Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice! Wikipedia will educate you about the solstice itself, which happens twice per year, and also about some winter solstice celebrations.

This doesn’t have much to do with Winter Solstice, but I felt like sharing. Last night I bought a few songs from iTMS you might find interesting.

Breathe is a beautiful down-tempo offering from Télépopmusik.

Departures from Karminsky Experience Inc is just one of many great songs from this group. Loungey downtempo goodness.

Treat Her Right and Mustang Sally from The Commitments soundtrack. Check out the movie if you like these tracks.

If it ain’t baroque don’t fix it. I found Masques while looking for something different for Christmas music. I love their Noël Nouvelet and Où S’en Vont Ces Gais Bergers? is fun and lively.

I’ve always enjoyed Carol of the Bells and couldn’t decide on just one rendition of it so I went with three: US Air Force Band & Singing Sergeants, Boston Brass, and Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops.

Squirrel Busting

Squirrel Busting

Originally uploaded by srcleaves.

We received this SquirrelBuster Plus bird feeder as a gift last year but just got the hanger for it this past weekend. It didn’t take the birds any time at all to find it and as you can see the food level is down appreciably in three days. So far we’re regularly visited by chickadees, cardinals, and tutfted titmouse and occasionally by a couple I haven’t identified yet. Of course it was no surprise when the squirrels turned up. While we are using high quality bird seed with no filler some of the birds are picky and just toss things to the ground. One of the squirrels seemed quite content to collect what he could find. The other was far more daring as you can see from this photo. That is a tufted titmouse in the background. (Photo was taken through a window.)

Edit: I have nothing against squirrels eating, if they can get the food out more power to them, but I do want the birds to get their fair share. I have no proof of this yet, but I suspect the design flaw of this feeder will be that just swinging it from the top will cause seed to drop out of the holes. The way it is intended to stop squirrels (and anything heavier than a certain weight) from taking food is that the entire perch drops and shuts off access to the food. I found on the first day that I had set the weight too low because it closed when a cardinal landed on it. Compared to birds a squirrel weighs quite a lot, but how much difference is there between a big blue jay and a cardinal?

Three female wild turkeys

Three female wild turkeys

Originally uploaded by srcleaves.

I was eating lunch and looking out the kitchen window on this dreary November day when suddenly a large bird walked into view. I was stunned momentarily but quickly raced to get my digital camera. By the time I got back to the window there were these three. I confirmed in my Audobon guide that they are female wild turkeys. I know this isn’t the best shot, it was through a window and with a very slow shutter speed without a tripod.

Quite an interesting visit given that Sara and I are getting our first turkey this weekend from a local farm that raises them as sustainably and humanely as possible. We’ve both been vegetarians for many years but the fact of the matter is that locally (and organically) raised meat is far more sustainable than packaged and processed vegetarian substitutes from California.