Invisible Woman

through my window: bunny lifeguard duty

 
Saturday morning, 7:30 am...

I looked out the kitchen window and did a double take, since our backyard is fully fenced against bunnies and other non-climbing wildlife.

But there sat a young cottontail, on the edge of the planter overlooking the 5 ft. deep center of the pool.

Looking a wee bit confused.

Not being certified in bunny water rescues, I dashed out the door and scared it off into the rosemary bushes.

Then I came back inside to watch for it, hoping it might re-emerge so I could chase it out of the yard.

It did, and I did, noting the small gap in the fencing it exited through.

The gap which is now patched, thanks to John.

The bunnies can still find plenty of green stuff to munch on in our front yard.

And hopefully I won't have to worry about doing bunny lifeguard duty for awhile. 

transition time...

 
With Phoenix temps headed above 105 for the next week (and much of the next 3 months) I don't expect to be outside with the camera quite as much.

Time to finally dust off my sewing machine and get reacquainted.

Thanks to a recent trip to a local quilt fabric shop, I have some gorgeous new Marcia Derse fabrics to play with, which I've mixed here with some Kaffe stripes, just for the fun of it.

They do seem to get along well, yes?

 

time traveling via 6-pack

 
But not the kind of 6-pack you might imagine.

This is a 6-pack of Sprinkles cupcakes.

A special treat, indeed.

These taste like cupcakes tasted when I was a kid, back when cupcakes were made from scratch, or at least from a simple mix that didn't include pudding or call for (ick) vegetable oil.

These have buttercream frosting. Lots of it.

Some people say there's too much frosting (in our family, frosting was always icing) -- but I think it's a perfectly perfect amount.

Eating a Sprinkles cupcake makes me feel like a 5 year old at a birthday party, or a family picnic, or a cozy Sunday supper at Grandma's house.

Mmm...

Almost makes me want to dust off my vintage Betty Crocker cookbook to see if I can whip up some good, old-fashioned cupcakes myself.

  

and ten days later...

  
When I returned to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum on Monday, it had been ten days since my last post, ten days since my previous visit, and ten days since I first saw this Cooper's Hawks' nest, way up high in a eucalyptus tree.

 

 
This time, to my utter delight, there was one fluffy white chick exploring the nest...

 

 
No -- make that two fluffy white Cooper's Hawk chicks and one very watchful mom keeping an eye on the observers far below.

Seeing the little chicks peering over the edge of their nest (50 feet high or so) makes this human mom a bit nervous! But the hawk mom seemed quite comfortable.

An arboretum staffer told me that this resident pair of Cooper's Hawks had three chicks last year.  So it's possible there might even be another chick or two, not yet large enough to be visible.

Birdnerds, stay tuned.

 

hawks' nest & new Flickr updates

  
Yesterday at Boyce Thompson, another birdnerd thrill was actually finding the Cooper's Hawks' nest described in the BTA May 29 birdwalk report.

Once again, I'm sorry that I don't have a longer telephoto to capture better detail of this hawk, but luckily she moved around enough that out of many photos taken, I got this one with a good pose -- her distinctive head & beak visible. (Click on the photo for a larger view.)

I'm not sure at what stage this nest/brood is; the nest was mentioned in a birdwalk report back on March 30, but I don't know when eggs were first laid. Egg laying takes 8 days (average), incubation takes approximately 30 days, and then another 30 days for for the young to fledge. I couldn't see any young above the edge of the nest, but the mom wouldn't still be at the nest if her young had already fledged, so likely she is still tending them.

Maybe they'll be visible next time...

Meanwhile, both my BTA and DBG Flickr slideshows are newly up to date. Or you can manually click through the BTA set here, and the DBG set here -- a good colorful dose of our desert flora & fauna, either way.

  

BTA: my hummingbird photo challenge

 

This morning I went out to Boyce Thompson Arboretum with the specific goal of photographing the elusive Broad-billed Hummingbirds.

The males apparently didn't get my memo, but this lovely female showed up, outlasted her Anna's competitors at the nectar feeder, and granted me this pretty photo. (Click on it for a larger view.)

There were lots of other birdnerd thrills this morning, too. I'm hoping to get all caught up on my Boyce Thompson Flickr slideshow this weekend... I'm still a few visits behind there, but it's off to a decent start.

Happy weekend!