swaps. This year I signed up for the lotion bar swap, figuring that it would force me to work on my formulating. (I've made them before, but hadn't really ever been happy with them.)

Mine was still a bit greasier than what I was aiming for, but it sure worked well on softening my rough elbows. So I called it "Elbow Grease". It still needs some tinkering.



After I see all the swap goodies, I usually end up wishing I'd entered two or three more. This year it was the Shampoo Bar swap that I was especially envious of. Dianne always has such adorable packaging, and her treatment of the swap items was no different.



Cute, huh?



Shopping is one of my favorite parts of the meeting, and this year we had more vendors than ever.



This is one of those times I wish for smell-o-vision.



We also have table space for members' garage-sale items. If you're lucky, you can pay for your meeting expenses this way.



We usually have a mixture of lectures and demonstrations. Carol demonstrated her company's cutter, and Darlene (who's really from Georgia, but we claim her as an honorary Alabamian) showed us how to make sugarcube scrubbies.



There's a camera showing the up-close action during demos. This is Alison's lotion-making class. (Click to enlarge.)



But sometimes you just have to get up close in person.



Theda showed us how to make liquid soap.



Tammy is the "Mud Queen" and sells all manner of Dead Sea salts and mud products. Here she is demonstrating the proper use of gloves and goggles.



That evening, she had a mud party in her room, and I was able to take many incriminating photographs.



I'm hoping my blackmail money will start arriving any minute now.

Madopterini

Weevil party at the nearest daisy, pass it on...

I think these weevils are in the tribe Madopterini. Though I might just be leaning towards that conclusion since I like the name so much.

I wasn't even aware that there were such things as tribes, taxonomically speaking, until I started trying to look up bugs. Just as species can be further divided into subspecies, families are sometimes further divided into subfamily, tribe, and subtribe.

Madopterini: More likely to march on Rome, or to perform straightjacket escapes while upside down and underwater?

All zoological tribes end in -ini, apparently. (I would not have been able to resist naming several of them after Italian operatic composers.)

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A professor at the University of Florida has a nice series of pages about writing scientific papers. They include sections on species name formation, Greek and Latin words adopted into English, pronunciation of scientific names, and several other interesting topics.

Prickly pear

I was surprised the first time I saw cactus growing in the wild here in the southeast. Outside of cactus gardens, it's not the kind of plant you tend to find in the suburbs. But it's a native in most eastern states.



This is Opuntia humifusa. The upright tall version is Opuntia stricta. There are three other prickly pears in Alabama: Opuntia austrina, Opuntia pusilla, and Opuntia monacantha. But only humifusa is in Blount county, and it's the only member of the cactus family that's native here.

My book says it grows in sandstone outcrops, limestone glades, and open, thin-soiled woods.

Zygodactyl Coccyzus & the cut direct

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus).



Giving me...



The cut direct.

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Cuckoos are zygodactyl, like woodpeckers. Click that link for further bird-foot edification.

Friday Ark.

New chickens

The newer chickens never seem in the mood for portraiture.



We came up on the losing end of the chicken lottery this time. Out of eight mystery chick picks, five were cockerels (males), and only three were pullets (females).

What kind of homesteading woman am I, if I couldn't watch what had to happen?



The squeamish kind, I guess.

Hubby is just as content to do it all himself, I think, to avoid having me standing over his shoulder. "Offering suggestions," as I see it... "Bossing me around," according to him. "And stressing me out."

We made the rookie mistake (according the the Backyard Chicken Forum) of cooking them without letting them rest in the fridge for at least 24 hours, so they were a little tough.