Tweets for Tweets (7): My Favorite Bird Photos July 2022- Early October 2023

It's been a busy 12 months as we head into the 2023 holiday season, and this blog suffered the consequences. Not that I've been lazy, mind you. Just a little distracted.

I've worked on several white paper topics for Carrier, including a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the centrifugal chiller. Carrier is 120 years old and reinventing itself, which is a fascinating process to watch (and cheer on).

I've also been writing for the Old Colony Historical Society blog. Articles include: 

• "The Horses Behaved Better Than the People: Taunton's Fourth of July" 
• "We Talk With an AI Historian About the Old Colony" (in which I experimented with ChatGPT)
• Three posts here, here, and here about calamities (hurricanes, fires, blizzards) that have visited the Old Colony in the last three centuries
• A post about my great-uncle, "Charles Monroe Baker: Taunton's Architect of Big Buildings" 
• An article featuring Dighton, Anawan, and Plymouth Rocks called "Loves Me Like a Rock: 8 Old Colony Hunks You Should Know" 

  

  One of Uncle Charlie Baker's most impressive buildings,
  the First Parish Church in Framingham, MA

• A summer 2022 reading list, "The Authors of the Old Colony: A Summer Reading List (If You Dare)"
• And, a bit on "The Golden Age of Radio in the Old Colony," where I got to mention another uncle, Eddie Litchfield. 

I also got to be an early reader of Bill Hanna and Katie MacDonald's nearly-published book, a fascinating history of the Taunton River. It's a work of art, and I have yet to see all the archival pictures in the completed book.

Both King Philip's War and Innovation on Tap book talks and speaking engagements have picked up, and that's been fun. 

I've also been writing bunches of essays for our Family Tree Maker database, and one in particular to my family that summarizes fifty years of genealogical research. 

I started essays on the Boxford match factory and researched ideas for three possible books, none of which panned out--but it was good work.

Oh--- I almost forgot. :) We were blessed with our first grandson, Theodore Schultz Lindquist. I have re-learned my Raffi lyrics, how to change a diaper, and where the best swings are located. It's. been. the. greatest. thing. since. the 1990s. I haven't taken Theo to Anawan Rock yet, or told him about Willis Carrier's "Rational Psychrometric Formulae" or the mistake Eli Whitney made in his cotton gin business plan, but soon. However, I did build few books for him on Shutterfly, including one to prepare him for birding.

My pig continues to behave. I even met a gentleman on my last Mass Audubon trip who had a porcine valve inserted in 2008 (thirteen years before me), and he thinks he's got another five years before the pig konks out. I was hoping for a decade of steady oinks, so that news was very, very encouraging.

Our couples book club passed 22 years and 162 books, with Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead becoming one of my all-time favorites.

As for birding, I've hit the usual local hotspots, running my life list up to 725 species. I also 

• Traveled to Block Island with Mass Audubon earlier this month, adding a Buff-breastedSandpiper and a Clay-colored Sparrow
• Birded a little on Star Island (Isle of Shoals) as part of a King Philip's War book talk, getting to spend time with one of my favorite archaeologists and historians, Dr. Emerson Baker

• 

  Bay View, August 2023, one of the
  best handbell concerts all year

  Visited Rocky Mountain National Park last summer (while babysitting for a Taylor Swift concert) and was lucky to add a Violet-green Swallow, Mountain Chickadee, Pygmy Nuthatch, Mountain Bluebird, Western Tanager, Spotted Towhee, Black-chinned Hummingbird, and a Broad-tailed Hummingbird. That collection is big-time stuff for an Easterner!
• Birded around Bay View in Petoskey, Michigan (though I am habitually three weeks late visiting Hartwick Pines to see a Kirtland Warbler), while my lovely and talented wife played handbells
• And birded the Finger Lakes (including Montezuma, where we spotted a Trumpeter Swan) with a visit to Cornell's birding center last November.

Here are some of my favorite bird photos taken during that period. First, from the aforementioned Finger Lakes:

And then, a stop at Cornell's lab (an amazing facility where the staff was most accommodating) and the surrounding Sapsucker Woods:

Yes, these two are Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.

And here are my most recent bird photos in the order that they appear on my hard drive, July 2022 to early this month, more or less:

Yes, this is confusing.

We're moving into fall now. Cooler temperatures. Pumpkins. Vince Guaraldi. The Topsfield Fair (today). An amazing Thanksgiving planned. The best time of the year. A 40th wedding anniversary arrives in less than a year. And the 350th anniversary of King Philip's War is just around the corner. Lots and bells and birds, rocks and centrifugal chillers, and lots of swinging and building snowmen to be done between now and then.