Hello, Hello! Anybody still got me on their list?

I'm back, at least for this one post right now.  I hope to be a little more regular, but I'll probably be a lot more erratic than I was in the past.  I just can't seem to find things to post about.

I guess I have two pieces of news, though.  The first is that I'm on day 17 of a diet.  I decided that it was time to lose all this extra weight that is keeping me from doing the things that I want to do.  I could stand to lose 100 pounds, but I'll be happy with less, as long as I keep it off.  So far, only weighing myself once a week, I've lost 5.5 pounds.  But, I won't bore you with constant updates on how the diet is going.

The second thing that I wanted to share with you is the wonderful sight that I saw out of my rear window this morning.  I was puttering around when I noticed that Becky Cat, who loves to sit and watch the birds out of that window, started making that chattering noise that cats make when they are excited.  I went over to the window and this is what I saw.

Yes, that's a Snowy Owl, sitting there in my back yard!  I knew that they were around.  There have been reports of sightings in my area.  But, I never expected to see one right here at home.  I have heard that the irruption has occurred this year because the Arctic Summer last year was very mild.  That lead to an explosion in the population of lemmings.  In the chain of events that nature often provides, this meant that adult birds had plenty of food to feed to their nestlings, leading to a larger than normal survival rate.

When the birds fledged, the young birds had to roam farther afield, to find new Winter hunting territories.  That's why we, here in New York State, are now being treated with the sight of so many of them.  This looks to me like a first year bird, probably a male, which would be in line with the theory.

Just a short while later, I got an email from my neighbor.  He had seen the bird also, and sent me this picture.

They are so beautiful, and so large.  When I first saw it, I thought it was a dog.  Hey, it was early, and I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet.

So, there we have it, a brief update on my so very unexciting life.  I promise, I'll try to get a blog up now and again, and I also promise that I will try my best to get caught up on your blogs in the next few days.