Where's summer?

I don't know what happened, but summer seems to have come and gone in a week. We still haven't gotten a nice warm summer day. OK. Once or twice. But that's it. It's cloudy, windy, and rainy. No sun. Haven't been able to find any evidence for this global warming people are talking about. At least not here in Anchorage. Since spring migration has come to an end, the birding has been extremely slow. The birds are all laying low while they incubate eggs and raise young. The chickadees are out and about with their parents, but so far those are the only ones. Oh, and my husband has seen a magpie with 4 very rowdy young. Poor girl! I feel sorry for her, she certainly has her wings full! If anyone has seen a juvenile magpie, you know what I mean. No wonder they don't migrate. They're too pooped by the time they're done raising their young. There was a moose the other night with triplets! A very rare sighting, even here. There's another poor girl. They were just roaming in 3 different directions. She kept trying to round them up. She needed a Border Collie or something to help. And they were on the side of a very busy road. Yep, sometimes I'm glad I don't have kids. Almost done with the minor renovations and repairs to the house before we finally put it on the market to sell. I think we've waited too long. We'll be lucky if we get it sold before we leave. But I must say, the upstairs bathroom looks good with it's new paint and tiles on the floor. Now we have to paint the bedroom. All those shows on HGTV keep saying about using neutral colors. The bedroom is definitely not neutral. I'm just waiting for the moving truck. Everything will be easier once all this stuff is out of the house. Gotta go!

Hello and Welcome to my first post!

Hello all! This is my first post. I haven't yet decided exactly what I'm going to talk about, but as you can tell from the title, it will be about birding and other stuff I feel like writing about. This blog is intended mostly to let my family in on our trip from Alaska to Pennsylvania. And anywhere else we happened to be. Right now I am in Anchorage, Alaska packing up my home for a move to the East Coast. Avoid moving like the plague! I don't understand how people can just pack up their stuff and move. Some on a pretty regular basis. Talk about stress. I'm not liking this getting rid of things that I have amassed in the past 17 years. Yes, I've lived in Alaska the past 17 years. So, we have a LOT of stuff. So, let me tell you about me. After being away from family for so long, I feel the need to reintroduce myself. I am an avid birder. Love, love, love birdwatching. AKA bird nerd. I am also what is affectionately known as a cork dork. I am into wine, my favorite being Pinots. Any of the pinots. Also like Zinfandel. I also like to cross stitch, crochet and quilt. Right now I am finishing up my position as an accounting clerk with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Alaska. I will be done the end of this month, and then I will officially be on my sabbatical while we move. I am also an avid fan of Anthropology and Archaeology. So much so as to have gotten a degree in Anthropology. But back to the birds. Migration in Alaska is over. Baby birds are showing up all over the place. Today in my back yard, baby chickadees are calling for their parents while the parents are riping bugs off my shrubs. Yay! I have also noticed that magpies and stellar's jays are picking up stuff like apples, obviously feeding babies with never ending appetites. Peanuts are the meal of choice for the jays and magpies these days, although the pilot bread seems to be a close second. I also have a few common redpolls hanging around, as well as a red breasted nuthatch, pine siskens, and an orange-crowed warbler, a first for my back yard. Also in the area are 4 juvenile common ravens making a raucous loud enough for everyone to hear. They're like kids. You can hear them, but you really don't know what they're up to. There seems to be a lot of robins around this year. We always have robins in the summer, but this year there seems to be even more. And of course, the juncos, the violet-green swallows, and the mew gulls. Something had the cranes in a tizzy today too. But the best bird today was the eagle. It was calling in the sky while trying to catch a thermal. Never caught it. Just flew off toward downtown. That's all for now. I'll let you know what happens.