Tag: nature

Posted on

Preparing for This Weekend’s Great Backyard Bird Count

The Great Backyard Bird Count kicks off this weekend (February 17-20), and I’ll be counting the birds that come to visit the Johnson Funny Farm in Williamson, Georgia – partly because I love birds, but partly too in memory of my mother, Miriam Haynes, who adored them and worked hard to establish a nature-loving legacy that she would be proud to know lives on in ways that continue to make a difference.

Here is everything you need to know to prepare and to participate this weekend. I’d love to invite you to participate and to share your findings and photos on your blog post next week. It takes as little as 15 minutes to observe and only a few minutes to report.

The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) started in 1998 when the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society collaborated to create the first online citizen-science project. In 2009, Birds Canada joined forces to expand the geographic data collection points. Its goal is to encourage people from all over the world to spend time watching and counting as many birds as they can, and then reporting their observations – which helps scientists better understand global bird populations and their migratory patterns.

To take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, you can visit this link to learn more – but to make it quicker and easier, I’ve pasted this information from the link:

Step 1: Decide where you will watch birds.

Step 2: Watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days, February 17-20, 2023.

Step 3: Identify all the birds you see or hear within your planned time/location and use the best tool for sharing your bird sightings.

How to Share Your Observations:

  • If you are a beginning bird admirer and new to bird identification, try using the Merlin Bird ID app to share what birds you are seeing or hearing.
  • If you have participated in the count before and want to record numbers of birds, try the eBird Mobile app or enter your bird list on the eBird website (desktop/laptop).

Here’s a link about the Great Backyard Bird Count from a former edition of Georgia Magazine.

We have two Great Horned Owls that I hope will make an appearance – or at least be heard – during the GBBC Weekend! Listen closely and you can hear them exchanging their innermost thoughts.
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers at Slice of Life
Posted on

Gratitude for Mallory on her Birthday

It’s a good idea to remind yourself that you are slow traveling to experience the world with all your senses and not the World Wide Web from behind a screen…..when our mind is free from information overload, we tend to slow down.  – Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

Today is the last day of five days of January’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. Each month, this writing group gathers to write and give positive feedback to at least three other writers. Please join us and write with us!

I’ll share my Open Write writing from today in tomorrow’s post. Today, I give thanks for my daughter, Mallory, who celebrates her 36th trip around the sun. Happy birthday, Mal!

MALLORY MICHELLE MEYER

My daughter~
Adventurer
Les Miserables star!
Little Shop of Horrors fan
Outdoor-Lover
Rock Hounder
Youthful lover of life

Master Jeopardy Player
Indubitably a Prize Child
Child of God
Hiker of deserts and hills
Everyone's instant friend
Leader of the Safety Plans
Living healthy
Explorer of caves and trails

Miracle, she is!
Ever a champion! 
Yearns to learn new things
Ever the creative spirit and
Reading Enthusiast
Posted on

Creativity: A Jar of Snow Memory Preserves

Daughter clicking her heels in the snows of Kentucky on Christmas Day

One of my creativity goals this year is taking more photographs. I’m not a talented artist who paints and draws, but I enjoy images and words. My daughters have always kept sketch pads and art projects going ~ they appreciate the spontaneity of lettering a Bible verse or sketching a face or landscape. I think “capturing the moment” is the artistic approach that appeals to me most. Life sometimes begs to be captured.

My daughters sometimes just doodle. They fill entire sketchbooks this way, savoring spontaneous bursts of creativity.

On a recent visit, my daughter asked me to share the photos we’d taken while we were out exploring in the snow. We’d worn our pajamas and snow shoes and had taken pictures of sunsets, snowdrifts, and squirrel statues. It’s the ultimate happiness for a mother, really, because pictures aren’t just pictures. They’re memories. That’s what she was really asking for ~ a jar of snow memory preserves. She wants to come back to our moments, just as I do. Score!

I’d given my daughter the camera and later looked back at all she had captured, like this birdhouse.

Something I hadn’t expected was the surprise of discovering photographs she had taken after I’d handed the camera over to her when I’d gone inside to thaw my toes. Scrolling back through these images, I found pictures I didn’t recognize. And then it hit me: these were images I was seeing through her eyes – the gift of glimpses that weren’t mine in the moment, but shared even now.

A favorite photo taken that day – sunset over the snow, and I think we photographed it at least three dozen times as it tucked itself into bed in the rolling hills.

And so I logged in to my photo processing account and ordered some snapshots on real photo paper. Over the next week, I plan to send her three or four each day to bring smiles and memories. She’ll make a photo collage that will keep this day, these special shared moments, forever etched in her heart.

I will, too.

Sunset over Burdoc Farms in Crofton, KY – White Christmas Evening
Assortment of photographs I’ll send this week – making my creativity goals happen through smiles!
The start of a snowball fight……..I passed the camera off to Briar and launched an invitation to fun….