Recently Noticed Wildlife

Since we put a birdfeeder on the deck a few weeks ago, we've had a variety of feathered visitors: cardinals, Carolina chicadees, assorted wrens, tufted titmice (titmouses?), mourning doves, and--for a few days--some rose-breasted grosbeaks. There's a definite (excuse me) pecking order, as the cardinals chase away the smaller birds, and the bigger mourning doves strut in to displace the cardinals. The mourning doves are easier to photograph...instead of darting in to grab a few seeds quickly, they hang around like punks in front of a candy store, daring the other birds to try to eat.

Even the mourning doves fly away when the squirrels arrive, however, and the squirrels arrive often. They climb up and around the iron pole, grab the top of the bird feeder with their hind legs, and reach down to the seeds with their front legs. Watching them do this is mildly entertaining. Watching them scramble back up, around, down, and off through the air to the nearest tree is really fun.

At first they would run wildly away when they saw me approaching from inside the house, yards from the glass door. Gradually they learned I was no threat until I reached the door and started to open it. Now even that will only make them freeze and wait to see if I'll really come any closer.

But ALL of the little creatures disappear when the hawks arrive. A pair of them have been hanging around for more than a week now, and we haven't had to refill the bird feeder nearly as often.

We haven't seen one swoop down on a smaller bird or squirrel, but those creatures seem to consider it a distinct possibility. So far we've seen them perched on this tree stump (the remainder of the tree that fell on our house), or on the deck railing, or in a nearby tree, or soaring above the trees with a loud and annoying caw-caw-caw-caw as they go. They may be trying to establish their territory, because it sure isn't to attract their prey.

The largest of all of our visitors, the deer, seem oblivious to the screeching of the hawks and the disappearance of the birds and squirrels. They just keep munching on weeds, pausing every few seconds to jerk their heads up and stare at us. We stare back, unmoving, and the deer lose interest and continue munching. If accidentally walk near them (they're nearly invisible in the woods when not moving) they will hold completely still until they feel they need to leave and then they will bound away almost faster than we can turn to see them.

Monica in New York

Monica made it to New York safely today. Her flight from Tallahassee was delayed, but she made her connection in Charlotte and got to New York okay. She'll stay with friends for a few days before starting her Montessori training.

Enjoying Monica's visit

Monica has stopped off here on her way to summer Montessori training for teachers of infants and toddlers. Since Father's Day is only a week off, she served me a special breakfast.

She's also preparing for her course, catching up on her email, and visiting with us and her Oma.

ComCast Finally Fixed the Connection

We had been offline since Sunday. I gave up trying to fix it by checking cable connections and restarting the cable modem and called in the problem Monday afternoon, arranging for a ComCast technician to come over Tuesday. He finally figured out that the problem was "at the street" not in the house, and said "someone from maintenance" would be over within 24 hours to fix it.

Wednesday evening we called ComCast Maintenance to ask why no one had fixed it yet, and they said it would take up to a week (very complicated, lots of testing). I called ComCast Customer Service, and she said it should be fixed within a day--and she'd call me back as soon as she knew exactly when. Half an hour later she called back to say it would take up to ten days to fix it. When pressed about why it would take so long, she finally admitted the problem was that they had a backlog of maintenance work and it would take that long to get to me. I suggested they should employ more maintenance people, and she got snippy and said she didn't want to argue with me.

Late today, surprisingly, it's been fixed. I guess we got moved up in the queue by complaining. Lesson learned.

ComCast failure (posted by dial-up modem)

We've hit a snag in our on-line presence. ComCast has let our connection (at the street) deteriorate over a couple of days and our Internet connection has gone from sporadic to nonexistent. It took a day for a ComCast technician to find the location of the problem, and another day for us to find out that ComCast has no immediate plans to send anyone out to fix it. Apparently we're not first in line for repair work, and it could take as long as ten days to get someone out here.

We are NOT fans of ComCast, and are seriously considering switching to DSL, even though it's slower.

SPAM ALERT: Tagged.com

Ursula received some email today--supposedly from Shelley, a friend of hers--with the subject line "Shelley sent you photos on tagged". It turned out to be spam that sent a similar message to everyone in her address book. If you got a message "Ursula sent you photos on tagged" or anything like that, please DELETE it without opening it. Thanks, and sorry about that.

First Post

This is the first post to a new blog about Gordon & Ursula. We'll let you know what we've been up to, especially with regard to our daughters Jennifer and Monica, and their husbands Winston and Toby.

We're also moving our family web site to a new location:
http://www.gordonrmorgan.com
It's available now, and is similar to the one at the old location on nettally.com. I'm enhancing it, though, so be sure to go to the new address. Soon I'll be replacing the old one with a note reminding you to go to the new address.