Robin Arnold Art

Gena and I decided to walk  a few laps around our marsh yesterday afternoon but we didn't get very far before we were waylaid by several chickadees looking for a hand-out. It was a cold day with a bitter northeast wind but it was well worth the frozen and numb fingers to bond with these adorable little birds. The chickadees will eat of Gena's or my hand but in this video Gena is feeding them while I documented it with my new point and shoot camera. This is a great little camera to take on walks because it's nice and light...a lot easier than carrying heavy DSLR equipment. Not long ago it was a big deal to have 1-2 chickadees feed from our hand but the population is slowly growing and yesterday there must have been 3-5 birds flying in for a treat. When we first started feeding them a year ago they would fly in close to investigate but they wouldn't perch on our hand. We solved that problem by placing our hand under a small branch where the chickadees could safe...

Over the last two and a half weeks we have had fun watching seven monarch caterpillars we were raising in a "critter tank" complete their life cycles to become beautiful butterflies. Although we did this several years ago we never saw a caterpillar enter the chrysalis stage. When we saw the first caterpillar transform we were amazed and when the second one was close to changing I made sure I had my camera set up. This isn't the best video--for extra light Gena was directing a small incandescent lamp at the caterpillar--but it shows the transformation fairly well. That black thing that fell off towards the end of the video was it's butt! The entire process took three and half minutes and I've been told from one person that this caterpillar was slow and they've clocked the transformation in one minute. If you want to learn more about our experience follow the link below to our lastest Lifestyle 2000 article. As always Gena did a great job writing it. The ...