Catching Up and Feeling a Bit of Deja Vu

 Since my last post, we took a wonderful trip to Cortez, CO for the annual Ute Mt Birding Festival, came home to two birds' nests in very inconvenient locations (of course), suffered through a bad cold, relistened to a couple of great audio books on the road trip, and read a couple of new books.

What to cover first?

Travelogue: Cortez 

Let's go with the trip to Cortez. It was our 5th time going to the festival, and as usual it was great. Most memorable was the tour of the Yucca House National Monument, led by a Mesa Verde park ranger and expert birder. Until this trip, I had never heard of this site, and believe me, I spent a lot of time in this part of the country as a kid. It was established early, 1919, but never developed as a destination, simply preserved, which is a good thing.

The site, which is contemporaneous to Mesa Verde, is mostly unexcavated, but the ranger was able to make the lives of the people who inhabited this huge village come alive. We also saw a lot of cool birds, including a shrike, but no roadrunner, which he had sort of promised us we would see!

Brownheaded Cowbird

Northern Shrike

Cortez is a cute little town, near the Four Corners (i.e., where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona come together), and I especially love the street art. Below is a mural on one of the outside walls of the Cortez Cultural Center. 

Another mural

And yet another mural

Nests with Eggs

Once home, we discovered that an enterprising House Finch had set up housekeeping on our front porch, taking advagtage of the twigs in my spring wreath to create a safe, dry place for her family.

My husband thoughtfully put up caution tape around the front porch so that Mama Finch isn't startled too often. 

The other nest is that of a Eurasian Collared Dove and is situated so that we cannot go from the garage to the backyard without disturbing Mama EC Dove.  

Feels like we are running a maternity ward but proud to have created a congenial habitat.

Books

Finally, we get to the books read and reread.

For the road trip, we listened to You Are Here, but David Nicholls, which I loved and knew my husband would enjoy. He did. Since we finished that on the drive home, we started Murder Takes a Vacation, by Laura Lippman, which again I had really enjoyed and knew would be a good, light book to listen to. 

I've also recently read the following:

A Case of Mice and Murder, by Sally Smith - recommended by both Constance of Staircase Wit and I think also Lark of Lark Reads. It took me a little while to fall in love but now I am smitten and intend to read more in the series (The Trials of Gabriel Ward). Gabriel is an unlikely detective, but I like the way his mind works and he definitely became someone I liked spending time with. I had the whodunnit part figured out early on, but so what? A very fun read. And, I think I now have a better grasp on the Inns of Court in London, which means whenh I reread Bleak House I won't feel so lost...maybe.

 The Impossible Fortune, by Richard Osman - #5 in the immensely popular (and rightly so) Thursday Murder Club series. It was as good as all its predecessors. These books are genuinely funny and always make me laugh out loud, but the plots are complicated, relevant, timely, and often techie (so, like Joyce, I learn something!).

I also just finished another Scottish-history novel, but I will save that for another Reading Scotland post.

The Cold

I know, I know. Everyone gets a cold. But I haven't had one in a long time, and I am a big baby. I actually took a Covid test because I felt so crummy. Negative, which is good. I am finally feeling better today, with the proverbial lingering cough

We started rewatching Outlander last night and just watching Claire and Jamie and the other Highlanders riding for days and nights in the rain was almost more than I could take!