Bird Lady of Blog Land?

There was a comment left on my last post, by Rick, that I was certainly the Bird Lady of Blog Land.  What memories that brought back.  In a couple of my former lives, similar titles have been bestowed upon me.  (Titles sounds rather presumptuous, but I couldn’t think of a better word.)   When the kids were growing up, and we lived in Upstate New York, besides raising pigs for 4-H, I was a federally licensed bird bander, and became known as the Bird Lady of Newark Valley. 

It was a small town, and everyone knew that I ran an Atlantic Flyway migration bird banding station on ten acres on the outskirts of town.  What that meant to the folks of that rural area was that any injured birds were brought to me in various containers.  I remember a green heron in a hamster cage from two little old ladies, a crow in a pillowcase on Christmas Eve, and a great horned owl in a small shoebox from a local farmer!  I also got a call to get a kestrel out of a police station, a starling out of a chimney, and a great horned owl out of the high school soccer net.  I was not a bird rehabilitator, but I could never turn those folks down when they came calling.  :)  Many of these folks I didn’t know, but they knew that the ‘bird lady’ lived on Bridge Street!

Time marched on, all of the kids were in school; I gave up my tax collector job; and went back to teaching in a juvenile corrections facility (high security prison).  Most of the young men in that facility were from Brooklyn and the Bronx, and had no idea what a bird was.  That’s when I first became known as the ‘Bird Lady of Alcatraz.’   Several years later, I moved to Minnesota and worked at a medium security men’s prison where the aka moniker followed me.  So I guess I’ve been known as the bird lady of ‘something’ for close to 30 years.  I just hope I don’t start sprouting feathers!  :)  Thanks, Rick, for giving me a stroll down memory lane!
Since I’m on the subject of birds, I was outside this afternoon in my ongoing quest for the perfect hummingbird picture. 
I’m not there yet, but the journey to get there is sure a lot of fun.  :)  I tried to edit out the red feeder perch using Picasa 3, but my oh my what a time I had with that!  I think something was going haywire with my Picasa tonight as it started putting pieces of the perch around in different places in the picture, so I just quit trying. 
These two photos aren’t very sharp, but I wanted to show you how territorial and feisty these little hummingbirds can be.  What I wouldn’t give to have these photos in focus!  That’s the challenge with these fast moving aerial acrobats.

Thanks for stopping by….talk to you later,  Judy