Duck Soup - Oh No, More Duck Pictures!

I have now made it a habit to stop up at the outlet when I am out on an errand trying to get better pictures of the ducks I have seen at a distance. What a surprise today to actually see two more ducks that I hadn't seen before! I must add that it is freezing cold up here but at least the camera continues to work! The outlet was almost totally frozen over today.

This is looking toward Lake Ontario from the outlet. Looks like duck soup down there!

This was the little bit of water on the bay that wasn't frozen solid -- snowmobilers were whizzing across the ice as I was watching. I think the heat of them continually swimming and diving is keeping the water thawed. I got a big kick out of the swans with their rear ends sticking up.

This is a Common Goldeneye. I knew they were frequent visitors to this area but this was the first I had seen!!

These are called White Winged Scoters and are very easy to distinguish. What a surprise when I came home and blew up my photos! I had never seen one of these before either!

This is the first time I have seen the Red Breasted Merganser with his full plummage!

I believe that the ducks in the foreground are Greater Scaups as opposed to the Lesser Scaups that I thought I had seen.

In this picture there are about six varieties of duck -- blow it up and how many can you identify!

There were a lot of Oldsquaws today although they were not anxious to get close to me! This was better than before and you can see their long pin tails in the back!

A Play Date with Marcia and Priscilla!

These were all the strip sets that I did down at the beach house on the cold afternoons. There is approximately 10 yards of "striped fabric" that I can play with creating totes, embellishments for jackets and numerous quilt patterns! This is really old 70's and 80's fabric that is awful for the most part but you don't notice when you sew them all together!

Yesterday was great fun even though Priscilla made us work on planning a project we have going for our 2011 GVQC quilt show. More information later as it is an invitational event that we hope some really crazy quilters (not people who do crazy quilts) will want to join!

Suki just wanted to cuddle with Marcia first thing -- look at those pretty blue eyes!

This was a piece that Marcia had just completed piecing. I really loved this one. She had it vertically with the stripes on the bottom but I preferred this orientation.

Priscilla was working on a new jacket featuring this wonderful cross-stitched piece as the focal point. The pallette was about the same as the last jacket she was working on. She is pinning up pieces that we were voting on. She has some lovely hand dyes in here.

This is the jacket Priscilla has almost finished. Just loved the colors!

This was the jacket that Marcia has been working on -- just stunning color combination and fabrics which were a gift from a friend who stayed with her for a bit!

Bet You Thought You Had Seen the Last of the Birds!

I thought this was a Greater White Fronted Goose -- what a surprise to see these birds wandering around just feet away from me this morning amongst all the Canada Geese! However, more research tells me that this is probably a domestic goose which is bred for its meat and is bigger than the one in the bird books. Makes more sense to me!!

It is amazing to me that less than two miles from my home here in Rochester, there is an everchanging landscape of waterfowl!! Who would have thought? My house is very close to Lake Ontario and another body of water called Irondequoit Bay. When we first moved here, the Bay was not connected to Lake Ontario but some years ago, homes were removed and the bay was opened up to the Lake for 7 months a year. In the winter months, there is a small metal removeable bridge crossing the outlet. There are piers going out into Lake Ontario from either side of this bridge. I discovered last year that the birds seem to congregate there so I thought I would wander up yesterday and see what was there.

Yesterday the area was pretty frozen over with little blocks of ice floating and ducks pretty much out in the more open water. Today, very surprisingly as it is still well below freezing, the water had NO ice on it and there were some different birds! Amazing...

This is one of many Oldsquaws that I saw yesterday further out. This is their winter plummage and it is one bird that is a lot prettier in the winter than other seasons!

This was another Red Breasted Merganser. I have seen them in both Florida and NC this year. This is the first time up here though!

This was looking out over the docks. Notice all the Mute Swans and Canada Geese. The Mute Swans are an invasive species and brought here to populate the large estates at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. They now breed freely in the wild. I don't remember seeing that many of them up here until a few years ago and they are all over all year now.

This is a closeup of the mute swan with a Canada Goose and Mallard. Mallards were definitely in the minority yesterday!

This is another picture of the Oldsquaw. You can see the long skinny tail here better. Aren't they striking?

This is a Lesser Scaup, also very common up here.

The top duck is a Red Headed Duck while the bottom one is a Lesser Scaup (I believe). I had never seen the Red Head before either!

This is a closeup of the Domestic Goose with his Canadian friends! They certainly look like the birds in the bird book but by further descriptions. Will you look at those bright orange legs!

February RAFA Meeting

This was piece of surface design work from Donna Patrick who just can't keep her hands out of paints, bleaches and dyes for very long. Won't this look great in a jacket?

Well, it was lovely to be back for our meeting of Rochester Area Fiber Artists (RAFA) today!! We have a new place which is very cozy and well lit and although a number of people have left from last year, we had several new faces which is always fun! It was very exciting to see the exhibit catalog from our Arts and Cultural Council show here in Rochester which was very well attended and succeeded in raising $300 for the Arts Council from the sale of art postcards that were donated from the group. It was a thrill to see my Memories of California piece as part of their magazine article (The Metropolitan) as well as it having been used as the banner for the web site information about our show! I never did get to see the show but hopefully I will get a picture of the piece in context at the show.

We were a little lean on Show and Tell this month but certainly not lean on quality. A highlight was a piece by Marcia E which she hopefully will be lending to some important venues -- she requested no pictures because of that! Several of our friends as well as one of our members were featured in the book 500 Art Quilts so we got to see an early copy of that book. I will definitely be putting in a pre-order on Amazon. Nancy Murty's quilt (a major prize winner at Houston a few years ago) is featured on the cover and she has been a RAFA group member various times over the years of our growth.

Mary showed a number of pieces but with no flash, most of my pictures came out quite blurry. I had changed my camera to less sensitivity but guess I still needed the flash. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had changed the sensitivity when I went out to take pictures of some of the ducks I saw on Lake Ontario a little later so may try again tomorrow -- if not I will publish some slightly fuzzy pictures -- I did see a new duck!! (And you thought I was done with duck pictures....)


This was a quilt which will be in the Mancuso Mid-Atlantic show soon. I just love this one of Marcia's which she has worked and reworked. It was inspired by a rug she saw at Schweinfurth a couple of years ago.

This is one of Sarah's pieces. She incorporated metal pieces and actually blow torched them to get the color she wanted. A wonderful complementary color scheme (I think). It just sparkles!

This is a second piece by Sarah which incorporates a piece of her marbled fabric which she has profusely embellished with beads -- just beautiful!

Our own Priscilla Kibbee had another jacket workshop while I was gone (rats) and this is the front of the vest that Caris finished. The wonderful piece that inspired the vest was a hand-dyed linen she purchased from Elin Noble. Caris has such a wonderful subtle color sense.

This is the back of the vest showing a larger piece of the linen.

There has been a lot of chatter in my email group about the One Block Wonder quilts and there were two today begun in a workshop in one of the local guilds. This was Pat Faulkner's. These hexagons are all made using one fabric. Where you cut the triangles determines how the colors play.

This was a second and very stunning one block wonder quilt made by Karen. The focus fabric that she used was just multi-colored leaves. She did a wonderful job arranging the hexagons. I do LOVE hexagons!

The Secret Beach -- Last Day for the Winter Kure!

This was one of my Eider Ducks coming out of the water. I just loved all the different colors in this scene. It probably looks better if you double click on it. The water was so blue reflecting the bright sunny day.
This is the relatively common herring gull but strangely this is the first one I saw in NC and I didn't see any in Florida when I was there! There were certainly lots of Laughing Gulls and Ring Billed Gulls though in both places.

The spectacular winter storm that closed down parts of North Carolina had little effect on us except to have the waves a little higher and the wind blow quite a bit harder! The temps were a bit chilly too but no snow or ice for us! As we were leaving on Monday, I wanted to spend a little time exploring the rocky beach at low tide. We were packing the van so Warren nicely drove me down and picked me up a half an hour later. It was such a sunny bright day and the birds were covering the rocks. I figure they had a rough day getting any food the two preceding days! The beach was really reorganized by the storm with huge drifts of sand on the dunes and a sheer cliff down to the beach! Walking a bit of the way down the beach, I finally found a place where I could climb down and get closer to the rocks.
The local name for these sandstone rocks is cochina rocks, referring to the small shell that lives in the tideline on the beaches. The rocks under the water are just covered with seaweed of all different colors. The contrast of the seaweed, dull beige of the rocks and the brilliant blue of the sky was really nice -- very inspirational -- must be a quilt in there somewhere!

The rocks were covered with Semi-Palmated Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings and Willets. It was very bright and hard to even know what I was photographing!

On my way back to the house, I spotted this Yellow Rumped Warbler. I took several shots as he was at a distance and I only knew that he had yellow on him. One of the shots clearly shows the yellow on his rump as well as the bright yellow spots on his breast. It is one of the most common of the warblers but seeing any warblerand then being able to identify it is a treat for me!

And what day on the rocky beach would be complete without seeing Buffle Ducks and the Common Eiders, both of which didn't disappoint me the last day. I probably took 30 pictures of the Eiders. There was a pair of juveniles and they even took the opportunity to come out of the water for a walk on the beach! This is just one of them but he looks just like the picture in my Field Guide to Birds by Stokes.

Finally a House Finch!

Well, finally a House Finch even though a bit blurry! With some luck I will get to have one more day with some nice weather and birds to see! Although we are in NC, we have been spared the bad weather much of the state has had but have had a lot of wind and some rain.

We are madly packing to head home but hopefully I can sneak out tomorrow to go to my secret beach access and spend one more day by the rocks at low tide. We shall see!

When is a House Finch Not a House Finch?

The sun is very bright when I take my morning walk to get the paper but I try to capture images of birds I meet along the way but sometimes I guess wrong!! Many times I have seen house finches down here and seeing the red breast on several birds off in the distance, I assumed that is what I was seeing.

However, when I got home, I discovered several pictures of the Eastern Bluebird. I wasn't allowed to claim seeing one earlier in the year (by Bill) because I didn't have a picture! (Sorry Gail, I don't have much choice but to photo on electric lines as the birds REALLY disappear into the trees here!)


I believe this is a Song Sparrow but could be a Savannah Sparrow which is common down here as well. I have seen him several times.





Nothing exciting about a Blue Jay but boy did he hide in a hurry after I took this picture. The prevalent tree down here is the Live Oak which provides a wonderful habitat and hiding place for the birds. Two blocks behind us is a forever wild area that is just teeming with birds but really hard to ever get a picture because of the foliage.

Back inside as it was a bit rainy (okay, very rainy) for a couple of days which provided me ample motivation to sew together all those bags of strips I have left over from very, very old projects. I am basically making yardage which I will use in wearables, totes and maybe as borders in a quilt or two. I have made up about five yards of fabric using these different width puple, blue and green strips. It is actually quite fun.