Another Back Yard Critter

We had a new visitor yesterday in the back yard.

He’s a wood stork, and is probably down in this area for the winter. He has a long, decurved beak and a very interesting, scruffy-looking head – it reminds me of a turkey or vulture with its roughness. His body was white, with just a little black underneath, his legs were black and he had pink feet.

In the U.S., the wood stork is an endangered species and is the only stork that presently breeds here. It lives off a diet of fish, frogs and insects.

Christmas Day Visitor

We had a back yard visitor on Christmas Day…as usual, I had to run get my camera and telephoto lens to get a shot. This particular critter is called an anhinga.

If you’ve ever seen this bird swimming, you know why it’s also called the snakebird – it swims with its body submerged and, with just its head and curvy neck sticking out of the water, it looks like a snake. Another common name for the anhinga is the water turkey, due to its long tail.

After swimming, it likes to perch and spread out its wings and tail to dry. I could tell this bird was a female anhinga, because her head, neck and breast are buff-colored.

These birds will dive underwater to hunt for food – It’s interesting to watch them come up with a small fish clutched in their beaks and then carefully flip it into position so they can swallow it.

And a last little tidbit of information – the binomial name of this bird is anhinga anhinga, which for some reason just cracks me up…it’s like someone ran out of ideas when they were naming this bird, and just used the same word twice

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Roseate Spoonbill

I know it’s been forever since I last posted – much has been happening, which is why I haven’t written in a while, and I will try to post a detailed update soon.

For now I wanted to share a photo of our new backyard visitor. As I’ve mentioned before, Allen’s Creek runs right through our back yard. It’s a brackish water creek that feeds into Tampa Bay, which connects with the Gulf of Mexico. We are really enjoying watching and identifying the wildlife. So far we’ve seen lots of turtles, pelicans, yellow-crowned night herons, crabs, white ibis, anhinga, river otters and ducks.

Recently I saw a big pink bird flying by…I started yelling that there was a flamingo out back and ran to get my camera.  After examining the shots I took and taking a close look at the fellow’s beak, I realized that it wasn’t a flamingo – our bird book helped me I.D. it as a roseate spoonbill.

It was gorgeous!  It’s the only spoonbill bird species native to North America.  It is a wading bird which feeds by rhythmically sweeping its spatulate bill back and forth through the water.  I haven’t seen one feeding yet – this guy was just hanging out with his buddies on Bird Island.

This other little guy was also hanging out on Bird Island – I think he was posing to be on the back of a coin I’m a little unsure, but I think he’s a great cormorant. They have a large hooked bill and a bright yellow throat patch bordered by white feathers. One of their characteristics is that, when perched wet, they will hold their wings in a spread eagle position to dry.

There’s never a dull moment in the Huebsch House back yard!

A Lot of Pooh in Our Bathroom

My blog friend Leena over at Bye, Bye Brooklyn had a recent post about the quirky switchplates in their 130-year-old house which they’re renovating.  I got to thinking…we don’t have a lot of quirky switchplates in our house, mainly because we hardly have ANY switchplates period in our house.  However, there is a stellar one which I have to share.

Yes, Winnie the Pooh adorns our bathroom wall – but wait, there’s more! The previous owners were apparently Pooh-maniacs. Pooh is surrounded by lots of blue clouds.

There are blue clouds over the doorway…

blue clouds over the window…

blue clouds over the shower…

and blue clouds on the light soffit.

But wait, there’s EVEN more! There’s a Winnie the Pooh cabinet knob:

And we wouldn’t want Pooh Bear to be lonely, so there are also Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet knobs:

And we’re not Pooh-i-fied enough yet – there are Pooh and Tigger stencils EVERYWHERE…on drawer fronts:

On closet doors:

And my personal favorite, over the toilet paper holder:

I guess you can never have too much Pooh in the bathroom

Bamboo Flooring in the House

The last time I posted, we were shopping for bamboo flooring…now, a month later, the flooring is purchased and actually installed in the master – too exciting!

We decided on Morningstar’s 3/8″ x 3-3/4″ clic strand carbonized bamboo:

(Source)

We ordered 2500+ sq. ft. of it from Lumber Liquidators…two weeks and $11,385 later, we brought home one of the three pallets:

We loaded 5 boxes at a time onto a wagon to wheel it up to the front door. My job was to pop open the end of each box so that the wood planks would acclimate while sitting in the house.

We had to wait an EXCRUCIATING five days for the flooring to acclimate before we could start installing it. We are not good waiters. On the fourth day, Jim put down the moisture barrier and the underlayment.

The underlayment was crinkly and didn’t want to lay flat – there was definitely much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Finally the room was ready for the flooring! (Prepare yourself for my animated GIF – give it a few seconds to load; then it will replay after a 5-second pause.)

After the flooring was down, Jim painted and installed new 5-1/4″ baseboard to replace the skinny little baseboard that was there before. Finally the master was ready to move into! And just to jog your memory, it went from this:

to this:

Ooo-o-o, wait, we have to see this side by side!

We just love everything about it! We’ve spent 2 days in the master and it’s wonderful. Here’s a recap of what we did (and by “we” I mean “mostly Jim”).
– Remove the popcorn ceiling
– Realign the hallway/closet wall
– Divide the closet into 2 walk-in closets
– Re-align the hallway/bathroom wall to create a small linen closet
– Center fan on ceiling peak and install new fan
– Apply knockdown texture to ceiling and new walls
– Prime and paint ceiling and walls
– Install bamboo flooring
– Install new baseboard

Hopefully we’re done with the hardest of the four bedrooms to update. Jim moved on to K’s room today and started demoing – no resting on his laurels!

The Latest in the Master

Well, I haven’t blogged lately and it’s not because we’ve been doing nothing – pretty much the opposite…there’s been a lot going on. But I did want to bring everyone up to date on the house renovation.

Jim finished texturing the ceiling and new walls in the master. He sprayed on a coat of primer – it looked great, but it did involve an emergency trip to Home Depot for a second 5-gallon bucket of primer and a super duper respirator mask for Jimbo.

After the primer, he rolled on a coat of white ceiling paint…the ceiling looks beautiful with all that popcorn texture gone!

We picked a paint color for the walls – “Pale Wheat” by Behr. I ended up buying a gallon of eggshell enamel by Glidden, which they color-matched to the paint chip…don’t you just love color matching? We decided to just get a gallon because we’re notorious for not liking the first color we pick. Jim used up the whole gallon and…

WE LOVE IT!! It just makes the room look nice and warm! So, I’ll be off to Home Depot shortly for another gallon of paint, which should allow Jim to finish up the job today. Then tomorrow we’re heading out to shop for flooring. We’re interested in wood flooring, maybe stranded bamboo in a natural color. After the flooring, the baseboard will go up, and then WE GET TO MOVE INTO THE MASTER – too exciting!!