Tieing my old blog entry record...

This may be a cheesy way to tie a record for second place, but since I was so close to having another good year in terms of the number of entries, I thought I would just throw a couple of things together to let you know how we spend our days here when it gets cold and snowy  --  bird watching.  One of my old Army buddies who checks in every once in a while is probably saying -- "Oh, no, not another bird story!"  Well, "hang in there" (hint:  this will be further explained later in the article).  There's more to come.

It seems that we have gotten into the habit of sitting in the pentagon room in the mornings to watch the birds as we drink our morning coffee or juice.  It really is a nice place as the sun generally fills it with warm sunlight and we can look out over the feeders, the pond and fields and watch the birds come and go, fuss and fight over seed, and explode in flight as the pesky neighborhood red-tailed hawk comes to try to get a tasty breakfast.  Of course, when it comes around, Pam yells at it and tries to chase it away before it can complete its mission.

This red-headed woodpecker is fun to watch.  He comes in, gets a sunflower seed from the feeder and then climbs up the side of the tree and starts whacking the seed up against the tree in order to crack it open.  It's funny to watch its routine...it is the same every time.

So it was a good insight into how these animals react to weather when I looked out and saw it just clinging to the side of the tree as it is here, just hanging on and not moving.  Then I realized that the cold winter winds were out of the west (which would be to the left of this picture) and they were really cold and blustery.  I checked the weather station and saw  that the winds were about 15 m.p.h.sustained with gusts to 25.  There was also a wind chill at 2 to 3 degrees.  Pretty smart bird staying in out of the wind behind the tree.  We often tell people to "just hang in there" when something is pretty bad.  Do you suppose this is where that saying came from?  Yeah, I doubt it too.

So this is the official end to the 2014 blogs.  I hope you have enjoyed them.  Feel free to leave a comment.  And if you too have noticed that I have kinda settled into a routine and have written about some of the same things as the seasons turn, you are very observant.  But that's what happens when we get older -- we settle for routines because at least we're vertical to see them and that is still better than the alternative.

Now, having said all that, I am going to go public with one of my New Year's resolutions (actually, the only one I have made so far) -- I am going to try to write more entries, write about some different things, and get more deeply involved with the things around me on which I might repeat an article. The way I look at it, there is nothing wrong with revisiting something, but the challenge is to "resee" it, to scratch a bit deeper and keep going.  So that is my resolution -- and I'm sticking to it!! (At least for now.).  In this entry I kinda got a better insight in to the phrase "just hang in there."  So maybe the next golf article, grandkids entry, and so on will get into that next level.


When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of unfinished writing left, not a thing I yet need to see, and could say, "I used everything you gave me."

Hooah