Lost

Where, oh, where have they gone?

Over the past week odd things have gone missing....

The bathroom scissors, with which I lop off my hair, for the most part at random...

They are essential. For me a hair cut is not an event, but a process. A sticky-up clump here..whack, it's gone. Another one there...ditto....almost every day. 

The result is a sort of Rod Stewart look only (slightly) younger, plumper, and a lot less jaded. With the scissors gone I will soon be sporting that wild collie look....or maybe Golden Retriever....and that is so not me.

Not here....

Next to vanish was one of the Irish rings I wear.

Mappy and Alan each bought themselves one in Durham a couple of years ago. Alan bought me one too and I have worn it all the time ever since.

Alan's I rescued from his pants pockets, pretty much weekly, back when I was doing his laundry, and wore on my other hand until I saw him next and returned it. Eventually he refused to take it back, so I had one on each ring finger. You can tell them apart by the grout in his and they click together nicely when I get impatient.

However, the left hand one vanished without warning the other day. We cannot find it anywhere.

Thus I walk about unbalanced and shaggy, missing these icons of daily life...Woe is me...

Where, oh, where have they gone????

Guess we'll have to keep looking

The Excitement Never Ends

Red-breasted Merganser

So yesterday we went back down to the river, and although we didn't see the Black-bellied Plover again, we did meet two expert birders, with whom I was delighted to chat a bit. (Met one of them last spring in the same spot...so nice to encounter him again and to meet his friend .)

They identified a little flock of small shorebirds that kept whirling past us as Dunlin, which are new for me in the county, although I have seen them before at Montezuma.

A little better photo of the scoters....but only a little

They went down to Yankee Hill with us too, and confirmed that the birds there were indeed Surf Scoters, as they were still hanging around.

It spit and spat and sputtered rain all day today, so I did a short walk around the house and called it good until late this afternoon.

Then we went back down to Schoharie Crossing, as it had stopped raining for a bit.

It was COLD (!!!) down there and the wind was roaring, so I bent over to zip my hoodie.

There, right at my feet, right at the edge of the water, was a merganser. I have been looking, both here and at Montezuma, for a Red-breasted Merganser for at least a year. I have seen dozens of Common Mergs and find them delightful....but I wanted the rarer one.

And guess what..... 

Red-breasted Merganser