Issue 10
Dear Friends and Family,
Happy Fourth of JULY! It is nuts on the island today, so we are hunkered down and waiting for the 5th of July to go anywhere. We did go to church today and the joke was that the Pastor had been on vacation. When you live in a vacation destination where do you go for a vacation?
I have much to tell you. First, the Deck Cam is not working and the weather station is not updating because two of Doug’s computers died. He is in his laboratory now putting new parts in trying to bring them back to life. So all the exciting stuff on our web site is not so exciting right now. Please be patient and check back.
Remember back when I was raving about all the birds? It turns out that this area is truly the birdiest. Here is a quote from the paper, “Corpus Christi, for the second consecutive time, has won bragging rights as America’s Birdiest City, beating out such cities as San Diego, Calif., and New York…The competition’s purpose is to see which cities can document the highest count of bird species during a selected 24-hour period. Corpus Christi’s bird team located 246 species this year, beating last year’s number of 228. Second-best Sand Diego spotted 209 bird species, and New York City came in third with 190. Philip Pryde, a retired San Diego State University professor, started the contest four years ago to gain bragging rights for Sand Diego. New York won the first year. In 2002, San Diego earned the title. The Corpus Christi birding team took the honors in 2003 and 2004, winning two of the three times they have competed.”
It is wonderful to be surrounded by so much natural beauty. We have a family of Whistling Ducks and ducklings in our Lake that we watch from our living room. We also have two Moorhens that will paddle up to our deck to get fish chow to take to their little ones in the reeds. The latest new creature I have run into is the “butterfly of death”. It is a giant moth migrating from Mexico. Know as the black witch moth in the United States it is surround with superstitions. It has an average 6-inch wingspan and is often mistaken for a bat which is exactly what I thought when I surprised one Monday morning from my bushes.
Finally, I am giving all my friends in Cleveland advance warning that we are planning to return for the first two weeks of October. So we will be there for Claire’s birthday and Heather’s Bat Mitzvah and any other parties we get wind of.
That’s all the news that is the news for now. May God bless you with boldness in his name. All my love,
JanisJanisJanis-----
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