New renters

Here's some pictures of the tree swallows I took this morning. I had read that the female sorta looks like an orca whale when she had her head sticking out of the nesting box. She does kinda look like one.

So far it looks like she has only two eggs in the nest. I've read that they'll adjust the clutch size according to the space in the nesting box.

After I had inspected the nest I backed away and waited for the female to return. She did and so did the male. I was able to get a shot of both of them on top of the nest box.

Tree Swallows

Was thinking about cleaning out the bluebird box since all the young had fledged. When I walked over to the box I noticed a bird with it's head sticking out of the hole? At first I thought the sparrows had moved in but eventually the bird flew out of the box and it was a tree swallow. I hope to get pictures tomorrow. It hasn't been more than a week since the bluebirds left.

Vieques questions and answers

Since Lorrie has been getting so many questions about our trip to Vieques I thought I would answer a few of the questions here. First where is it? Well it's off the east coast of Puerto Rico. I circled it in yellow below.

Next question that keeps coming up is "did you use a travel agent". My gosh no. Who would these days with the internet at your finger tips. I did book the flight through Priceline.com, but I won't for our fall trip. I'll just go through Continental. To get from the main island of Puerto Rico to Vieques took about 25 mins. We used Cape Air . The only other way to get to Vieques is by ferry. I ran the numbers flying into San Juan and then renting a car and driving to Fajardo to catch the ferry. Not a whole lot of difference just flying onto the island. Plus, unless you plan staying in San Juan overnight your gonna have to plan things right to catch the ferry. Here's a link to information about the ferry.

It took us about 11hrs to get to Vieques coming out of Indianapolis. We flew to Houston then to San Juan the over to the Island. We had 2hr lay overs between flights. Cheapest tickets I've found so far are running $450 to get you to Vieques outta Indy.

I really need to say before I forget, Vieques is not a place to go to be "entertained". Your not gonna see a ton of people  parasailing or jet skiing  and there's not any shrink-wrapped resort complexes along the beach  front.  There are many poor people that live on the island. Well...poor in the sense that they might not have quite all the material things that so many of us in the states consider standard and essential, especially regarding our residences. But that doesn't really mean they're truely poor. What was it Thoreau said..."A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone". Well you get my drift.

We stayed at the Hacienda Tamrindo just west of Esperanza. Can't say enough about this place. Check out the reviews of it on Trip Advisor.

We ate at Next Course, Bananas, Lazy Jacks,

New Beginings

Bluebirds have left the nest. I've not seen any around the box, either alive or dead. Hopefully they all make it. I'll be looking for them over the next few days. Indigo buntings are now feeding with the finches on the feeders in the front of the house. How do I know this? Because I've had a bit more time lately to take it all in. The din of the television has finally disappeared from our home. I had been wanting to cancel the satellite service we've had, for over 15 years now, for a long time. Direct TV raised my bill one too many times. They crossed my price/value threshold. $83 a month is too much. For now we have an internet radio. It runs off of the wi-fi in the house. I have Bloomberg, CNN, Fox, and NPR programmed on it, along with an assortement of radio stations. There's also some old time radio programming that we've really enjoyed listening to. Actually got to listen to "Inner Sanctum Mysteries" on the old time radio. I've heard my grandmother talk about how they used to listen to it back in the 40's.  I believe there are over 16,000 radio stations to choose from. We logged into Reciva and registered the radio and use their service to create our own favorite folders of radio stations that each of us like. Best part...it's all free. Over 16,000 stations for free.

This is a picture of the radio. It's a Sanyo R227 and was extremely easy to set up. Works like a charm and can also pick up FM radio stations. Also has a built in alarm clock.

Next step is to buy a computer for the television so we can watch Hulu. All I need is a computer with HDMI output and a proccessor fast enough to pump it out to the TV.

At any rate I know I can find a better way to spend the $996 that Direct TV won't be getting.

New kids on the block

Checked the bluebird box this evening. These guys will not be around much longer. Looking at other pictures of fledgling bluebirds I would say these are older than 12 days and they usually leave the nest at 16-22 days. I count 5 birds.