A coffee break........

Its that time of year, the time when it is dry and hot, and the hills are spotted with fires that burn for days; the time when the Condominium Stucky runs low on water, and what we do have is rationed; and the time of year when the parrots come for their semi annual visit, living in our attic, in the very small space between root tiles and the wooden ceilings of the house. 

All week the our house guests have been chewing and scraping, and screeching at one another, then finding their way back out of the house and raiding our bird feeders, running off the smaller birds, gobbling up the the sunflower seed and cleaning the papaya scraps of the final bits of sweet meat.  Screeching and flapping, they fly to a nearby tree and looking back over their shoulders at us  with looks of disdain, beginning grooming each other and discussing the coming days over their morning coffee.

NOTE:  On the 15th Camillo and I leave for our fall vacation.  This time in the USA – driving from DC to New York State, up the Hudson valley and then over to Michigan for a week with my mother.  Then I will go on to Houston for a month with the kids and grandkids..... click those photos of the parrots, I swear the are looking back at me taking their photos.

For the sake of seeing...

I don’t know how many times I have been to Rio’s botanical gardens, ‘Jardim Botanico’.  Walking over from Ipanema several times a year, lugging my Nikon D40x in a small backpack and carrying the point and shoot in my handy pocket, my purpose focused on a brisk walk, on exercise, on calories and fat loss.  Seeing interesting sights but not stopping, not giving up on my exercise.  As in all change, slowly the purpose of the walk has become a stroll to see; to see the birds, to see the leaves, and to see the flowers that are prominent during my walk: stopping to watch a child play, to find the birds in song, so walk down the slope for a closer look at a flower. 

I can’t say that yesterday I jumped  eagerly out of bed, it was more of a slow roll and groan, but I did wake with a determination to walk to the gardens to see what was blooming.  I managed to leave the apartment a little after ten, walked to the Lagoa, partially around it to the little street that cuts beside the Jockey club to Rua Jardim Botanico. 

Along the walk were young boys playing soccer, a class of rowers, a tennis match, a small construction on the path, and the usual bikers and joggers.   A small tree was in bloom showing me, for the first time, its abundant, bright red, waxy leafed flowers. Anyone know the name of this tree / flower?

A crane wading gracefully among the reeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      and bright yellow birds hidden among the red leaves of the fig trees.

    It took me a good 40 minutes to get to the gardens.  I must have been looking up or sideways, detracted or something, because I missed the shortcut that runs along the water.  I ended up walking along the street, surrounded by cars, busses and speeding motor bikes – not the best way to go if you want peace and beauty.  

It now cost $R6.00 to get into the gardens – a bargain for sure, but another change.  I always promise myself that I will walk the trails to the right of the entrance but when I arrive – I go left (because I know where the bathrooms are!).  Yesterday, I changed to my bigger camera and went to the right. 

Good choice!  Along the outer edge of the gardens are huge old trees.  I will put those photos into an album for you to see.

 

There was not much in the way of flowers this time of year, but there were a few surprises to take pleasure in.

              

      More Later !

My Town Friday Shoot-out - Birds

I am still working on Camillo’s older computer, mine had a hard drive crash the first day of 2010 – and because I didn’t want a pirated version of Windows Vista (64 bit) on the new hard drive – and I wanted the program in English, it has taken now over 2 weeks and still no computer and no reassurance that the data can be recovered…. Thank goodness my photos were almost totally moved to the external drive. Only my last trip to Salvador, Bahia was on the hard drive.

Now to this week's Friday Shoot-out - Birds.

I have done photos and posts of the few birds that we see at the house in Nova Friburgo before, in fact there are 11 posts noted on the side panel’s label list under Brasil-Birds. I didn’t want to tell those same stories again and had one other idea that didn’t pan out. I don’t know if it a custom in other areas of Brasil but in the state of Rio de Janeiro it is a common site to see small bird cages hanging outside of stores, riding on bicycles handlebars, being carried along by laborers on their way to work. I wasn’t able to get any photos of this and didn’t get a chance to ask for the story of why, so I will save that post for later.

 

 

For this week’s FSO – Birds, I am going into my archive for the photos from a trip we took several years ago to Iguaçu falls. Across the street from the entrance to the Brazilian side of the falls was a small bird sanctuary. I use the word sanctuary loosely because most of the birds were behind wire mesh fences – more of a bird prison as far as I could see. I hope I have picked a nice cross-section of these birds to show you.

The first 'Birds' is a sculpture on the grounds of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, and the second a lone crane at the base of the Falls on the Brazilian side.     I am sorry I have no names or guarantees that the rest of these birds are native to Brasil, but the shots are nice.    The last two birds were drawing a crowd on the trail along the Argentina side of the falls. They were out in the open, in the wild and singing for those stopping to watch and take photos.  Don't have the names, but definitely native - oops to Argentina although there is no way for them to know they were on the Argentina side of the falls.... so lets just agree they are Brazilian. 

 

  

   

       

      

  

just passing through

Yesterday and today it has been dark and rainy.  For the past couple of weeks it has been hot, hotter than is normal for the month of August or September – kicking back the covers in the night type of heat.  The heat seems to have finally broken with the start of rainy season.   Generally we don’t have this type of warm air up here in the mountains except in February or March and the birds are loving it. The parrots are back from wherever they go in the winter months. This week they sat two by two up in the pines deciding their mates for this season and how they would get back into our attic to have their broods. And as of yesterday morning they were definitely back, squawking and chewing and probably doing their worst to our attic space.

In compensation, the show at the bird feeder at lunch has been great. This week I saw three robins. No photos, they stayed to far away from the feeder to catch them with my little 55-200 lens but I know I saw them and that is good enough for me. They come through here twice a year and stop over for 3 or 4 days each direction, so there is always next year. It is interesting that they used to do the same in Houston and I always watched for them there also, feeling pleasure and connection from catching their visits.

This year we have watched several newcomers to our feeder. We added a board below the feeder to put fresh orange slices and papaya pieces which the small birds seem to love. Yesterday I added pieces of pineapple that so far have been ignored. This fresh fruit, though, brought us a male and female (assuming) that are baby blue on the underside with ranges of turquoise to midnight blue on the wings. What I think is the males have dots of bright yellow on each wing. (sorry forgot you like to see…..)    

 

 

 

 

 

 

I make an assumption that this is a male (upper) and female (to the left) of the same family because they come together to feed, one will sit on an upper branch and watch, then they switch places…. rarely do you see birds of different families eating together at the feeder. These blue birds are very aggressive little buggers, we left a whole papaya (mamao as they are call here) on the veranda rail to ripen in the warm sun and before we knew it they had eaten the whole inside and left Camillo and I only the skins for our breakfast.

 

 

 

 

We have had squirrels, two big, one little and, of course, the parrots. The parrots usually come in groups of 3 or 4. Two at the feeder and the rest waiting patiently on the branches above. They scare away all of the other birds, then sit and daintily go through the seeds, greedily eating the sunflower seeds. They are very systematic - popping the seed and spitting the shell out on the ground. Maybe there is hope for our attic if they are this neat in their habits. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year we have also had a very small, very black bird. I haven’t noted any differences that might distinguish male / female between the ones that come to the feeder. During the 5 visits or so that I’ve noticed, they seem to be the same bird.

We have also seen a small brown morning dove, a beige and turquoise bird with black eyes and one yellow breasted with black and white chipmunk like striped head.    We

also have routinely the big gray and brown forest pigeon and a small sparrow. We’ve really been enjoying our pre summer heat and dry and in no way look forward to the confinement of the rains to come…..

My Town Friday Shoot-out / Signs

With this post I am finally caught up with the Friday Shoot-out gang. I hope you went back and saw about ‘power’ in Brasil.

In Brasil I have two issues with SIGNS – The streets are shadowed with signs, there are billboards along the roads, and large, often garish signs atop every store. I try ignore them. And to beat it all they are in PORTUGUESE! Can you imagine?  If I don’t focus on the ugly things then I can’t read them, or understand their purpose.  As you can see they are often not only above the store (loja) but the same sign will be painted on the store front and a third may even hang down near the sidewalk – Why is all I can ask?

When Camillo is driving I sometimes catch a sign with a word I don’t know and I ask…. most the time I just ignore them. As you can imagine this attitude of mine has somewhat stymied my ability to meet the true purpose of this shoot-out.

Of course there are other signs that can be photographed;  signs of love, signs of holidays, or signs of Spring.

Yes, remember here in Brasil we are looking at spring just around the corner. I didn’t have my camera (isn’t that always the way it is?) but across the street from our favorite lunch-time restaurant is a prenatal clinic – the waiting room was full and there were 3 very pregnant women out in front….. a sure sign of spring in the air.

 

 

The parrots landing two by two in the trees out front – a little necking in the tree tops, a sure sign that spring is here and summer, with them sleeping in our attic with their new families, is only a short time away.

  

The Ipe tree is beginning to bloom. The last days of dry season are here, each day starts with an overcast sky and clouds in the valley – a sure sign of spring on its way.  All our signs of spring are subtle and easy to miss – but rainy season is obviously a sign that spring and summer are here.