I'm Back and So Are My Coots (American Coots, That Is)

The first of my American Coots are back at Carolina Beach Lake.  Last year the first day I saw them, there were ten.  This year there are nine but the count seems too double almost daily until they reach a flock of about a 100 that winter over down here in southeastern North Carolina.  Hopefully soon I will see more of the winter visitors!  It went down to just short of freezing last night which was almost a record cold but still nice enough this morning to drink my coffee out on the porch in the bright sunshine.  Last year was exceptionally mild and hopefully this year won't be too cold.

I took a lot of pictures of this beautiful Great Egret who was fishing in the Lake.  There are a lot of fish there and I was surprised I haven't seen the birds feasting there before.  He didn't seem to mind me taking his picture too much.

I just thought this was a nice picture so didn't put it in the collage!

The Yellow Bellied Sliders have come out of the water to sun which means the water is getting cooler. You don't see them in the warmer weather.

Most of the butterflies have headed south but I have been seeing Monarchs lately including this one that was on one of our palm fronds.  I always keep a camera next to me when I am out on the third floor  porch so that if I see something interesting, I don't miss it.

At LJ's, I sat out on her screened in porch with her kitties and read and took pictures.  This is through a screen and I believe is a Hairy Woodpecker.  I also saw Cardinals and another Yellow Rumped Warbler but the screen just blurred them too much!

 This is one of Lisa's handsome kitties (Paka) who was instrumental in me not getting as much quilting done at her house as I would have liked.  Kitties just love to sit in the middle of quilting hoops.  He just looked at me a purred!  Other times he just plopped on my shoulder and purred in my ear.

Despite kitties, I have made a lot of progress and have 17 out of the 25 motifs quilted around.  Now to get the final 8 done, do the border quilting and then the background (I still have to figure out how to mark that as it will just be straight lines).  The quilting really makes the appliqued motifs pop out.

Maybe if we have some of the predicted rain, I will get some of the machine quilting done on another king sized quilt.  It is going very slowly because of machine problems and weather much too nice to spend much time inside!!