Fiacré's spade: More birds and a new toy

We are, as Terry says, bird-a-licious. I finally got a picture of the male hummingbird flying, which is tricky…

Male hummingbird in flight

And with the light at the right angle to show his ruby throat, which is almost harder than catching him in flight.

Showing a bit of his ruby throat

Here’s the female.

The female humming bird

The goldfinch males have completely molted to their bright yellow. They are the same color as the dandelions. A flock of them were picking through the seeds under the feeder one morning. I don’t fill the feeder every day because, as I have mentioned before, they just throw it all on the ground. They can eat some of that before I put more out, dang it!

So many goldfinches!

I have seen both the male and female orchard oriole, but only got a picture of the male.

Orchard oriole

The white-crowned sparrows don’t hang around long. A day or two, and they move farther north. I did not see or hear the white-throated sparrow this year. Their visit is even more fleeting.

White-crowned sparrow

The chipping sparrows are around all summer. They look like they are wearing rusty-colored bike helmets with white racing stripes.

Chipping sparrow

Saturday was gloomy, cold, and damp. I met friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time for breakfast. It was nice to catch up. Jane and I wen grocery shopping after that. We went back to her house to try making orange jelly. Jane read somewhere that the orioles prefer it to grape jelly, so we thought we’d give it a go. We haven’t tried it yet. All jelly has to sit for 24 hours before moving it, which counted me out for having any until next weekend when I see Jane again. Jane is finishing her grape jelly before converting. While at Jane’s, I saw four indigo buntings. That was very exciting! I had only ever seen one at a time before.

Terry suggested that I get a battery-operated weed whacker because he felt I was too weak and puny to pull the string to start the gas-powered one. It would be an insult worthy of righteous indignation if it weren’t true. I’d asked Jane to do some research for me, and she shared her results. We decided on a Kobalt 80V Max. It had overwhelmingly good reviews, was on sale and in stock at Lowe’s. We were surprised that it was raining when we left the house at 2:00.

We shopped in the rain. I drove home in the rain until the last mile or so. It turned out we’d had no rain at all. Just a little spitting, that was it.

The first thing I did after opening the box was charge the battery. Academic that I am, I read all the instructions for my weed whacker before putting it together. I learned, among other things, that I should always wear safety glasses and not use the weed whacker while barefoot, intoxicated, around unsupervised children, near open flames, or in the dark. It’s like they don’t want you to have any fun! Seriously, they could have saved three pages of fine print with four words: DON’T BE AN IDIOT. But that assumes too much, I realize. We live in an age where “true fact” is no longer needlessly redundant but a necessary clarification to separate verifiable information from all the ridiculous crap on the internet. I digress.

I did a minimal bit of assembly and put in the battery. I’m sure there are safety glasses somewhere on the property, but I didn’t know where. I took the weed whacker outside for a little trial without wearing eye protection. The creeping Charlie beneath the deck felt my wrath. In return, it peppered me with green flecks of leaf and stem. I did not sustain any eye damage, but I think they could add one more warning to the manual: wear old clothes.