for bird-watching and more

Have I mentioned all the cool birds that come to visit us at our new house? At the old place we saw a lot of robins - but that was about it. Well, okay, across the street on what is locally known as 'Breadloaf', we saw scavenger birds. I'm not really sure if they were black birds or crows - or if there is even a difference!

Anyway, I digress. We have all sorts of cool birds at the new place. I would love to get a good pair of binoculars so that the kids and I could check them out more closely. I have no idea what kind they are, but my mission this year is to learn!

Another hobby I would like to pick up is star-gazing. I can remember Dad taking us out back when we were younger and doing a bit of star-gazing. I'd like to create some memories with the kids like those from when I was little.

Then, hunting came up again. A buddy of Troy's was talking about hunting at one of the graduation parties we went to this past weekend. I told him, to my knowledge, Troy had never been. He said he had never really been either - not often enough to call himself a 'hunter', but that it is one of those things he would like to do. You know, 'take dominion' and all that.

So, I really have been thinking about getting Troy one of the rifle scopes at Optics Planet for his birthday. Maybe I'll get advice from his brother and Dad first before I do that.

However, I did notice while hunting around there (pun intended) they have all sorts of scopes. I'd really like to add a microscope to our homeschool.

Back to birds - so far I have counted at least six different types of birds that visit us. Well, they don't actually visit us, per se, but they do come to our yard. Yesterday, Marlee found a dead baby bird up at the barn. It doesn't even have feathers yet. The skin is translucent. Again, not sure what kind of bird it is, but we thought about doing a bit of backyard science and disecting it. Well, the kids did - I'm not much on that sort of thing. However, if we had that microscope they could get a bird's eye view (another pun) of the innards.

I have some research to do now - one, find out more about birds here in the Pacific Northwest and two, find out if Troy really wants to take up hunting and what he'd need if did!