Jim’s Blog

 
Knowing that the gestation period of barn swallows is 60 days, and the fact that we saw the birds mating on the 4th and 6th of May, it is about time for some eggs to appear in the nest. I just climbed up a ladder with a camera and mirror and snapped this photo of inside the nest. – No eggs yet, but the nest looks very cozy with all the soft feathers.
 

 
 
I recently put together a new PC. Before building a new PC, I try to make my component list as close to state-of-the-art as I can afford. Then hopefully it will still be current technology two years into the future.
The components I chose:

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz Socket AM3 processor
• Asus M4A79T Deluxe Motherboard
• CoolerMaster 690 Case
• Patriot 8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz DRAM
• EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card
• Fedora 11 x86_64 O/S

 
7 p.m.: We just noticed a new baby cottontail eating grass in the back yard. He is so tiny that when he has his head down eating, all you can see is the tips of his ears above the grass. I waited until he looked up to snap this shot. You can also see here that our catnip is flowering, and will soon be going to seed.
 
 

 
 
It’s now 8:10pm, almost dark, and here is the little guy on the patio right up by the back door. There was not quite enough light to get a good photo without moving the camera and blurring the image.
 
 
 

 
 
The birds out back are providing hours of interest from our six cats. In this photo, our cat “Chip” is intently watching the barn swallow on the nest outside the window. It’s a good thing that these cats of ours are indoor-only cats, good for the birds and little critters, that is.