Feathered Friends at Red Roof
Saturday, January 30, 2010
For a variety of reasons Ann and I ditched my plans to drive out to Rochester last night and decided instead to meet in Utica this afternoon. I had hoped to get out for a short run this morning but no such luck, especially after I lost a bunch of time trying to get my e-mail program working again... my guess is that sometime next week I'm going to have to restore it from an old backup and will lose the last 6 months or so of my stored e-mails. Hopefully there's nothing too important in there... it's particularly annoying because this is the 2nd time in a couple of months that this sort of thing has happened. Previously it was due to a fancy new upgrade to the software that I foolishly tried (if it ain't broke...) but this time around I have no clue what triggered the problem.
Once I reached the hotel and got settled in I decided to spend some time out on the walkway that ran along the outside of the 2nd floor... as it happened my room was right near the front of hotel, with several trees nearby, and a number of birds were flitting back and forth. I caught glimpses of a couple of chickadees and I think a rather quiet bluejay (I saw some flashes of blue but there was none of the usual screeching that they do.) There were also two male cardinals flitting around, and one spent enough time on the ground looking for food that I managed to get some pictures of him. A bit further off there were the ever-present crows cawing to each other. Not exactly what I was expecting at the Utica Red Roof Inn... but a welcome diversion nonetheless!
JMH
