bird for the lifelist

For real birders this is nothing, but it's a first for me. It rained FIVE INCHES overnight (and I have water in my basement). Naturally there are puddles of water all over the place, including a small lake right in front of the steps of the building where I work. As I was coming in from lunch, there were several LBJs ("little brown jobbies") bathing in the puddle. Two of them were regular English sparrows, but one of them was much smaller, with a "rufus streak" on the top of its head, and white above the eye. First thing I did when I came in and got logged on was to do a search, and I'm pretty sure that what I saw was a chipping sparrow. Apparently they like to nest in ornamental evergreens, and there are two big ones right by the front entrance and two smaller ones along the sidewalk. Little things like that can just make my day.

We not only got 5 inches of rain last night, we had the most incredible thunderstorm I can remember--not long low rumbles but big cracks and bangs, with lots of lightning, like a fireworks display. I had to get up to close windows and had three little shadows glued to my heels, and when i went back to bed, I had three companions. I was really surprised by Annie, because I don't remember her ever being upset by a storm before. Timber came and sat in my lap to be hugged for a while, then went into his crate. When I laid down, Taenzer cuddled up as absolutely close as she could get and hid her face in my shoulder. I kept saying, "It's okay, it's just Mr. Thundermonster, he'll go away soon," but I kept jumping at some of the really loud bangs--they sounded like they were right over the house--and of course it's hard to hide that kind of thing from them. It was a big storm--it went on at that incredibly intense level for at least 45 minutes. I had a spray bottle of Rescue Remedy, so I spritzed all three of them, and I think it helped--Timber went to his crate and Annie went back to wherever she's sleeping these days, and Taenzer unglued herself from my side and stretched out at the foot of the bed.

When they started with the warnings they were talking about a storm with 50 mph winds and quarter-size hail so I put the van in the garage. We didn't get the wind or the hail, thank goodness, but I'm glad I garaged the van anyway. (Ironically enough, after I wrote that post about how nice the long days were, it was pitch black by about 8:00 last night.) We were supposed to get more rain today but so far we've been lucky and even had some sun. They're also predicting rain for tonight and tomorrow, and there is some mean-looking stuff out by Des Moines, but maybe it will miss us. I hope so! I don't need any more water in my basement!