Birds, Bees, Flowering Trees...and Pollen

Birds

Robert and I made a nice trip to a different park last weekend to do some birding that I barely managed to smuggle into my schedule. We didn't take any long hikes (there is a nice hour-long hike out to a marsh, but we weren't wearing mud boots for it), but did see a nice variety of birds. No life birds, but several that were new for North Carolina. The three best species (that I have not seen as often and thus are a nice surprise) were hairy woodpecker, purple finch, and yellow-throated vireo. I believe I have only seen a purple finch one other time, and this one was extremely cooperative, giving us long close views at a set of finch feeders in the children's garden area.

OK, this is my first time to try to put multiple photos into one image (using Corel Paint Shop Pro, which I've never used before), so it could use some work, but here's what the birds looked like (ahem, not to scale):


Bees

I now have both honeybees and bumblebees hanging around my balcony and front door. Last weekend, we started seeing a huge bumblebee hovering at eye level outside the front door (thankfully, a couple feet to the side and not right in front). Even though he's not aggressive, he seems to be watching you, so it's actually pretty creepy. Every time I go in or out, I brace myself mentally and try to move quickly, staying away from him and getting out of his range as soon as possible. This morning, I was up before 5 and out the door really early - early enough the huge bumblebee wasn't at his station yet, but at 3:30 this afternoon, he was hanging out with two somewhat smaller bumblebee friends.

Flowering Trees

It seemed to happen overnight - the branches went from bare to bursting with blooms. I impressed Robert and myself by identifying the white ones instinctively as dogwood trees, which I can't be sure I've ever seen in real life before. I can only guess that I had a vague sense of dogwood trees from some stamp series and got kind of lucky applying that memory to these actual trees. (Yes, it's crazy the things I know from collecting stamps. Ben Franklin would be proud.)

Pollen

Oh my god. When you have a lot of trees around in the spring, everything gets covered in pollen. I washed my car Monday afternoon and by Tuesday morning, it was absolutely covered in yellowish-green pollen again. On Tuesday at school, the number of conversations I got into about pollen exceeded conversations about Duke (our rival school) winning the basketball championship by about 4:1.

In other news, I met a woman who is thinking about coming to our program next year (she's been accepted) in the grad lounge this morning and talked to her for a while (she was waiting on another student to take her around). I liked her right away and hope she will decide to join us. Oddly, she is trying to decide between two programs that I was trying to decide between last year (I was actually deciding between three, but one of them wasn't psychology). Perhaps in some small way, seeing that I chose this program over the other one will influence her decision. Or perhaps my strutting around in a pretend warm wool coat will scare her away - her research interests aren't in clinical.

Breaking news...Pollen update

EQ Weather Reporter RVMan writes:

"Forsyth County counted 7,237 grains per cubic meter for today – that is the third highest total in their 13 years of recordkeeping. The highest total ever was 9,632, set Tuesday. Pollen.com gave Raleigh a 11.7 on a 12 point scale. Really – this week broke the scale. Both cities have had pollen counts about 2-3 times the average annual peak count for the last several days. It is all trees – grass and weeds are minimal, and peak in late May and September respectively."

Wow, I guess the pollen situation is more unusual than Duke winning the basketball championship (which they did in 1991, 1992, 2001, and 2010).