Category Archives for animals

Scene in Spain, #20

We arrived in Ponferrada early in the morning and sat tiredly in the hotel lobby until our room was ready. (The staff were amazing – brought us wonderful coffee and fruits and kept apologizing that the room wasn’t ready despite us arriving before most people would even be up!)

When we finally moved out to walk around, we found out there was a festival happening – what timing to catch the final day when we weren’t even aware it existed! It looked like a Renaissance Fair. There was a display of birds including these two rather sarcastic looking owls:

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There were also a ton of food vendors. We stopped at this one because it smelled amazing.

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This is where we got the delicious festival food I posted earlier (a looong time ago, actually) – and I still have yet to grill jalapenos!

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Scene while walking: July 18, 2014

I was walking on campus at work and saw a crowd of people looking in a tree. I wondered if they spotted a hawk, which we sometimes have around. But when I got closer I realized it was a tiny kitten. I am happy to report the kitten was successfully rescued and was immediately taken in by a co-worker who has experience with feral kittens. We have no idea how it got there but suspect someone dumped kittens in the hopes they’d be adopted. That’s a ridiculous thing to do.

No, I don't expect you can see the kitten in this picture.

No, I don’t expect you can see the kitten in this picture.

zoomed in, you can just make out the poor kid.

zoomed in, you can just make out the poor kid.

A welcome visitor!

While sitting on our porch my husband spotted a bird fly into a sentinel pine right by the house. He got up and noticed it was on a nest. We decided it was a mother robin.

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It’s hot, so the open beak is part of heat regulation (common for birds). A bit later I noticed she had left so I went to the upper deck to see what I could see. I spied three “robin’s blue” eggs! Hard to get the camera in for that, but here are two of them (okay, part of two of them):

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This is likely their last brood of the season, and I’d like to know how we missed the first one (or two)?????

Anyway, we’ll be keeping an eye out!

Another installment of…

An actual conversation of a married couple:

Me: Your whack-job cat has decided her new favorite place to sleep is in front of your laundry hamper.

Him: I know. That’s why none of my clothes are in the hamper.

Me: That’s why? What about the clothes that are in the dryer?

Him: They’re stored.

Me: But I need to use the dryer.

Him: You can take them upstairs. That wouldn’t be a problem.

Me: Good to know.

Brown Ibis?

While on a break from my meeting today I spotted these birds (which I had seen before, but this time I finally got a picture that someone besides me could actually see them in). Are these ibis? If they are white ibis they are juvenile but I haven’t seen any white ibis around and honestly this is the first time I have ever seen these birds on our campus. This is about a mile from the Columbia River. Any thoughts?

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