A Barn Swallow posting from me too!

Fellow blog-writer A.R. posted barn swallow pics the other day, so here are mine (just took them right now). Every year we have barn swallows that nest by the front door. The first year we moved here they hatched three broods of 4 chicks each, which was amazing. I don't know if the same birds come back or if it's the babies that come back, but a pair always shows up and uses the same nest (or makes a new one if the old one is falling apart). They seem to get more and more dysfunctional every year though, and I think two years ago there were no babies at all. They started putting feathers into the old nest, then built a new nest on the other side of the door, and then at night the male would be perched on the edge of one nest and the female would be perched on the edge of the other. I guess they got divorced that year.

They showed up a couple weeks later than usual this year (usually they arrive right around March 17th) and seemed to start nesting pretty late. They had a couple eggs in there but something (the stupid little house sparrows I would guess) stole the feathers that lined the swallow nest, and when they yanked the feathers out they yanked the swallow eggs out too, and I found them smashed on the sidewalk underneath. Very sad.

But they started over again. They started making a new nest, but then abandoned that and just reinforced the old one with some new mud, added new feathers, and I think there are two babies now. I thought there was just one but today I saw two (normally they have 4, I've even seen one batch of 5, which was pretty cozy!)

Oh, and they are not aggressive at all toward people, though a lot of people seem to report being dive-bombed by swallows. These ones will dive-bomb cats or other birds, but they just seem curious about people. They will flutter around but just seem watchful and interested.

It's 109 degrees, the adult bird is panting.

late night visitors

My "studio" is in a bay window area of the house, so the edge of my table is only about 8 inches from the window. The light is often on late at night, since that's one of my prime work times. The light attracts a lot of bugs to the window, and the bugs attract a lot of tree frogs. They are hugely entertaining to watch when they are hunting bugs. The best tactic seems to be to just sit still and wait for bugs to walk past (bugs apparently aren't very smart). Some frogs "stalk" their prey more than others. Sometimes they seem to overestimate their abilities, I've often seem them take a rather large leap to try to get a bug. Of course when on the ground this may work, but being on a vertical surface gravity tends to take over and they fall off into the juniper bush below, little limbs flailing on the way down. I wonder if the other frogs laugh when that happens.

I took a picture of one of them. They are generally 3/4" to 1" long from nose to butt. Most are brownish in color, sometimes a bit striped and sometimes solid colored, though they also come in shades of gray, pale green, metallic gold, and metallic copper. From underneath though they all look the same! The reflection is from my light.

Summertime...

...And the living is... HOT! Ugh! I'm not a big fan of hot weather, to make an understatement. I think it's supposed to get worse over the weekend too. Whoopee..... :-(

No horse riding news today, E called and said she wasn't feeling well, and since it was a million degrees anyway I decided to skip it. Instead I went over to W.T.'s and met her new filly "Sugar" who is 1 day old. So cute! She was sleeping while I was over there, with her nose mashed against the floor.


I was going to take a picture of Sampson too, he's actually turned out rather handsome, but he was way out in the pasture.

I got the new fly sheets today. I pity the horses for having to now wear plaid but I think they'll work. I am going to get some velcro and redo the belly strap though, I still think it's pretty stupidly constructed.

I ordered frames this morning for two of the Standard drawings. They are not a matched set (it's too females, same breed but different varieties) but since they are going to the same person I tried to frame them quite similarly, and similar to some of my other artwork that this buyer already owns. Since I've seen the location where he's going to hang them, I felt pretty confident picking out frames, and went a little more bold with color than I normally would if I don't know a buyer all that well. I generally will keep frame and mat colors fairly neutral but I went with some bold color this time and I think it's going to work out really well.

How do you hold your pencil?

I hadn't ever given much thought to the way I hold a pencil but it's been brought to my attention by at least one person that I might hold my pencil funny. Am I weird or is the rest of the world? (yes, that's how I hold it when writing too. And I know someone's going to ask... that's a little short indigo pencil with a pencil extender on it).

this and that, blah blah

Another crazy day. I spent the first 6.5 hours of my day delivering the 1-week-old Mallards to their new owner, who lives several hours away (yeesh, the things I do!) It is soooo nice to get those little stinkers out of here, I was having to clean their brooder every day. I think several hundred chicks are less work than 10 ducklings!

It was 100 degrees when I got back home, ugh. I made the rounds to check the critters, crashed on the couch for a half hour (driving wipes me out), then busted out some caffeine and put in a couple hours drawing. A.C. and crew came over this evening to pick up three 8-week old Rosecomb pullets (1 BBRed with bad comb, 1 too-dark Brassy Back, and 1 green-legged Blue Brassy Back). I do believe these are going to turn into some extremely spoiled pets! :-)

E.H. came over after that and we had a FANTASTIC riding lesson. I suppose this must be about the same as when parents think their kids are brilliant, but I think my horse is brilliant. She had been fine with me riding her but she didn't understand what I wanted as far as forward movement. So today E rode and I worked Shylah from the ground. I'm pretty sure the light bulb came on, by the end she was responding quite well to E's cues and I didn't have to do much encouragement from the ground. Shylah was super lazy today though. She did so well walking around we decided to go ahead and try a trot. I had E go ahead and cue her to trot, and when Shylah looked at me like "uh, do WHAT?" I cued her from the ground and she immediately took off at a trot. No bucking, no acting stupid. She was completely awesome, and E says she has a really smooth trot. So I think we'll keep working with walk/trot and direction changes for a while, then canter, and somewhere in there some yielding, backing, etc. What fun! We'll do it again tomorrow! (unless it's too hot) :-)

Tomorrow I will be ordering frames for a couple of the Standard drawings. I really like framing, it seems to be a good way to "finish" the artwork, and if done right it makes the artwork look even better! I have some interesting ideas for the two I'm framing tomorrow. What a tease, I can't even show them to you! ;-)

I'm really tired.

An Interesting Monday

Today was eventful, the sort of day that breaks up what can otherwise become pretty monotonous. The downside is that I didn't manage to put much time into actual work.

Several years ago, when Exotic Newcastle Disease was threatening California's poultry, the CDFA came out here and videotaped a public service announcement about it, starring one of my birds (a single comb Brown Red Rosecomb). I never actually saw it on the air, I think it got more air time in Southern CA. If you saw it though, that was my bird...

Anyway, back in April they called again and asked if they could come out here and film one about Bird Flu. I said yes, and then when I didn't hear from them for a couple months I gave up.

Friday they called again and asked if they could come out and shoot the PSA on Monday (today). I agreed to it, and proceeded to tame a bird in record time. I didn't have any particularly friendly birds, so I brought "Pablo" a BBRed Rosecomb into the house and he lived in the kitchen over the weekend, and sat on a portable perch in here when I was working on art, and pretty much spent as much time with me as possible.

And it worked. He was great today, very well behaved. He perched on the front fence while the spokeswoman stood next to him and said the 30-second Bird Flu stuff. I was very pleased to hear that it wasn't a "panic, panic, we're all going to die" message, as seems to be common in some circles, but instead was very practical, gave a hotline phone number for reporting problems, urged people to be vigilant, and not to handle sick or dead birds. So really more or less the same speil that was said about END, and West Nile. Anyway, so they showed up a little after 10 and were here til a little after noon shooting the PSA in English and Spanish. Everybody loved Pablo. So be on the lookout for this thing to air eventually!

Anyway, then I went off and did a photo shoot at the saddle shop, came back and worked a bit, moved some birds around and moved a bunch of youngsters outside, sat around and yacked about horses with E.H. for a long time, and the next thing I knew it was late and here I am.

I had a TERRIBLE hatch today, I think there must have been a temperature problem that I didn't know about. I candled them before I moved them to the hatcher and almost half were dead. :-O That's very abnormal, so I'm not sure what the issue was. *sigh*

Shylah is going to get a real riding lesson tomorrow, a two-person operation. Keep your fingers crossed.

Pictures of Shylah

Now if only I was as cute as my horse. ;-)

Many thanks to J.J. for photographing tonight's training/riding session! :-)

Flexing:

"Back up":

"Trot!":

Okay, she doesn't look nearly as small as I had feared:

Awww, such a pretty horse.

Two hundred!

Wow, this is my two hundredth post. I think this blog has been on line for about a year now (too lazy to check)... so two hundred postings in one year, I guess that's not unreasonable.

None of the other blogs I read (all two of them) have been updated in the last couple days so I guess I'll have to update my own, it'll give me something new to read. ;-)

It's really really really stinkin hot again. For a couple days it was sooo nice, it only got into the 70s during the day, and I even got sprinkled on the other night when I first rode Shylah. Woo, it's summer time now, yuck! Oh, and the swimming pool liner sprung a leak. Great...

I gave the horses (and me) the day off today, but I rode Shylah again last night. I encouraged some forward motion out of her. She tries hard but it's obvious she really doesn't understand what I want. But she didn't do anything bad whatsoever, and she certainly has no objections to me being in the saddle (of course this may change when she has to move quicker than a walk, we'll see). I need to get E.H. to come over and ride while I do groundwork, but our schedules haven't worked out just yet. Maybe next week...

The search continues for good fly sheets for the horses. For one thing it's hard to find ones that have a belly strap, and for my horses that's the most crucial part since they both get irritation on their bellies. The sheets that do have belly straps have buckles on the side of the sheet, and the horses rub on the fence and rip the buckles off (not good for the fence either but that's not my immediate concern). So... I thought I'd finally found a good one, but they ended up too large (it says right on there "these run large, order one size smaller" but did the company I bought them from say anything about sizing on their website? No, of course not! I reordered smaller sizes today so maybe that will work out. The belly strap on these hooks onto dee rings that are on the bottom edge of the blanket, and that's all fine and good because then there aren't straps and buckles to rip off, but it hangs like 8 inches below the belly! Grrrrr. I'm hoping the smaller sizes will fix this. Or perhaps I can sew on some dee rings a bit higher up. What a pain.

Patrick has really settled in a lot lately, he doesn't neigh much, he's MUCH calmer. He still cribs, but I think he'd need a 12-step program (or a shock collar) to get over that habit.

I think next week will be my last week of selling eggs on line. It's gone really well, and I think I could continue to sell them, but the problem is the birds are stopping egg production in a rather drastic way (lots of birds starting to molt already, hens very determined to go broody, etc). The Blacks are still laying a lot of eggs, maybe I can still keep a couple of those breeding pens together, but the ones that get the most bids are the colorful birds, and they lay the most eggs early in the season (the Blacks are very poor layers early on but then go into full force in May and June). I am taking about half of the oldest batch of chicks to auction bright and (way too) early Sunday morning. Another batch is due to hatch Monday. Where am I going to put all these things?? The auction people will get to know me quite well this summer! Oh geez, I am going to have an tremendous amount to take to the mid July sale...

I made a strawberry cheesecake today. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. :-)

Sometimes if you look too closely you miss it

So I was chatting with A.R. and she asked me about my Silver Duckwings. As she said, referencing one of the pictures "what the heck is the blue one?" And it was like CLICK, holy moley, what ARE those blue ones? I've noted all along how amazingly similar they are to the Blue Brassy Backs, but never did I stop and realize they are NOT Silver Duckwings, but perhaps Blue Silver Duckwings!?!? How did I not make that connection? I think I just got so caught up in them being NOT Birchen that I didn't even realize it! Sometimes I feel really stupid. And for that matter how the heck did they end up blue anyway!?!? Silver Duckwing X Black = ???

According to Clinton Anderson, a horse is only being ridden if the rider's knees are not together. :-) So I've spent a lot of time "not riding" Shylah (lay across her back, stand up in stirrups, etc.). She's so good, she's so accepting.

I couldn't resist, so this evening, by that definition, I rode!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (yes that's very exciting!!) I stood up in the stirrup, she just stood there (like always), so I took a deep breath, swung over, and sat down. That's the first time I've sat on her (one knee on each side!) where I have NOT had a hold of the fence at the same time! ;-) And... she just stood there. I flexed her neck around a couple times, got off, got back on, flexed her again, got off, and ended the lesson there (and took her out in the field next door for some grazing!). So I didn't make her go anywhere, but hey, that's a start! I was the only one around and I figured I'd better not do anything TOO stupid.

I'll end with a cute pic. I'm hatching mallards for a friend. Ducks drive me crazy when they are older but right now they are just soooooooo cute! This is the best age to have them, I'll be happy to get rid of them in a couple days!

Busy weekend

It was another one of those insane weekends, I don't even think I've recovered from Horse Expo yet... We hosted a poultry show planning meeting here Sunday morning, so I spent much of Saturday cleaning and getting ready for that, and then was at a graduation party til late (it's mildly disturbing that people I "will always think of as a little kid" are now graduating from college...)

The meeting on Sunday was good. They really are a lot of work to prepare for (the officers and members are very keen on having meetings here...like almost every meeting now except the Christmas one!) but it is nice to see people, especially this time of year when there aren't any shows. It's almost time to start thinking about the fall shows, have to be careful not to crowd the young birds. I may try to go to auction soon. The oldest youngsters are still small but I need the extra space and I think I could find a lot to get rid of!

Shylah is doing GREAT with her training, she's just an awesome horse. I saddled her up today and worked on stepping up in the stirrup (as in, step up and stand in the stirrup but don't swing over and sit down). It's SO tempting to just swing over and ride but I should be proper and actually wear a helmet and enlist some help when I do that... She was great though, took a couple steps the first time but then just stood very quietly. I really need to get some photos of some of this stuff! Hard to do when I'm the one on the end of the lead rope! (JJ want to take pics some time?) Riding-training should progress more rapidly now that I will have an extra set of hands around, since E.H. is out of school now and willing to lend a hand. I will probably have her be the first real rider. I may sit up there a time or two beforehand but since I've been the one doing the groundwork I think I ought to stay on the ground while Shylah makes the first transitions from on-the-ground-training to in-the-saddle-training. It is ridiculously easy to get up in the saddle, she's so darn short it's no effort at all, almost seems like cheating!