birding 2020: awesome week with 2 trips to Tennant Lake

This week I went to Tennant Lake to see swallows.  Twice.  The first time was cloudy and fairly breezy with a definite chill but I got some swallow sightings and got some excellent photos of a couple of Common Yellowthroats having a song duel.  Since this is possibly the second or third time I've seen one, I was thrilled.

Not only did I see a bird which has not been at all common for me, but I got the traditional spring bird singing with his head thrown back pose.   So even with not much in the way of birds, Tuesday, my first day out there, was good. 

So I talked Jeff into going with me on Thursday as I wanted to try the boardwalk.  Between my CFS and my ankles, I was a bit leery of going by myself so I was really happy he came along.  And what a great birding day it turned out to be!

We got swallows, almost immediately, and then heard lots of birds but didn't see so many until we were about halfway through the boardwalk loop in the marsh.  Then the birds just came flocking to us.  A mourning dove, a common merganser, a marsh wren, all good sightings and easy to spend some quality time with.  Then the timer went off so we headed back at a brisk walk since Jeff had a zoom meeting scheduled.  Two twists of the boardwalk later, we surprised a Great Blue Heron fishing from the platform.  He squawked, I squawked (those beaks are big and sharp) and he did a small flight hop away.  I was disappointed I didn't get a chance at a photo but we continued on.  And ran into him again a couple turns later.  This time, he didn't startle, so I got my camera up and focused and we followed him slowly down the boardwalk, pausing for good photo ops.  I got some excellent shots and it was a wonderful ending to our trip.  (Yes, Jeff made it to his meeting with plenty of time to spare.)

I posted the full body shot on Instagram, here's the head shot.

I find birding to be a wonderful stress reliever so I'm feeling great today and looking forward to setting up my backyard birding area this weekend.  I hope your selfcare routines are working as well.

Staying with a series

Given my time and energy limitations, I'm experimenting with sticking with a series.  This has been an interesting challenge but once I made it clear to my brain that we were doing snails, nothing but snails, and all other ideas were not going to be acted on, I started getting tons of ideas about snails.  (I used to have 2-3 different projects going at once so I could switch between them when I needed to think about something on one.)  So now, I have 2 snails going at once.

The first pair used the painted snail on watercolor paper with a marbled background.  I found two different ways to use the background and one of those used the onpoint orientation that I like a lot.

Snail #1: Persist!  started with an idea based on a photo I took of a yellow snail crawling across tiny gray gravel.  I mentally added big grass stalks behind the snail and started to do that idea.  During the process, I remembered I wanted to use marbling so I pulled a marbled fabric for the background and then put stone fabric against it.  No way.  Not a good visual.  So I dropped the stones for later and went with the marbling.

Snail #2: Go With the Flow continued the use of the marbling with the hand painted snail.  I liked the change in the flow of the background.

With the next pair, I went back to the grass & gravel idea.  Snail #3: Journey of a 1000 Slithers (title still in flux since snails don't actually step) got the gravel added back in but while I was selecting the background fabric, I was captivated by one of the spiral pieces I've got in my stash.  So no grass yet.  That's coming in #4.

I'm learning things with each piece and getting more and more ideas so right now I have at least 4 snails jockeying for position to be piece #5.    Right now, I'm feeling good about the whole process.  My energy is up, I'm finishing pieces fairly quickly and the ideas are surging.  I am in the zone!

2020 Birding: a swallow hunt

Today I went to Scudder Pond to look for swallows.  It's not the best place for those birds locally, but I also wanted to see Wood Ducks and look for any lingering warblers.  Alas, I missed out on all 3 of my goal birds, a frequent event in birding.  So I enjoyed the birds that were there:  Red-Winged Blackbirds, Spotted Towhee, a surprise group of Pine Siskins, an abundance of sparrows and one active and feisty Black-Capped Chickadee.   Later this week I will venture out to the best swallow spot I know (Tennant Lake) where I can see the swallows from the parking lot.

Here's some photos from early May of last year.

swallow at birdhouse off of boardwalk

And my favorite funny shot, butt end of swallow.

My blood pressure is up slightly, I'm assuming from the lockdown stress, so I am going to up my birding since that's one of my selfcare practices.  I hope you are taking care of yourself too.

CFS/ME update

It's been a bit over 6 months since I started the Myhill supplement regime along with taking D-Ribose regularly and I am really pleased to say I am getting better.

I hit a plateau after our October vacation and was struggling to make more progress so I reviewed Dr. Myhill's book.  That caused me to visit my doctor and see about getting off the beta blocker she had prescribed for my blood pressure.  Once I was off the beta blocker, I felt better immediately and have been improving since.

I am mostly doing art now but I am able to do the household chores in addition to my studio time and, most days, I still have energy after dinner.  This is a *huge* improvement.  I still feel like a snail rather than the energizer bunny but I can see the progress so I'm focusing on persisting.

Snail #1 in Persist! series

The stress and uncertainty of the current coronavirus situation, especially here in Washington, means that I'm not trying to make big changes now.  I am starting to do regular walks outside.  This has not been on my list of activities for months so that I am doing some is also an improvement.  I'm sleeping well, making art, and my daily energy is growing.  I'm now going to just keep on doing this because it's working.