The Big Sit! with Dog

This is one of the hardest-working homes in southeast Ohio. Four and often five people using it as a bivouac for their busy lives. And a steady stream of guests. For a place that's stuck in the middle of nowhere in a "depressed" area of Ohio, it does pretty good. Yes. I know "well" is the word to use there, but I'm being Appalachian right now, thank you. Been here a long time. It happens.

One of the really nice things that happened when the new front porch was built was that my bonsai bench had to be moved farther out alongside the house into the north bed, where it's easy to get to, to tend and admire. It had been stuck in the notch between the house and porch before. Hard to get to, and you couldn't see the beautiful trees. My oldest maple is doing its best to match the new siding as it turns toward fall!

Another is enjoying the sun on the far side of the new porch. I must say the colors set Chet Baker's shiny black coat off very nicely. He looks fab, doesn't he? And this shows you how big that little tree has gotten. Venerable. Chet can stand under it!

We were really hoping to get the new windows in before the Big Sit, which happened October 13. Donny brought his whole crew out on Friday October 11 and they did a window installation blitz with the newly arrived CORRECT Pella windows. Got them ALL in. Amazing. And they are so beautiful. We're seeing things in the landscape we have never seen before. 

New view out the east BR window. 

The middle box on the pole is the Observation Bat Box. Squeee! You can open it up and see BATS in it if you're lucky enough to get them. There's a sheet of plexiglas in between you and them if you're at all squeamy which I of course am not. 

South BR window view, orchids happily in place. Yowza!

The glorious huge living room window and its view of the meadow. We've truly never seen it from here, in 21 years.  That's the bell Piper the indigo bunting sings from.

But back to the Big Sit.

On the appointed Sunday, people started showing up. Chet Baker waited in the towertop to wash each face that came up the drop-down stairs into the towertop. You had to get many, many kisses from the Gatekeeper to be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Birding.

And if you had a cookie, you were expected to pay the Gatekeeper with a tithe.

He would remind you with gentle toenail prodding. Oinking, if that didn't work.

A Dog at the Big Sit by Seymour Butz

We attempted to counter his ButtVision by putting Chet Baker on his own special stool, but he only had eyes for cookies. This is him, asking to be helped down so he can beg some more. He spent the morning with us, and the afternoon hanging out with bored birders and a Kookerhondje named Wally in the front yard. It was a good day for Chet. Jason brought him a big red ball to pop.

 Kind of a slow Big Sit, with only 55 species logged (we try to break 70 in a good year). Probably the highlight was a passing peregrine in the afternoon doldrums, which lasted about 7 hours. That's OK. For us, it's a social event. Birds are a bonus. Because most of them leave here about two days before the Sit starts.

A few Cape May warblers hung around.

But the Lincoln's sparrow didn't. C'est la vie. Birds are where and when you find them. All birders know that.