OK; Buddy---you see how much you've been missed---don't be coy. When I pick up beer bottles along the roadside while walking my daughter's dog, I've often thought of you. When Bicycle Charlie comes and hangs out down by the river for the day, with his knapsack stuffed with food and beer, camoflauge jacket and wide brimmed, beat-up hat, I've wondered how you're doing. I see him leave in the afternoon and wonder about you again. Solitary life, but happy enough and content with himself. Your individual paths find their own routes when I remember the galaxies of separation in your thought processes and your particular ability to take any given day and turn it into an excerpt from a battered novel, which when opened, allows weathered pages of life-lived-on-the-edge to fall where they may. One has the choice to pick up a page or two and read them, or to leave them as they lay and continue on their way. I have to chase them as they're blown about and catch what I can. So much of this world is worded pablum, contrived situations passing for reality, cocooned lives rolling over those who have nothing between hurt and their vunerable skin. You remind the reader life is to be lived and endured, to be celebrated and once again, endured. And you never, ever sugar-coat it. That is why I remember you. That is why I will never, ever forget you. You remind me of Richard Abbey---he got out before you did---not that he wanted to. I'll never forget him, either.

It's true Jean - your husband's reality. As a business you can make money but for 10 hens at home each dozen eggs would be about $300 a pop until you paid off the coop at $899 and the freight to a home at $365, not to mention buying the chickens. Started 17 week old laying poulets are about $12 each but the shipping on them is $49 (they do come with their shots however). Then there is the feed and having to work it each day to keep everything extremely clean and fresh. You have to keep chickens away from wild birds and their droppings, not to mention the predators, but oh the romance of having a barnyard and a self sustaining life (without the hard work of course because you are rich enough to hire a few people to actually run the place). He he he... My co-worker had chickens and their chickens lived outside during the day and sometimes at night, but had a shed they could go into if they wanted. They lost some to predators and sometimes the eggs were just laying around on the ground and other times the hens would lay in thick shrubby growth at the edge of their woodlot (in the brambles). Betcha egg gathering was the pits there! She said they shot a opposum one time that was raiding a favorite hen's nest - the hen woke them up screaming her bloody head off and running to beat the band (they are fast she said) and with the flashlight they saw the possum on the nest eating the eggs. Boom - bye bye possie. Awww...... poor possie - he only wanted some fresh eggs too!

ugogran, close guess on the tanager. The bill of a tanager is more conical and a bit shorter whereas the warbler has a thinner all-purpose. You can also see the start of the chestnut colored streaking on the breast that the tanager doesn't have. The eye-ring is still present so it's either young, or female. Females don't have the breast streaking so it's a first year male. Another easy way to tell the difference in a lot of birds, and something often overlooked, is the color of the legs. My father is an ornithologist and he taught me as a little kid to always look at the legs! Tanagers have grey legs whereas the yellow warbler has pink to light olive legs. Either one is quite welcome in our little corner of the planet :) Grackles...ugh. Right now we have a boatload of immatures hanging around all the water features. They love to pull on any nearby plant and it drive me bonkers. But hey, at least they aren't starlings.

Two out of the three hummingbird feeders are up. Now, the waiting game. Last year I saw my first ones on May 7. I don't have a clear view of the porch feeders from my reading chair inside so I need to get up and go to the window but in better (warmer) weather when I'm out on the porch they are up close and personal. There is one feeder on each end of the porch, about 90 feet apart. The third goes on the wisteria covered pergola at the end of the front walk, maybe 50 feet away. It makes a nice triangle - or racetrack - for them to zoom around and play. I suspect that a nest(s) are somewhere in the cedar hedge nearby that separates my property from the next door neighbor but haven't been able to find them. I do enjoy watching other birds but I'm still very much a novice. The more flamboyant birds I recognize easily, it's the more common ones that still look alike to me that I have no confidence in my IDs. I'm just learning what to look for. Our local Nature Conservancy has been a big help to me and I have many field guides. I also enjoy learning about interesting facts and behaviors that birds exhibit. I'm a big fan of crows because that's just about all I see in the winter. I decided that I'd learn to like what I have and that's been fun. One spring the crows alerted me to a barred owl that was sitting on some patio furniture on my front lawn. What a fuss they made swarming and screeching - the numbers were incredible. Another time a persistent crow let me know that there was something trapped In the downspout of the garage. DH was able to dismantle it and rescue a baby squirrel that had slipped into it and couldn't get out. Excellent! Sorry for such a wordy post!