I've been working my butt off the past few days trying to get my illustrations finished for the aviary's new exhibit that will be opening some time at the end of the summer. I have to complete 8 total and 4 are nearly done. I had desperately hoped that I would have at least six totally done by the time we leave tomorrow afternoon, but I think that is wishful thinking. We'll see!

Here's one I'm nearly done with:
The colors aren't QUITE right for the chest and head yet (a little too fluorescent) and obviously the coloring for the chicks on the left isn't completed yet, but I'm geting close. Phew :)

Second walk

On our second walk today, I remembered my telephoto lense:

It makes me believe that maybe spring is ACTUALLY here!

And then, of course, it snows.

(Knock on wood).

First post

So, I know I beat Andrew to our blog purely by virtue of my having just MADE the blog, but it still stands:
First!

This morning we took Linus, who is looking really sleepy right now, on a walk to the grocery store and did some good urban bird watching. I'm teaching 'Birding 101' to my AVES 4th graders right now, meaning I'm learning a ton myself and teaching Andrew everything I'm learning too. We saw lesser goldfinches for the first time:

My guess is that it was a male and a female, but the male had less distinct coloring than they usually do, so hopefully the ID is right. The female was plucking fuzz from these dangly bits of the tree:

I totally forgot my telephoto lense, so the photos are a bit hard to make out, but the female is behind one of these fuzzy dangly bits, pulling the fluff out of another one. Spring is here! Nest building has begun!

And needless to say, Linus had a lovely walk as well.

It's been a busy week (looong days for both Andrew and I) and a good weekend.  Friday morning we had our Super Date engagement photo shoot with Anginet, our wedding photographer. She was SO COOL! We had a phenomenal time. We woke up to snow, which cleared to sun for just long enough to get the park portion of the shoot done, and then we had nice, diffuse lighting in the downtown library when it got a little stormy again. Anginet was really talented and we can't wait to see the photos in another week or two, when she is done editing them.

Then later that night we went to get food at a local pub with some friends as a post-birthday celebration for me, and have relaxed for the rest of the weekend.

In other news, I've been practicing origami flowers, which may or may not find a place in the wedding. They've certainly found places around our apartment, in an effort to save them from finding their way to the recycling:

Now for another three days of work, and then OFF TO NEW YORK! Woohoo!