Blog Tune Up

The inspiration continues and the ideas are flowing!
I've been tweaking the blog today to ease navigation, organize and de-clutter!

I've added new pages:  Nature Cards and Books, and renamed others.  What used to be the Mission Statement page is now simply called About New Pioneer, and NP Styles is now About NP Styles.  

This makes it easier for newcomers and general reference.

The Nature Cards page is a big deal!  I first took the best of my recent images and created a new gallery on my artist website at Fine Art America (you can view it here ).  These images are only available as greeting cards at this time.  If you are interested in enlargements please contact me.

Then I created the new Nature Cards page on the blog (view here ) which is the full collection with several links for purchasing.

I have been with Fine Art America for almost three years and they do beautiful printing, timely shipping, and secure purchasing.

The Books page was a terrific way to get them all in one place!  I have several photo collection books available through MagCloud;  great coffee table books or gifts.  I also have my second poetry book and the Backyard Bird Sighting booklet available.  You can view that page here .

I'm gathering recent poems for a third book, coming soon, and I plan to reprint the first book from 2004 in this new format on MagCloud - so stay tuned for that!

Additionally, I have cleaned up the side bars on the blog.  The images to the left under the first house photo are all available as greeting cards and click-able to that page.

On the right side bar under recent posts I have added easy access links to the pages as well.

Other new surprises coming soon will be a Nature Kit, The Shift oracle cards, and several new ideas for quick downloadable guides!!

Whew!  What a great day for cleaning blog house.

Thanks for being here!

My Feathered Friends

This week I had a rare afternoon free and the weather was tolerable, so I took the hour long drive up to my favorite shop in Gardiner, WA.;  WildBirds Unlimited.  Do you have one in your area?

This one is truly a treasure, equipped with everything you could possibly want in your backyard wildlife sanctuary.

What's really unique is their landscaped, bird friendly area with a large pond and waterfall.

On this visit to WB I got an extension for my bird feeding pole system I bought there a while back, which came with two extensions for hanging feeders. 

Currently I use one for the WB (lifetime guarantee) blackoil sunflower seed feeder, and the other for their woodpecker friendly suet feeder made from recycled plastics.

My new third extension will accommodate my newest feeder, the (also lifetime guarantee) thistle feeder.

 

Right now I have mostly hooded juncos, towhees and purple finches.  One or two flickers have visited the suet feeder as well.

A couple of days after I put up the new thistle feeder I noticed the juncos had taken a liking to it!  They are primarily a ground feeding bird.

Today my first pine sisken of the season has arrived.  They are usually the reason I put up a thistle feeder at this time of year.  Also when the goldfinches arrive they will feed on thistle too.

I often refer to my Backyard Bird Sightings tracker to see who is arriving on time and who might be earlier, or later, than previous years.  So far everything seems about normal even with the late snows we had in March.

My first hummingbirds began arriving last week, and the first Rufus of the season arrived just two days ago.  Soon I will have to put up a second feeder to accommodate all of them!

I moved the swallows nesting box this year to a safer location, so I hope they like it and decide to stay.  They should be arriving sometime within the next month.

I also put up a new nesting box on the back of the house in hopes of attracting the chickadees, who usually get voted out by the swallows for the first box.

This year I'm also hoping to get more and better photos with a couple of new accessories;  another tripod and a remote shutter, as well as a couple of new spots to set up and shoot from.

What birds are returning to your area?

Documenting the Sightings

One more post about the bird tracking template.  Bear with me, this is one of my most favorite subjects - wildlife.

I noticed in the stats that no one has read either of the previous posts, so either you're not birders or I have failed to represent it correctly.  If you are interested in documenting your backyard sightings, here are some tips on how to use this PDF document I created.

This is available from MagCloud.com and you can easily access it by clicking on the image of it in the left sidebar, or in my previous post.  The downloadable version is only $2.  I recommend this format so you can print out one document for each month you want to track your bird or other wildlife sightings.

Here is a sample page.

  

The left column going down is the day of the month.  Years across.  In this sample I have used a page from May that had some sightings documented over three years.  This document is for the period of 2008 through 2011.

When I created it I wanted something simple, easy to use and lots of options to change it.  So for the MagCloud copy, the years are 2012 through 2015.  You fill in the month.  There are enough pages for all the days of the longest month.

The fun thing here is that for instance if the Swallows arrived on May 22nd in 2008, and May 25 in 2009, they may arrive again on May 22nd in 2010.  So you have documented their arrival for every year for four years - at a glance!

OK, maybe birds aren't your thing.  Do you have deer?  Bear?  Raccoons and babies?  Maybe you want to track the plant growth;  when you planted the seeds for the spinach, what did well when.

Anyway, you get the idea.

OK, so there is the how-to on the bird tracking form.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Bird Tracker Available Now!

OK, here it is, the Bird Tracking Template, ready from MagCloud.  You will be able to document every bird or other wildlife sighting, daily, by the month, for four years at a glance. 

You can purchase the booklet for $2.50 and get the digital download for free or purchase just the download for $2.00.  I highly suggest the download so you can print it out for each month.  
(It had to be 8 pages to publish so two are blank, you can use them for notes.)

Click on the image below and it takes you to MagCloud, once there you can see a preview of the pages.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask!!
Enjoy!

Backyard Bird Sighting

Bird Tracking Template. Four years at a glance for noting wildlife activity, even the weather. Simple graph template that you can download, print out and fill in.

Tracking Your Birds

Just a quick post here to let you all know that I have created a PDF format of my bird tracking template, soon to be available for download here!!  Yay!

I created the form for myself a few years ago when I could not find anything online that I liked, or could figure out how to use!  It seemed like a such a simple thing, some boxes or a graph on paper with a way to line up the years so I could see who came and went, and when.

It's great for all the things you want to track by the day and year.  Besides birds, you could track other wildlife, new plant growth, weather events, etc.  It goes across by year so you can see exactly what day the migrating birds arrived, left or whatever, for a four year span.

So I figured out how to convert it to a PDF and am hopefully going to go through MagCloud so you can easily purchase it and download it.  How does a couple bucks sound?  It's not a major publication and you'll have to print it out and fill it in, so I'm going mega affordable on this one.

Just a teaser for now to let you know it's coming!!