Birch Bay trip cut short

So, stuff happens, right?  We ended up coming home after a couple of days since all the restaurants in our area along Birch Bay closed completely.  I can understand not bothering with takeout since they're not that busy this time of year anyway but if I'm going to be cooking dinner, I'd rather do it in my own kitchen.  And they closed the Canadian border, or at least limited it enough that day trips to Canada for birding seemed unlikely.  So, we came back.

But not before trying out some of the birding possibilities.  We got some great views of scoters from the walkway in front of our condo on the 5th floor.  Alas, my eye issues meant I needed to use the big screen to aim the camera and the glare from all that sun on Monday made that not work well so I only got one good distant shot.  Not bad for no walk birding though as long as you don't mind the gray wires slicing through the view.

Tuesday we went to Semiahmoo fairly early.  Small birds weren't out in numbers altho we did see a Bewick's wren in the bushes.  Again, lots of scoters and gulls.  And lots of benches so I didn't get a chance to use my new stool altho I carried it along with no problems.

There were clouds and early morning light so the colors are very different but this is good enough to see the distinctive scoter beak.

But the best shot of the day was a closeup of a gull. 

I'm not great at gulls but I'd call this a Glacous-winged Gull.

We'll be trying out the monoscope and the walking stick at the heronry here in Bellingham while doing our social distanced birding.   I'm going to do as much birding as possible because it really helps me stay calm and happy. 

Birding accomodations for CFS/ME

Jeff and I are heading off to Blaine for a week, roughly 35 miles away and we'll be cocooning in a condo near a fabulous birding spot.  Lots of reading, videos and takeout food in our future.  But to make it easier for me to go the whole 1.6 mile roundtrip distance at Semiahmoo Spit, I have some accommodations I'll be trying out.

Here's everything but the electric scooter. 

A folding, adjustable stool so I can sit instead of standing when we pause the walking to look at birds.  Standing causes more fatigue than walking or sitting so I want to avoid it as much as possible.  A walking stick to help reduce the fatigue.  And because I love multitaskers, the stick has had a bit of hardware added to the top so I can mount my new monoscope on it.  The scope comes with a phone camera attachment to allow digiscoping and the complete setup is smaller and much lighter than a full scope with tripod.  Here's hoping it works.

The stool is super easy to fold and collapse and comes with an attached strap for either hand or shoulder carry.  The claim is it can support up to 330 lbs so it should be very stable and easy to use.  Here's the shot of it at full extension.

We're looking forward to a week of no news reports, lots of birding and enjoyable reading and movie watching.  Here's hoping you're doing the same!

Bellingham Heronry is under construction

This last week Jeff & I went to Fairhaven to visit the heronry and try out a new restaurant.  The herons have started building and remodeling their nests and the deciduous trees haven't leafed out yet so the viewing was fabulous.  Alas, while I took my camera, I left the SD card sitting next to the computer so all the photos were taken using my phone camera.  Next time, I'll prepare better.

The largest lumps in the photo are the nests and the other ones are herons.  Binoculars or some kind of scope are very helpful as the nests are up in the top of trees and the trees are separated from the path by a generous fenced greenbelt area.  However there are at least two dozen herons there working on the nests so it's a wonderful opportunity to observe them.

There were also lots of other birds as it was a sunny day. 

Mallards and buffleheads predominated but we got some quality face time with a couple of chickadees who wanted to chat. 

A good day and the kind of stress reliever I need right now.  Hoping you are coping as well.

visual decision making using a phone camera

I've been making slow progress on the snail series due to life throwing some troublesome things my way but I finally finished up the first two snails this week.

I started with a memory of a picture I took of a small yellow snail on the greenbelt gravel.  The color contrast was amazing and the tiny snail was crawling over relatively huge rocks but still making noticeable progress over the length of my daily walk.  But I also wanted to bring in some color using my marbled fabrics so I finished painting the first snail, picked out a good color of fabric and laid it all out with some stone-like fabric as the path.  And wow, the stones just didn't go with all the swirls so I ended up just using the marbled fabric.

So snail #1 is done.  Unfortunately, it's an odd size since I trimmed the background piece assuming there would be rocks on the bottom so it's 6 3/8" tall and 10.25 wide.  This will require some effort to frame it, if I decide to do that before posting it on etsy.

Thinking about the framing problem reminded me to make these design decisions before cutting.  (Plan twice, cut once.)  So for snail #2, I cut the background in a square after trying out the second, slightly darker snail against the background.  But which way to put the square? 

This is where the phone camera came in very useful.  I grabbed my phone and snapped shots of the snail against the 4 possible rotations of the background and then was able to look at them side by side.  This is much better than trying to visually remember the different orientations.  I tossed 2 out immediately and was left with these 2 possible layouts.

Final choice

The runner up orientation is below but sideways.  I apparently rotated the phone while taking the shot. 

As my year of experimentation continues, it's interesting to see how many ways I can simplify things with the right tool.  Now all I need to do is add the resin topcoat to #2 and post them to etsy.