27-28 January 2013 - My Auspicious Day

Today is a great day. It's my birthday. My family has never gone crazy about birthdays, so in many ways it is just another day. Except that the first email I saw was from my brother. He wrote:

"I see you have a Full Moon to mark the occasion, and 100 percent chance of snow!"  

That made me feel great. As an avid moon watcher I had missed the fact the full moon was on my birthday. Makes me wonder how many times in my little life that has happened?  I had seen the moon the previous night and it looked darned round to me, but I hadn't put it together, the full and the date. And yes, we had snow. All day. Very pretty snow, I might add. 

The first interesting thing about the day? We had a mixed flock of birds come through. There must have been 100 or more birds: robins, cedar waxwings and a few starlings.  The cedar waxwings are gorgeous. Love their spiky heads. They were twittering all over the yard, trying to find the few remaining berries on the russian olives, pyracantha and fruit trees. 

I grabbed a needle and thread and started stringing dried cranberries. The people across the street from us had a gorgeous Christmas tree: straight limbs, very open and lacy. When they put it out for the trash pick-up I rescued it and planted it in a big snowbank outside the living room window. Made a great spot to hang the cranberries. 

Adding to the delight of seeing the cedar waxwings, we identified two new birds. Quite a birthday present. First, after a lot of discussion and pulling out of bird books, we discovered a new tiny little bird hanging around the suet feeder is a brown creeper. It is so tiny and fast that I have not been able to get a really good picture. 

The second new-to-us bird turned out to be a yellow-rumped warbler. 

This is another very small bird, but isn't he a cutie?  He is also a very fast moving variety, but I caught him landing. 


28 January

My brother came over today with a birthday cheesecake. He is a really good cook--it was delicious. This was a fabulous surprise and such a treat. I'm thinking another piece would go down really well right now.