More Birding (Hey, It's a Short Season)

Skip and I got up at the crack of 7am this morning to go birding at Thickson's Woods. It was a first time for both of us. There was certainly a lot of bird life present but it's getting harder and harder to see them as the leaves are starting to come out. There are only a few days of good birding left.

Here are some things we saw.


A Baltimore oriole (icterus galbula),








a downy woodpecker (picoides pubescens)










a tree swallow (tachycineta bicolor) guarding the nest.








an American goldfinch (carduelis tristis),










and some lovely red trilliums.









We also saw some yellow-rumped warblers, Nashville warblers, barn swallows and a house wren.

I'm working on the plans for a couple of knitting classes I'm going to be teaching at Kniterary. One will be on knitting cables without a cable needle. Another will be a beginning knitting class and a third one will be a 'Christmas in July' class knitting miniature sweaters. It uses remnant sock yarn and the sweaters can be used as Christmas tree ornaments or as part of a gift tag. Here are a couple I have knit over the last couple of days. The second one, I started and finished during our Sit 'n Knit on Thursday evening. These sweaters are actual size on a 17" monitor.