I saw recently where James Taylor was supposed to sing the Star Spangled Banner, and started singing “America, the Beautiful”…God Bless him.  I want to put  a vote in for America, the Beautiful for our national anthem.  The Star Spangled Banner sings of war and bombs but America the Beautiful sings of the beauty of our country, the abundance, and the brotherhood (as yet to be realized, but a worthy goal).

A beautiful, crisp morning as the sun rises….now moved across the horizon for the winter sleep…

I saw six deer this morning.  Sometimes they will stop and just observe me, but mostly they just run off, with white tails bobbing up…it never ceases to amaze me how they can be standing still in front of a four foot tall fence and leap over it with such athletic grace.    They like apples, by the way.  A momma deer and baby were seen nibbling apples one morning while they hung from the tree.  You’ll see a half-eaten apple on the ground and know that it was lunch for a deer.

I went out the other morning, and the birds were singing as if it were a Spring day.  It caught me off guard….this is Fall, right…? :p

There were cardinals singing, Blue Jays sounding the warning, and another bird I couldn’t identify singing its little heart out.  Funny.

I’ve seen a bird that is mostly grayish black that at first I thought was a junco, but it’s tail looked like a sparrow’s and it was too big to be a junco.

The hummingbirds have long since sought warmer climates.  I miss their antics.  They spend more energy fighting over the food, when there is plenty there, rather than conserving the energy they used fighting so they wouldn’t need so much food….I know there is a lesson for mankind in there, somewhere….

You remember the hornet’s nest I mentioned?  Something happened to it–we had about three days of rain (no chemtrails to interfere), and then we had really windy days….so it may have been the combination that caused the nest to lose its outer wrap (for want of a better word).  It literally had torn off the wrap down to the honeycomb-like inner chambers.  I guess birds could have gotten to it, too, but I’ve never seen that. Not that I’ve seen that many hornets’ nest….in my youth, when I lived around the woods, but not since moving to the city.

Here’s an informative blog on hornet’s nests.  I learned something today–I saw the honeycombs of the torn hornet’s nest but I did not realize they actually made honey! It makes perfect sense, though, because they need something for the pupae. However, I wanted to double check this, and another site said they did not make honey.

Continuing the search, I found this:

I also learned that the Maya believe hornets/wasps learn the hut owner’s scent and leave them alone….but may go after visitors.  Interesting.  Hornets generally do leave people alone….unless they mess with them.  There was one story of my childhood where one of the neighborhood kids thought it would be funny to poke a hornet’s nest.  Um-hmm….you can guess what happened…hornets mad as hell swarmed him.  They had to get a hose to get them off.  Yep, he never did that again…

I found this interesting blog on hornet nest destruction.  Apparently, bears will tackle anything.  This site is pretty interesting with discussions on biodiversity.  Someone posted a video on biodiversity but it advocates eco-tourism, and setting aside small tracts of land for preservation.  I think both of these ideas send the wrong message.  Tourism is tourism and the more people that trample the ground, disturbing the wildlife, the more stress they bring to resources and the life forms there–not to mention more pollution by using motorized vehicles.  I shake my head at folks who drive up in SUV’s to the parks….the irony seems lost on them on the damage their vehicles cause by consuming gas and polluting with exhaust, which are destroying the nature that they seek.

And the setting aside tracts of land is a noble idea–but in my view, it absolves the rest of the occupants of the land their responsibility to take care of the land they’re on.  In other words, it’s like they’re saying “we have this land over here that is being preserved, therefore, you can pollute the hell out of the other land that isn’t in the preserve.”   It’s still missing the HUGE point that we cannot separate the land by lines….as much as we have been brainwashed into thinking that it is possible to do just that.

Water runoff polluted with pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified forms, mercury, etc., will migrate from the unprotected land to the protected land.  Toxic air will flow over the protected land.   There is no way to keep a tract of land pristine while the land surrounding it is poisoned.  Just like we see with the nuclear accident in Japan–what happens in one area affects another that has nothing to do with it.  We have to see that everything we do affects another–to take care.

Another link someone posted is something near and dear to my heart–natural water filtration a la natural swimming pools.  Pretty cool, eh?  Last one in is a rotten egg! 🙂

Also, there is a thread on endangered invertebrates. Interesting read.

Have a great Sunday. 🙂