Day 17.356: New Year for some

We’re still several days away from the end of the Exile year, but we’ll celebrate the end of 2024 along with the rest of the world tonight.

Exile #3 went to bed before midnight and E5N1 is out with his friends, but three of us made it to watching the “ball drop” and toasting the new year.  

Day 17.355: More gaming

There has been various gaming going on - both video games and board games. This afternoon all five of us played “Connected Clues” which boasts the questionable subtitle, “A party game for clever friends” it was a lot of fun and it didn’t matter too much if a few of the cultural references didn’t work too well for us. 

Here are also pictures of Exile #4 dominating at Catan and joining Exile #3 for a first try at her cooperative game based on the video game Stardew Valley. 

Day 17.354: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #506

Exile #2 writes...

We still have much to discover in the many generous gifts we received for Christmas but we have been particularly enjoying playing a game that E5N1 received from a friend, called That Escalated Quickly. At the beginning of each round, players are dealt a number from 1 to 10 and the person whose round it is reads out a statement, for example: I am performing in the school talent show. What is my act? On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is the act least likely to get me expelled and 10 is the act most likely to get me expelled. Each player then has to invent an answer appropriate to their number. The person whose round it is then has to attempt to place the statements in the correct numerical order.

It is very silly, very fun, not too demanding - although it requires you to concentrate enough to make sure you have the scale the right way round in your head. Detail and imagination is definitely a plus and, in our case, we definitely discovered we had some wild differences in what we considered to be the worst and best in a situation! All in all, two thumbs up from us.

Day 17.353: Another era

Here is E5N1 dressed for his evening out today:

He attended a Winter’s Ball hosted by one of his classmates. The invitation read in part, “… an evening reminiscent of an 1800’s soirée.  Attire for the evening is formal. If 1800’s costume is not your preference, feel free to choose formal attire from another era or fantasy genre,” leaving things generously open-ended. I think he rocked it  and - more importantly - it seems he had a lot of fun.

It seems that all this formal talk was slightly triggering for Exile #2 and me, within minutes of each other both wondered what time the invitation called for “carriages at”. I’m not sure when we last saw that on any invitation we received. 

Day 17.352: Beach photography

Exile #4 joined Exile #2 and me for a walk on the beach - partly as an opportunity to experiment with their new camera. I also took mine - as you might imagine - although I was a little suspicious of it due to another event that happened today but will not be related today.

Here's some of what my camera (and phone) captured at today:

The three of us with evidence of cameras and binoculars

I watched this gull fly a few feet into the air and then dive several times - presumably trying to catch something swimming fairly close to the water surface.

I played peek-a-boo with a pair of black scoters as they were diving and disappearing behind the waves. Here is the female.

We looped back through Ferry Beach State Park

We heard what I assumed was a woodpecker stripping bark from a tree. I went to investigate and found this hairy woodpecker.

Day 17.351: Boxing Day birding

We’ve been greeted with comments about today being Boxing Day by various American friends who are familiar with the term despite it not being used over here.

It was also a Thursday and as such we gathered before dawn at the cemetery for our weekly birding and nature walk. Today’s was perhaps more skewed to nature and away from birding than most - as we inspected various mammal tracks in the snow, but here are some pictures of some of the birds we saw:

Dark-eyed junco

Red-bellied woodpecker

And - one of our last sightings of the morning - a lovely view of a winter wren (appropriately enough for this very cold snowy morning). 

Day 17.350: Christmas Day

We started with matching Christmas pajamas and ended with setting fire to Christmas pudding so we may have reached the peak of our a dual-culture Christmas celebrations after all these years here. 

Day 17.349: Merry Christmas #18

Four of us also sang this at our carol service this evening. Merry Christmas to you all!

Day 17.348: Sparrow excitement

The only sparrows we see with any regularity in our backyard at this time of year are dark-eyed juncos. We had twenty of them today - after a slightly disappointing showing of just six for our counting days. A couple of weeks ago we saw a white-throated sparrow and a house sparrow which caused some excitement. Today, we noticed this rather eye-catchingly colored chap in amongst the juncos. I thought perhaps a song sparrow, but at closer inspection it is a fox sparrow which we have looked for before but never spotted. Apparently we just needed to wait for it to come to us.

Day 17.347: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #505

Exile #2 writes...

On Friday, I went with Exiles #3 and #4 to the town museum to catch the festival of trees before it ends. We were too late for the raffle, and a couple of the trees had already gone but there was still a very nice display and we picked out our favorites anyway. A couple of organizations had plumped for a 70’s theme and I was delighted to discover that silver trees, tinsel, and glitter ball ornaments were all features of Christmas over here too, as they were in my childhood.

Here is a little taste of what we saw, including our favorites and Exile #3 posing with the extremely pink Barbie tree.

Day 17.346: More information needed

I think we've received the message "Confirm high count" almost every weekend when telling the Project FeederWatch app how many bluebirds we've had. You only count the maximum number that you see all at once and each time we get to seven it checks that we really mean we saw that number at once. 

Today was only the second time that the app has questioned the adding of a single bird - this time with the message, "More information needed". The first was when I reported a red-shouldered hawk last year (or maybe two years ago). Today, it was this fellow:

We often see turkey vultures circling over or near our count area (basically our backyard and the nearest part of the woods), but we never expected to see one perched at the edge of our lawn only about 12 or 15 feet off the ground. It was cool to get such a close-up view of these usually-distant birds.

Day 17.345: Birding birds

Some of the birds we sa yesterday:

Red-bellied woodpecker

Pileated woodpecker 

Another red-bellied woodpecker after the sun had climbed a little

Northern pintail (L) and mallard

The pintail again

Red- breasted merganser out on the river

View out over the marsh around dawn

Day 17.344: Morning birding surprise

We did indeed see some birds on our birding walk this morning, but the biggest surprise was a sighting of a different kind - a coyote on the marsh by the river.

There is some concern that it seems to have some fur loss on its back - possibly indicating some sickness. Nevertheless, it was a majestic sight in the early morning light.

Day 17.343: Choral

It was the second and final night of the winter choral concerts tonight. The centerpiece of the concert is a processional by the full concert choir to a version of “O Holy Night” we first experienced it when Exile #3 had just started high school 8 years ago and have had one or more children in it every year since (except for one year when it didn’t happen due to COVID).

E5N1 also sang in the auditioned choir including a solo tonight and played some percussion for a few songs. Here he is after the night was done.

Day 17.342: Delay: instrumental

This time of year is normally rather busy, this year it seems excessively so. Last week was the instrumental concerts and this week the choral concerts except that the storm caused a power outage that caused the second night of the instrumental concert to be canceled (at first) and then later rescheduled to yesterday.

E5N1 playing trumpet in the jazz band

E5N1 after playing French horn in the concert band

And, in addition to that, this week I have senior management visiting at work, our holiday party and a video to edit while Exile #2 also had a drive to bring Exile #4 home from college - all in addition to the normal two nights of the choral concerts. We didn’t go tonight, but we plan to be there tomorrow.