New bunny disapproval, yard ponds, and bluebirds

I'm only now adding photos to this post from earlier today. I'll start out with our newly bloomed daffodils, who took advantage of 80-ish degree temperatures yesterday to show their stuff:


NEWS: Birdchick has posted a new disapproving rabbits page!
http://birdchick.com/adventures/rabbit/index10.html

All the pages are hilarious, and page 4 includes a photo of Niblet from last summer, when we took him into our enclosed veggie garden! Sweet boy!

All this melting snow and rain have created quite the soggy mess on the marsh and in the backyard, but my backyard is nowhere near as bad as Neighbor Ed's, whose yard now features a nice big pond. This morning, some ducks decided to give it a try. First, the pertinent section of Ed's backyard, then a zoom onto the mallards, whom I didn't want to bother.



Meanwhile, the trig continues. . . . Still, it's easier than algebra was, strangely enough.

This weekend, I'm going to try to go to the upcoming Pennsylvania Bluebird Society Conference! The description states that it will be an "Excellent source of information and advice on Bluebirding for both beginners and those that already maintain Bluebird trails. Lots of tips, ideas and sharing." I'm pumped! I hope I can find some time to go. It's going to be a full weekend, what with Em and spring shopping and Easter bunnies.

There's also a birding club meeting tonight, plus there's something else going on in town called "Strictly for the Birds" -- "The Woodland Owners of Centre County are sponsoring a program on bird calls, bird habits and characteristics, stories of bird watching and tracking the bird's place in the ecosystem. Doug Wentzel, naturalist and program director at Shaver's Creek is guest speaker." Unfortunately, both these events start before I even get out of trig class. I may try to bolt out of there and hit the birding club meeting, arriving not-so-fashionably late. . . .

I just found out about these last two events this morning; I really need to get on some kind of listserv or whatever to keep up with the birding events, so I can plan better.

UPDATE: I didn't get out of trig until about 7:30 (had some questions on double-angle something or others), so I didn't want to interrupt the presentation at the birding meeting. I ended up having coffee with the editor of the community paper I used to write and edit for, Voices of Central Pennsylvania. It's a great little bastion of progressive and responsible reporting on important issues that impact this area, and Suzan Erem taught me a ton about writing and thinking in the time I was editing the environment section of the paper. However, between work and school and family and birding and woodworking and home improvement, something had to give. I miss it, but I'm just too busy to put in the time that paper needs. Still, I made some good friends there, and I helped the paper continue its life in this community.

So--no birding stuff tonight. BUT there are two great things that happened today regarding my birding:
1. A guy in my trig class is a farmer in Penns Valley, and he told me that all the farmers will be putting cow manure on their fields in the next week or so! That means BIRDS! I'm dying to see a horned lark, and I hear they're attracted to freshly pooped fields.
2. I got some great information on local birding hotspots from the State College Birding Club's web site, and I'm hoping to spend some time this weekend looking in some new places. Maybe I'll even spot some warblers--any warbler I see will be a lifer!

One last blog-related note; perhaps you've noticed that this post contains embedded links, which I hadn't been able to use since I switched browsers and computers (PC to Mac). However, I realized that I could just input the html by looking at other embedded links on my old posts, and voila! embedded links! I feel so computer programmy!