Why I Oughta...

As you can kind of tell from some of the 'Christmas Haul' posts here on the blog, it was a birding-kind-of-holiday in our house.  I posted about the two kinds of suet ( simply and hot pepper ), the fruit and nut bell and just yesterday, I posted a photo of the water wiggler for our bird bath .  With all those treats to try to lure birds to our feeders and backyard, Nat was thoughtful enough to also get me this Field Guide to Birds of Illinois from the American Birding Association.  We've already put it to work by documenting some of the feathered friends who have come to our feeders.  I'll post some side-by-side photos and the descriptions of the birds from this book in the next few days. Here's a look at a spread in the book for a two woodpeckers. I really like that this is an Illinois-specific Field Guide because it narrows down the searching we have to do to identify the species that are visiting.

We've had the same birdbath for a number of years now - it is a heated one that we can put out all year long.  I posted in November about how we put it out for the winter after I found it when I was unpacking part of our basement.  But, as part of the birding-related Christmas gifts, the kids also gave me a Water Wiggler.  This isn't the first one of these I've had - I posted about our first Water Wiggler here back in 2013 - but based on that experience, I wanted another one.  For details on how/why it works, check out my old post here .    The biggest difference this time is that the bird bath is now directly adjacent to our feeder set-up.  In our old house, we hung a feeder where we could see the birds, but the bath was connected to the railing on our porch so it was easy to refill.  Those positions were in two different locations.  Now?  You can see that we've put the bath out just a few feet away from the feeders.  I think this isn't likely the final loca

"What I have learned from the animal world, and what everyone will learn who studies it, is a renewed sense of kinship with the earth and all its inhabitants." - Walt Disney #WaltWednesday pic.twitter.com/PpzodqQUL7 — Walt Disney Archives (@TWDCArchives) January 17, 2018 I've been thinking a lot lately about our #newoldbackyard and the critters that inhabit it and pass through it.  While there's been some bad experiences (Lizzie got skunk'd!), we've been trying to encourage some good experiences (with the feeders and what-have-yous).  With Spring just around the corner, my attention is going to shift to our first full season of gardening in our new house.  Hopefully, with the right plantings, we'll find even more friends visiting us - and we'll have that sense of kinship with the earth - like Walt says.

Photo via Facebook.  Original here .   Via the Frankfort Station comes this news that there's a Lionel O Gauge Hobby Shop called Choo Choo Works that has sprung up in Frankfort.  That's cool and all.  But it is in the location of a place that was a big part of my childhood:  the (as I called it) Laundrymat.  More photos here on Facebook via this guy and this guy who I believe are involved/own in the shop (and the custom car shop next door). This is a weird collision of concepts and places that brings a HUGE smile to my face.  My Dad is smiling too, I bet. 

I've had one of these Rockwell Sonicrafters for a number of years and I've found it pretty useful from time-to-time.  It isn't something that I pull out every time I tackle a project, but have been a specific set of applications that required *just* this tool.  This year at Christmas, I was upgraded to the new version of the F80 that has 4.2 Amps and comes with this nifty hard-sided case.  My original one came in a cloth carrying bag and I pushed it to it's max, so this upgraded version is a welcome addition to my shop lineup. You might be wondering...what do you do with an oscillating tool?  Welp, the fine folks at Rockwell have created this handy list of 10 things you can do with a Sonicrafter . The F80 comes with a nice light to shine on your project and has two 'degrees' - meaning one setting is a narrow oscillation and the other is a wider oscillation.  Also, note... this is a corded tool.  But, it is a 10 foot cord, so you get some pretty good rea

Still going through some of the new birding-related supplies ( like this fruit and seed bell ) I was gifted this Christmas season and that includes today's post showing this other suet cake.  Like the hot pepper one that I posted last week , this one is from Wild Birds Unlimited.  The premise is the same:  make something that the birds will like (and need!) that the squirrels aren't interested in devouring down.  The hot pepper suet version takes a proactive approach:  adding something like red pepper that bothers the squirrels.  This one, takes the opposite approach:  strip everything else away but the rendered fat and the squirrels won't be that interested in it.  You can find this Simply Suet on the WBU site here .  I haven't gotten around to putting the hot pepper version out yet and that's because since about the first of the year, this Simply Suet cake has survived in our feeder.  Which....is a long time!  In fact, I found it on the ground one morning a

When the 2017 Lionel catalog came out early in the year, like most years, I ended up pre-ordering a few items from TrainWorld that I knew would trickle in throughout the year.  That's what most often happens - starting around Halloween, the cars start to arrive.  But, just like last year, a car that has Christmas theme'ing arrived in January...post-Christmas. Here's the post from last February showing the Buddy the Elf boxcars that arrived late .  This year's late arrival is the car you can see above:  a Tell-Tale Reindeer Christmas Car. If you look closely, you'll see that this is part of the "North Pole Central Lines" and is marked with "Reindeer Transport Express" on the sides along with some drawings of Christmas symbols like teddy bears, drums and a brass instrument. So, you're probably wondering...what is a "Tell Tale" car?  Welp, it is a car with an animal inside that kind of 'ducks'.  In this case, it is a r