On my first glimpse of the pic on this article, I thought it looked a bit like a buried crop circle. I wonder if there is any connection? Link: http://www.neatorama.com/2010/07/22/found-stonehenges-second-henge/

I looked up to see what was making the noise in the pine tree above me and saw a very young woodpecker, not fully feathered, flapping its wings and calling for food.

An adult came and perched for a second beside the youngling before flying to the next pine tree. Then, with what looked like a large effort, the chick hurled itself out in the air to follow the adult, calling loudly the whole time.

I wonder how satisfying it must be for the youngster to capture and eat its first dinner on its own? Once it has moved through this difficult adjustment, it's a new bird.

I love finding elegant ways to manage things efficiently. I'd probably make a good "efficiency expert" to come into some disorganized office and make it work better for everyone. So for a lot of the clerical stuff I do, I like to automate the process. Macros. Scripts.

This far I have managed scripting on the Mac with macro programs like Keyboard Maestro and by developing applescripts by trial and error. "Beginning Applescript" by Stephen Kochan has been a real help, as has the Introduction to AppleScript Language Guide from Apple's site. Yet I have missed out on the very basics - understanding why certain variables get returned as text and why others do not. And so even these resources have been hard going.

But this summer, I'm learning a bit more. I got Bill Cheesman and Sal Soghoian's "Applescript 1-2-3" and it is giving me the grounding I need to understand it better.

I just completed a pretty complicated script (for me) yesterday and I can't tell you how satisfying it was it to work through the logic and syntax and in the end, have a script do what I want brilliantly. Yes!

I think sometimes that criticism is often about the critic and not about us. It's often a response to a need, like a need for rest, a need for a fresh perspective or a need to feel useful or validated or important.

They fledged yesterday and this morning. This pic is of one of the two we saw leave the  bird house yesterday. The chick ventured far outside, still hanging on, backed up inside for a short bit and then off it went. This morning early, I heard two chicks still in the nest. But by 6 am they had also gone.

When the wren chicks first hatched, their voices were tiny and high-pitched. As the days went by, the voices got stronger. Until yesterday, though, the only time you'd hear them was when a parent landed to feed them, or a bump nearby mimicked the arrival of a parent. This morning, in the pouring rain, I can hear one or two of the chicks constantly calling out. I bet they'll fledge soon.

Language is meaningful to me. How things are phrased, subtle nuance can have so much bearing on my emotional patterns as well as thinking patterns, it's always nice when I suddenly see a new way of thinking about something, a new way of phrasing it, so that the results are kinder to everyone, yet still true.

"He may not care about this," (or my feelings) may be accurate, but the way it is phrased seems to say more about the caring or not-caring part. It affects my feelings. Instead I can choose to think "He doesn't think that way." This states the facts in such a way that it doesn't have to lead to emotional conflict or hurt feelings.

A simple change of phrase can change the whole mental, and then emotional landscape.

A wonderful replica of the "Bounty" was built in the Lunenburg shipyards in Lunenburg Nova Scotia for the movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" that opened in 1962. Today, on the news, I saw that the Bounty was in Toronto. An event. But the real event took place on July 15, 1986 when the Bounty sailed back into Lunenburg harbour. I was visiting my Dad at the time, and all ships coming into port in Lunenburg had to sail past my Dad's. There have been many wonderful "Tall Ship" events in Lunenburg but this one was special. Every boat for miles around escorted the Bounty into her home port - all with horns blowing and, as she neared the town, the church bells in town rang out in welcome. It was wonderful. It raised gooseflesh. Both pics here were taken in that lovely July.

Wrens will make decoys nests, but this one has babies. I heard a faint chirping the other day from inside, so high-pitched it was almost out of my range of hearing. Since then, the voices have become louder, and yesterday and today they seem downright demanding. Both parents are constantly bringing food to the nest. One and then another. I don't know how they can be anything less than exhausted.