kids, originally uploaded by hobbitsmama.
Kids at the hb meeting .. after our membership meeting. What troopers the kids were .. this made for a loooong day. I just want to say that L does not get her "fashion sense" from me .. but umm, wow. :)
Saturday, October 24, 2009
friends
kids, originally uploaded by hobbitsmama.
Kids at the hb meeting .. after our membership meeting. What troopers the kids were .. this made for a loooong day. I just want to say that L does not get her "fashion sense" from me .. but umm, wow. :)
L trying to tame chickadees
L has decided that our chickadees need to learn to eat out of our hands too. :) She was out there for a good long time trying.
family picture
Our annual trip to the cemetery and then to Gray's Beach. (We've also added eating at Grumpy's to this annual tradition.) Not a great time of day for a picture but a tradition is a tradition! We saw what I think were Lesser Yellowlegs here .. and watched people crabbing. Time to head towards home. It is always so hard to tear ourselves away. There is something so magical about the cape in October.
exploring the tidal pools
We decided to head towards home and stop at a beach in east dennis.The tide was so far out and was starting to come in .. so we stuck to exploring the tidal pools. We found lots of hermit crabs and snails. There were lots of dead horseshoe crabs. We were not alone in our hunting. We saw semi-palmated plovers, a black-bellied plover, lots of gulls and some brants further out. Earlier in the day we saw a red-tail hawk and a belted kingfisher. Beautiful day!
tree swallows
Amazing! We watched these tree swallows move over the dunes and go right over our heads. I was in awe. We also watched a merlin and a sharp-shinned hawk prey on tree swallows.
L found owl scat in the dunes and since we would have been there all day otherwise; we relented and let her carry it to the car. (She spent at least an hour of our drive dissecting it and showing us the bones.)
dunes
We went for a walk in the dunes .. ran into some people and discovered where there is a natural cranberry bog. We will be locating that next year. The kids were too tired to walk further. It was so absolutely gorgeous here. I can't believe we have been coming to Ptown/Truro for 12 years and have never taken this walk before!
sunset
This is the sunset from outside the door of our hotel. We are definitely going back next year!
a chickadee
We wandered on the beach in front of our hotel in North Truro where L learned to skip rocks! She was great at it. e was frustrated that he could not do it too. Ahhhh. We wandered around P-town and ate the yummy pizza at Spiritus; where the kids also like to pretend they know how to play bocce. (The kids at the next table whom we became "friends" with .. love how my kids make friends in 2 minutes.. liked j's new "monkey shoes.") We also went to feed the chickadees again .. this year we also fed tufted titmice and L even got a white-breasted nuthatch to eat out of her hand! L has a gift with the birds and bugs. Part patience, part stubborness (where did she get that?!) and part something else. I was too busy here trying to feed the birds that I neglected my camera. e gave up after having some birds come to us together but not him alone .. and he instead fed the lucky chipmunk and squirrel under the walkway. :) One chipmunk had it's cheeks so full that it looked utterly ridiculous. J made us a yummy dinner in our hotel kitchen while the kids and I tried not to blow off the bluff during the sunset.
snails everywhere in the dunes
So we were off to Cape Cod for our vacation at last (as soon as I was well enough.) We made a spontaneous decision to just get in the car and go. However we decided to skip the camping this year and j found us a hotel. Well we got up in the morning and surprise (!) we were staying in the MOST gorgeous location right on the bluff overlooking Provincetown and the bay. The kids were out the door first thing and found snails all over the place! Later we tried to pack everything into 2 days (and we came pretty close too.)
garter snake
j is an expert snake catcher. We all had a chance to touch and the kids were fascinated.
vacation week
The kids went on hiking adventures with j over the first few days of our family vacation. I was not feeling well .. and was sad to miss some of the hiking fun. Here are some pics from j's phone. One day they hiked in the Oswegatchie Hills and another day they hiked a huge distance on the side of a cliff (maybe better that I wasn't with them .. yikes!) in Guilford, I think. They all had a blast and I was home feeling a little sorry for myself.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
lighthouse
We got up before sunrise to be at the hawk watch at the lighthouse. Unfortunately our visit did not coincide with good migratory weather so there was not much to see while we were in Cape May. But we did get to meet the local birding authority. He was so kind; he lent us an extra pair of his fancy binoculars. We watched a pied-billed grebe (so cute) and 4 caspian terns hunting. Managed to spot a bobolink, lots of bluejays, sharp-shinned hawks, a fish crow, a carolina chickadee, a merlin, killdeers, a forster's tern, an eastern phoebe, etc. We headed back to the inn for breakfast and to pack up. Then we stopped one more time at the nature preserve .. missed seeing a sora by minutes (darn!) .. the fog was rolling in .. so pretty but not so good for birding. We did see a air of savannah sparrows, 3 common moorhens and the biggest great blue heron that I have ever seen. One more quick stop at Sunset Beach and we were on the road for home. We saw a beautiful double rainbow on the drive. So nice to hug the kids hello!
October 3
Happy 10th anniversary to us! Cape May is gorgeous. We walked around almost all day and ate all day. We started early at the nature preserve (saw a snow goose, tons of buterflies, lots of dolphins!), discovered the best coffee shop and a great sushi place, had a picnic at the lighthouse, went for a hike and saw egrets, ducks, sharp-shinned hawks, and a peregrine falcon that flew close over our heads. We took another hike at Higbee Beach, looked for "gems" at Sunset Beach, walked all over downtown looking at all the neat old houses and had a delicious dinner.
Black Skimmers!
These are the coolest birds! I was so very excited to see them. We spent a large portion of the day hiking around in all the nature preserves looking for birds. We saw some good birds too; but it was when we took a walk right in town to the beach that we saw the skimmers. We even got to see them fly and hunt. Amazing! They have these huge long beaks .. and when they hunt, they fly along with their beaks in the water "skimming" and when they feel something, their beak closes.
poor richard's inn
This is where we stayed in Cape May, NJ .. it was only a few houses down from the beach! The first day was spent mostly driving to NJ. We got checked in and wandered around town .. found a great restaurant with the best spring rolls that I have ever tasted. Then we had to find a good ice cream place. We went out to Cape May Point Lighthouse and watched the sunset and then took a hike in the dusk. We saw an owl! It was a beautiful night for a hike; the moon was bright and we could see the boardwalks. It was warm and there was a nice breeze. We felt so far away from everything. When we went back to town, we decided to wander some more .. and we found an arcade and played skee ball. So fun!
October 2
Thursday, October 15, 2009
October 1
E and I went for a hike while L was at her Nature Center class. L was making a bird journal and went on a hike to look for birds. We walked e's favorite trail to the hilltop with the big rocks. Along the way we saw deer and raccoon tracks in the mud. We met up with B and P, and the kids tried to make a seesaw out of a log and some rocks. It was cold today .. but we managed to keep ourselves warm enough to stay out for almost the whole 2 hours. We did look at the inside exhibits for a few minutes. E likes to do the magnet game ... putting all the animals in their proper homes. And we like to visit the frogs, toads, turtles, tortoise and snakes. L had an OK class (It was a new teacher and she loved her other teacher) but had a little trouble with a girl in the class who said L's shoes were ugly and were "boy shoes." L was upset but was remarkably insightful about it all. We talked about how the other girl may have been feeling left out since L has so many friends in the class. L concluded our conversation with "Well, I like my shoes. Girls can wear whatever shoes they want." Right on!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
September 30 .. Mystic Bridge
Best field trip!! This is one of those days where homeschooling feels like the luckiest gig ever. Thanks to P, we headed to the Mystic Bridge so the kids could interview the bridge operator. He was fabulous and we all had a great time. I am not sure if the kids or us moms were the most impressed. We witnessed the raising and lowering of the bridge and the kids checked out the view (and many a license plate, "It's Maryland!" "It's Illinois!" Love S. He is too cute.) and I took a ton of pictures. I am glad that P videotaped because I only heard a fraction of the questions and answers. E asked a great question about how the weights work .. answer is: 2 motors pull the bridge up until it reaches a certain point and then the weights pull it the rest of the way down.
Coast Guard boats at Fort Trumbull
We decided to take a walk at Fort Trumbull after errands. What a pleasant surprise to find the Eagle and 2 cutters there. We guessed they were ice breakers .. so we came home and looked up "Thunder Bay" (the name we could see) and sure enough .. they are 140' ice breaking tugs. The Thunder Bay is based in Rockville, ME.
We took more of a walk in the wind. L wanted to check out the stray cat "hotel" that we saw this morning in the very funny and biting critique by R. Koster on theday.com. Saw some terns hunting as well as a whole lot of gulls and Canada Geese.
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