Carolina Beach Lake Birds

My beautiful Great Egret was back and posing today after a VERY rainy Sunday (at least four inches).  

It was definitely a good bird day  at Carolina Beach Lake with the following in about an hour of time on a very cloudy afternoon:

Laughing Gull

Ring billed Gull

Cormorant

Pied Billed Grebe

Greater Scaup

Lesser Scaup

Ibis

Great Blue Heron

Great White Egret

Bufflehead

Boat Tailed Grackle   

Starling

Pigeon

American Coot

Mallards

Domestic ducks

I think this is the first time I have seen a Great Blue Heron down here at the Lake although I have certainly seen them elsewhere.  He posed with the Ring Billed Gulls as well as he landed right in the middle of a flock of them!

The Ibis are a common sight this time of year.  They wander in the empty lot across the street almost every day as well as down at the Lake.

This the first time I have ever been able to identify both Greater and Lesser Scaups at the lake at the same time.  Here are some Lesser Scaups swimming with two male Bufflehead ducks.  I usually see the Buffleheads out in the surf rather than in the fresh water lake.  The Lesser Scaup is identified by the head that somewhat peaks in the middle.

You can see the flatter head and the longer bill on this Greater Scaup!!  Exciting to see them both on the same day.  The Greater Scaups were hanging out alone while the Lessers were with the Buffleheads and Coots.

This is a female Bufflehead.

My Pied Billed Grebes were also off by themselves at the other end of the lake.

Last but not least, a nice view of the Cormorant who also is more frequently seen in salt water.

I figured you didn't need to see Laughing Gulls, Ring Billed Gulls or Coots!!

Because of the very rainy days we had this weekend, I got lots of machine quilting done.  I have found the secret is definitely to watch dvds as it helps keep me centered and not so stressed.  The machine has been behaving for me again!  I finished the third of my "serendipity" quilts and am working on the fourth.  Three more to go after this one and then one more quilt after that.  Then I can start something new.  

I have made major progress on my hand quilting project as well and may have to always have one going as I have enjoyed sitting in bed each night quilting for a couple of hours.  It may actually get done by the quilt show.  My left hand fingers are a little ragged though!

Another Kure Beach Day!

This is our kitty Cheney sitting in the corner of the porch checking out the other cats in the neighborhood.  We had to put up netting on our third floor porch as George took a tumble last year when he was checking out the Christmas lights.  They especially like to be out there in the evening.

I always sit out on the porch with my camera by my side.  For several days, there were a number of vultures circling around our house -- we figured out cells must be dying faster than we thought to attract so many vultures.  They are beautiful creatures in flight though.

The Grebes were back at the Lake today when I went for my walk!  I hadn't seen them yet this year and there were several swimming and fishing today (Pied Billed Grebes).

There were several young cormorants swimming and diving as well in this fresh water lake.

There were a number of Grackles and this was a female enjoying the fruit on one of the palm trees surrounding the lake.  The palms were filled with grackles today.

This was one of the male Grackles also feasting.  They really looked pretty I thought with their iridescent feathers.

I happen to think that the lines filled with Starlings were pretty.  I do love their winter coloration even though I am not particularly fond of the bird!!  They were all lined up about equidistant from each other.

My American Coot count is up to 29 now.  They all stick closely together, I assume to keep warm.  They will top out at a count of about 100 if like previous years.

The weather down here for two days was just very reminiscent of Rochester - blustery, cloudy, cold, with drizzle on and off.  I was impatient to get back to my porch and normal NC weather rather than cocooning myself down on the first floor machine quilting quilts (although I did get a lot done).  It was good to get back out walking today even though I am gimpy on two counts now -- left ankle and right knee!!

Ducks and Quilts

I finally finished machine quilting this king sized "serendipity quilt".  As I was doing the freehand quilting, I spent a lot of time (and I mean a LOT of time) fighting with the sewing machine.  I finally put on my Pride and Prejudice dvd and became much more meditative and calm and the machine responded accordingly.  I might add that I also changed how I was quilting the quilt.  I found that using the thin (60 weight) thread I was using, size 14 needles and going over thick seams, I was having constant thread breaks -- I was attempting to do a lot of free hand quilting in the ditch.  You can see by the next two pictures that I switched to a more free pattern on the blocks and things improved a lot.  I still did some "in the ditch" quilting but took it slowly (something I generally don't do impatient person that I am).  The quilting in this quilt will definitely never win any awards (I wouldn't even put it in a quilt show!) as I put some border strips on that were obviously a little too big and so there are a lot of pleats (yes, pleats) in the quilting (they look like seams as I actually pleated them rather than let them bunch up)!!  However, the dark brown hides almost everything so from even a couple of feet away, 
you can't see them.  

 This is the center block where I put a little more quilting in (click on to see closer).

You can see some of the other quilting I did in this view.  I still have five more "serendipity" quilts to quilt but they are all smaller and hopefully I have learned from this one.

 My elegant  Great Egret posed in the late afternoon two days ago.  I put this in Facebook but thought it deserved a place in my blog as well.  Yesterday we had some "Rochester"  (dreary, rainy, chilly) weather just to remind us why we prefer North Carolina this time of  year!!

My very smart egret is again at the lake today and is is really chuck full of fish!

I decided to try to see if I could get to the secret beach this afternoon but the access is gone and it was close to high tide so no go.  I was really quite distant from this very large flock of ducks who were riding the waves and literally playing in the rough surf.  These are American Scoters (black Scoters) which I have seen before down there but not in such numbers -- usually only one or two among the Buffleheads.  These are mostly females and first year birds.  Migration has obviously begun!!!

These are two of the adult male Scoters.  Note the bright orange at the base of the bill which really distinguishes these birds!  There must have been close to 100 and I saw another flock fly over as I was standing there.  I was really quite a distance and the sun was getting very low but the little camera has a pretty good optical zoom (35x) so I was able to get some pictures.  Too bad I couldn't get down the beach.

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!!

Bugs and Butterflies!

I'm in Charlotte for a few days enjoying the beginnings of fall down here in NC.  I took a few odd pictures before I left the beach (where the weather forecast was also awesome for the week).  This is another of those Long Tailed Skippers although you can't see the long tail here but look at those colors for a normally drab small butterfly!  He was sitting on the lawn next to our hibiscus.

I thought he was a rather handsome insect even though he was intent on eating our hibiscus.  Warren shooed him away after I took this picture.  I am now collecting bugs of all kinds I think!  

He is a grasshopper of some kind -- maybe just the common green grasshopper.  An interesting factoid is that all locusts are grasshoppers but not all grasshoppers turn into locusts.

I call this one Robobug as it looks like it has a suit of armor on its triangular head  and is strangely robotic. Found on our third floor porch.  It is definitely an insect!  It is what is called a "true bug" and I believe is a Leaf Legged Bug.

I am hoping to get to the Raptor Center while I am here in Charlotte as I do love those birds!  In the meantime, I am reading, working on hand quilting and scanning ancestral pictures.  It is notable (for me) that it was just a year ago that I met Colin Firth the first time.  Too bad the movie he made in Wilmington still doesn't have an American distributor. Hope it doesn't go right to DVD years after it was made like his last American movie!

Miscellaneous Butterflies and Bugs!

 Down at Ft. Fisher, I saw this grasshopper standing quietly in the sand and took a few pictures.  I am used to green grasshoppers so had no idea what this was.  I believe it is called a Mischievous Bird Grasshopper but could find no reason why!  I think it is depositing eggs here in the sand.  Its face seems also to be covered in bits of sand.

Another view of the grasshopper.

 Before we headed on our boat tour, I spotted bunches of Skippers on the bright  yellow flowers in front of the USS North Carolina from which our tour departed.  These are two pictures of this small butterfly in the Skipper Family.  It is either a European Skipper or a Fiery Skipper -- not sure on this one despite the decent pictures.

These two pictures are of another Skipper -- the Long Tailed Skipper as you can see from the above pictures.  I think I misidentified a butterfly the other day and it was one of these.  I was fascinated by the tail and the greenish color of the body.

There were lots of these butterflies on the flowers and I was pleased with the pictures despite their tendency to flit a great deal!!

Cape Fear and Black River Tour with Andy Wood

 Today Warren and I took the four hour naturalist tour of the Cape Fear and Black Rivers that I had taken last  year.  The weather was perfect and afforded me the opportunity to take some nice pictures along the banks.  Surprisingly, there were the very strong beginnings of fall color.  The Cape Fear River starts off as brackish in Wilmington and becomes more fresh water as you head north.  It is the draining river for about 1/6 of North Carolina and provides the drinking water for Wilmington.  At the south end of the tour, you see the remnants of the rice industry of the late 1700s and early 1800s where all the wood was clearcut.  As you head north, it is a Cypress and Tupelo swamp.  It was amazing to see no river banks, just a few areas where there was a small hill of dirt.  Numerous creeks feed into the rivers.  You can sign up for the tour here -  Black River Nature Cruise .

 I probably took a hundred of these scenic pictures along the river and it was hard to decide which ones to include in the blog.  The lighting was just about perfect.

 No tour would be complete without a sighting of a Great Blue Heron looking for lunch.

We spotted a number of Great Egrets along the way.  This was in the abandoned rice fields.



















The best treat was several sightings of a Bald Eagle.  We saw two adults and a juvenile.  There are only three nesting pairs known in the Southeastern North Carolina area.  They were quite a ways off but certainly distinctive.

 This gives a view of what the old rice fields look like and shows the rainstorm which we eventually succumbed to (but not too bad -- didn't even  get wet).  You can see how different it looks on different parts of the river.  

Our narrator was Andy Wood who has regularly contributes to the local PBS station with a series of narratives and whose book I bought (Backyard Carolina).  He is an ardent ecologist and the savior of a species of snails so it would endear him to my father.  He has the only surviving local ramshorn snails which he saved from extinction.  They won't tolerate salt water as they are a fresh water snail and during the various hurricanes the salt water intrudes on many of the local ponds.