Some Engelbreit and a Parakeet

I have been stitching away this week on my Mary Engelbreit WIP. I have now completed the upper half of the merry skier. Soon he should even have legs and skis. I have also inevitably added more yellow border and more blue sky. You can now see the bottom edge of where the moon will be. But now I am reluctantly putting it away so I can try to complete another month on my Petite Maisons, and to participate in the HAED Christmas project SAL. I have a barely begun HAED Christmas WIP called Santa's List by Ruth Sanderson.

The last couple of weeks, we have had an unusual visitor to our backyard birdfeeder. Our yard seems to have become an attractive refuge to someone's escaped parakeet. He is bright yellow and comes and goes with flock of sparrows.

He is less skittish than the sparrows, though, and will let us get quite close to him to take his picture. He also cocks his head as though listening to you when you talk to him. I hope he gets through the winter okay.

I wish all my fellow Americans a Happy Thanksgiving and a

wonderful stitchy week to everyone!

Audubon Birding Trip

On Saturday, Kevin and I went on a birding field trip to Lake Tewakoni with the local Audubon club. Kevin has been interested in birds and birding for a long time, but this was our first birding trip with knowledgeable enthusiasts. It was quite an experience for us both. Here is a picture of the lake in northeast Texas where we went. This park was in the news recently as it is the place where that gigantic mutant spiderweb covered nearly an acre of ground. They had sprayed the web so the spiders were dead, but most of the web was still there.

And here is Kevin in typical birdwatcher pose. I think he was looking at a warbler in this picture. Highlights of our trip were two bald eagles, a pileated woodpecker (it was way bigger than I expected), some crested caracaras, some loons, and a palm warbler which is apparently somewhat rare in our area. We saw many other birds as well...Kevin had a list of about 40 different kinds. Red-Headed Ducks, Shoveler Ducks, Widgeons, Pelicans, two kinds of cormorants, Anhingas, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Red_Tailed Hawk. It was a great birding experience.

And here is a picture of some of the birding experts we were with. They were simply amazing. They could identify so many songbirds by their call, and they could find birds so fast in the foliage and identify them in a second. See that long tubular thing hanging from the shoulder of the lady in the tan vest...that is a camera lens. I had never seen a camera lens that long before.

All that birding turned my mind toward some bird-themed cross stitch, but that is another post.