Are You A Birder?

Remember Susan's "You Might Be A Birder...." quiz back on Dec. 3rd? That was a lot of fun and I answered "yes" to most of the questions. Now here's another quiz for you.

I was reading the essay "The Passionate Flock" in the Jan/Feb 2008 Audubon magazine this morning. In that article it says that a survey of Americans who watch birds is somewhere between 46 and 67 million! However, there's a disclaimer saying that these surveys "count as a birder anyone who tosses sunflower seeds for the juncos." The article goes on to say that a better way to define "birder" would be the number of people who can identify more than 20 species of birds (this drops the number down to only 6 million) or even those folks who would be able to ID 100 species (narrowing the group called "birder" to a few hundred thousand).

So I got to thinking about this article and wondering to myself how many of us consider ourselves "birders" and I decided to come up with a little visual quiz for you. Shown below are 21 pictures of birds for you to identify. I invite you to take the quiz and identify as many birds as you can (without a field guide - but I've added hints). You can put your answers in the comments section or send me an e-mail (if you're not sure about all the birds - rjknits at msn dot com). I will post the correct answers on Sunday night (hopefully that will give everyone enough time). Good Luck and thanks for playing! (NOTE: All of the following photos were taken in Southeast Minnesota.)

1. Lynne's favorite bird (TURKEY VULTURE)

2. Native to the Arctic (SNOWY OWL)

3. Loves thistle seed (AMERICAN GOLDFINCH)

4. Loves berries (CEDAR WAXWING)

5. A game bird (originally imported from China) (RING-NECKED PHEASANT)

6. Sometimes also called the blackbird (COMMON GRACKLE)

7. Everyone's favorite red bird (NORTHERN CARDINAL)

8. His color and call are his name (BLUEJAY)

9. Gobble, gobble (EASTERN WILD TURKEY)

10. Feigns "broken wing" to lure predators away from its nest (KILLDEER)

11. This duck will nest in a house (WOOD DUCK)

12. This is not a hummingbird (AMERICAN ROBIN)

13. Its song mimics other bird calls & sounds - always repeated twice (BROWN THRASHER)

14. Has a baseball team named after it (BALTIMORE ORIOLE)

15. A bird of happiness (EASTERN BLUEBIRD)

16. This isn't the purple one (HOUSE FINCH)

17. A grassland bird whose numbers are declining (BOBOLINK)

18. A poor nest builder (MOURNING DOVE)

19. This is a baby (HOUSE WREN)

(Sorry, Susan, I wish this was a Carolina Wren--they've been seen in Rochester, but I've never had them out in my neck of the woods)

20. This is the female (not a purple finch!) (ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK)

21. Not a ladder-back! (RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER)

22. Our largest swallow (PURPLE MARTIN)

23. Aw come on....do you really need a hint for this one? (RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD)

24. Other varieties of these include Carolina and Boreal (BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE)

25. Sometimes confused with his much larger, identical cousin (DOWNY WOODPECKER)

If you get 20 or more correct, consider yourself a birder. And if you get less than 20 that's OK too, because the important thing is that you're having fun watching and learning about the birds.

While you're answering these questions, I will be thinking of a prize for the first five "birders" with 21 or more correct answers (it will be something knitted).

Unfinished Projects

I took a day off work on Monday with the intention of getting lots of stuff done: cleaning, take Christmas decorations down, cut my hair, and sort through my unfinished knitting projects in an effort to get organized. Well you know how that goes.....not enough hours in the day to do all the things you want to. I did, however, go through one closet of unfinished projects and here are a few to put on my list for 2008. (Comment: I have started keeping a log of knitting projects I start and also finish. I was thrilled that I finished 3 projects on Sunday, but after going through this closet, my joy was short-lived.)

I'm ashamed to say that some of these projects were started over 10 years ago and I had actually forgotten about them. Case in point: these 3 socks (on the left) and 1 entrelac mitten (on the right). Now I know some people really like entrelac knitting, but I hated knitting these mittens (on size 1 needles). I'm going to rip them out and use the yarn for something else. The same with the socks. The first one is way too big anyway.

Here's a V-neck Fana cardigan cardigan I used for a steek demonstration class in January 2005. I'm not sure if I have enough tan yarn to finish both sleeves and the band around the edge, plus the sweater turned out way big (about 52 inches around). If I get it finished, watch for it to go up for sale on this blog some day.

Remember this "Modern Quilt Wrap" I started last summer? Yup, not much progress here either. My original goal was to do one square a day (insert snort of laughter here).

Here are a couple of nice sweater sleeves--but no sweater body to go along with them. Sigh. Not sure what happened here....I really like this sweater pattern and need to get back to it.
Here's the last and most despised project of all--a scarf--started 3 years ago.

This scarf was commissioned to match this hat.

I made the hat to match a Norwegian sweater one of the Sons of Norway members had purchased for her daughter in Norway. The hat wasn't a problem. I designed the pattern myself to match the sweater and was done with it in a couple weeks. "Oh, but we have all this yarn left over, Ruth, would you be willing to knit a matching scarf too?" I said yes, but had a lot of other stuff going on so I couldn't guarantee when I might get it done. "Oh that's OK, Ruth, whenever....."

See the whole deal is that I have to knit it in 2 parts because the scarf will hang down on either side of the neck, the stitches have to be going in the same direction. Does that make sense? If I just knit it from one end to the other, when it's hanging side-by-side, the stitches on one side will be upside down. (This is what sucks about being a perfectionist knitter--most people wouldn't notice it, but I do!)

Anyway, my goal is to get this scarf done by the end of January (before the customer calls me again). I'm sick of having it around my house and I want to work on something more fun.

Backyard Bunnies

We have quite a few wild cottontail bunnies in our backyard. I enjoy watching them, but they're pretty shy and usually only come out into the open under the cover of darkness. Here are a couple pictures I took one night from the kitchen window.

This is a pretty large ground-feeding tray (it's also the same one that the deer eat from). Unfortunately, only 1 bunny is allowed in the tray at a time and things can get a little "hare-y" for the bunny who thinks it's time for his turn in the tray. These bunnies can be kind of feisty and it's especially fun to see one of the bunnies challenge the other one and then one of them will jump straight up into the air--about 2 feet. Have you ever seen them do that?

I've seen as many as 6 bunnies at a time in the area around this ground feeding tray.

I know there are lots of bunnies in my yard because I see their trails all over the place. Here's one you can't mistake for anybody else's trail.....all those little black spots aren't sunflower seeds!The trail leads from the ground-feeding tray to the large red pine that all of my backyard wildlife seems to prefer living in and under.

The bunnies also like running around and living under my white pine windbreak....as evidenced by the abundance of tracks shown in the photo below.

Here are a couple more well-used bunny trails running from the white pine windbreak to the dense red osier dogwood patch in the middle of the yard.

But here's the place my backyard bunnies love most of all.....the storage shed. I wish I knew how many bunnies live under here. They have an entrance/exit on the back side.....

And also an entrance/exit on the front side.

Daisy just loves sticking her nose in these holes and sniffing for the bunnies.

I know these bunnies are naughty and chew on lots of things they aren't supposed to, but I have a hard time getting rid of them, especially when I know next spring I may be able to get another chance to see this......

A Trip to the Woods

Today we went out to the woods to take down the last of our tree stands from deer hunting. The archery season ended on December 31. Other than being overcast and somewhat foggy, today was a pretty nice day--temps around 30 and not too windy.

It's nice to go out to the woods in the winter because there are always lots of tracks in the snow and it's a good way to gather information about deer and turkeys for our hunting seasons next year.

There were lots of turkey tracks--everywhere!

Who's following who??

We saw a few turkeys on the ground and also scared quite a few out of the trees -- but they fly way too fast for me to get any pictures.

Here's a fungus-covered tree -- especially for Jennifer. I thought of you many times this morning Jenn, you would have loved being out on this winter trip in the woods.

There are some pretty big white pines in this area where we hunt, but here's a picture of the Granddaddy of them all! My spousal unit is a pretty big guy, but he's dwarfed by this huge pine. It's pretty cool to see a tree this large.

The first stand we decided to take down was at the river bottom. While the spousal unit was taking care of business, I had some time to follow deer tracks down by the river.

There's still open water in a few spots and I took this little video to share (sorry about the loud breathing--I'll have to be more aware of that in future films)

There used to be beavers in this river and some of the evidence of their tree-cutting skills still remains. I'm not sure what happened to them....there's been some pretty major flooding for the past several years or maybe someone trapped them. Anyway, they're not around any longer and I miss them.

Here's a spot where a deer bedded down for the night. They can curl up so tight to stay warm and sleep in the snow.

Trying to climb up steep hills in the slippery snow gave me a few opportunities to see things a little closer to the ground. I thought these weeds sticking out of the snow looked kind of pretty.

This turkey feather was just laying on top of the snow. Turkeys have the most beautiful feathers!

Here's my spousal unit packing all of our tree stands and climbing steps back to the car. This little sled works pretty good--sure beats carrying all of that heavy stuff like we used to!