Saw my first (ever) Baltimore oriole today! He took a ride on the hummingbird feeder. [link]

I was quick enough to get a couple of cellphone pictures, but he was gone before I could get the phone attached to the monocular for some better shots.

Phone cameras have become amazing. Those two pix were taken from my table, five meters away, through glass and a screen, then cropped with standard viewing software, nothing special. For scale, the hummingbird feeder has a 15 cm diameter.

That is so cool, dcp! We've been bird watching and recording in our back yard. I need to get some sort of phone camera attachment for telephoto.

Thanks. What I use is this: [link]

I don't keep it all assembled. Sometimes I like to use just the monocular by itself. Putting the phone and the adapter and the monocular together takes me about 30 seconds. There is a tripod mount under the monocular, if you need stability.

Also, lately I have been having a lot of fun with Cornell's Merlin Bird ID app.

Yes, I randomly discovered Merlin and have been having fun with it, too! We don't have a ton of variety in the backyard, but I think I have five or six on my life list. So fun!

Thanks for that link. Added to my wishlist.

Popping in to mention that today is a day of celebration for Java Cat's birthday. I hope it is a wonderful year to come.

And I am off to do family stuff today. Like install baseboards at MIL's house. Then hopefully fun stuff.

I'm at lunch in our break room and 2 co workers I don't know are talking about their daughter and granddaughter and cheerleader try outs.

The mom didn't know tryouts for something was happening because a mom from her daughter's dance class said that it was over. But the grandmother (of another girl) was saying no that her grand daughter had cheer try out after whenever that was.

And then it transitioned into a rumor about the duaghter dropped another girl....or something like that and so it's turned into a gossipy bitch fest about the various girls and moms of the dance group.

In other work news I found out a coworker I liked got fired. I don't know what happened but my beat guess is time card theft.

We've reached the pre wedding, awkward standing around portion of the festivities. Yay?

Timelies all!

Not a great day with Mr. S. He woke up before 6 and was annoying all day. I spent part of the afternoon trying to detangle two skeins of yarn that were all tangled together.(The guidance councilor at Mr. S's school sent home toys for us to play with him when he gets home from school, which included yarn because he seemed to enjoy playing with it.)

Oh Sheryl, tangled yarn is a pain in the ass. Do you know how to roll it from a skein into a ball? It takes a little time, but it's something you can do while you're watching TV or whatever. I wish I could show you.

I checked out YouTube videos to show you, but a lot of them made it look more complicated than it is. This was the most straightforward one. [link]

Cindy, I ended up cutting the skeins in a few places, as there were knots I couldn't undo.