Audubon Nature Festival

Today we attended the 13th Annual Audubon Nature Festival at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary in Topsfield, MA.  It was a great family event with a great number of activities for young children.  Not that my young child took much interest in a lot of the activities, but that’s okay.  Sometimes it’s just as fun to run up and down the path.

The highlight of the festival were the presentation by Eyes on Owls.  The wife-husband team of Marcia and Mark Wilson brought their menagerie of live owls for display and discussion.  It was a very interactive program and many audience members came up to practice their owl calls.

The video below shows the Wilsons at work in a program very similar to what we saw today.  My owl photos follow:

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Related post:

• Photopost: Drumlin Farm
• Photopost: Boston Nature Center
• An Owl in the Arboretum

Rules for Moving in Massachusetts

After helping a friend move from Waltham to Arlington yesterday, it occurred to me that there are certain things that happen every time somebody moves around here.

1. The person moving provides a Box O’ Joe and Munchkins for the people helping out.
2. The weather will be hot and humid (don’t try to outsmart this rule by trying to move in the winter as you will encounter ice and snow instead).
3. At one point a large piece of furniture will end up stuck in a doorway or stairwell.  Neither brilliant logistical analysis nor brute force will make the furniture budge.
4. The furniture will eventually become unstuck by someone trying a mind-numbingly simple movement on a whim.
5. One of the helpers will have incredible spatial relations skills the s/he will use to pack boxes into the “Mom’s attic” of the moving van like a game of Tetris.
6. Someone will get hurt
7. Unloading will go ten times faster than loading.
8. When the truck is unloaded the person moving will provide pizza and beer.