Book Report and Birds

Precious little stitching has been done around here of late but I have been managing to do some reading.

I've been reading on  Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain, for a little while.  The fact that it's taking me so long to get through it kind of implies that it's not a very good book, but that's not the case at all.  It's excellent and extremely interesting but parts of it are depressing and kind of difficult to read.  Being that it's a true story about a young woman's experiences during World War I, I didn't expect it to be full of fun and frivolity, but it's a somber read as she describes her feelings when her brother, her sweetheart, and her friends head into the slaughter that was Western Europe between 1914 and 1918, and as she joins up as a volunteer nurse.  Not light reading by any means, but if you're interested in reading about World War I, I'd highly recommend adding this to your list.

I pulled out some books to move to the top of my to-be-read pile for this spring and summer.  I don't know how many of them I'll actually get to .



The one on the bottom is a new biography of Queen Elizabeth II.  I'm not big on books about the royal family as a rule, but I do like to read about the Queen.  I enjoy Susan Wittig Albert's mysteries, as well as those by Laurie R. King.  Foucoult's Pendulum has been on my stack for a while, so this may be the summer to finally get it read!  I'll see how I do with these.

I spent the weekend at the house in West Virginia.  My guy says this little fellow is a regular visitor to our deck.  He was there yesterday morning, so today when he showed up I ran for the camera and managed to get a couple of shots of him.

He sat there in the rain with his feathers all fluffed up for three or four minutes and let me take a couple of pictures through the slider.  I didn't dare try to open the door for fear he'd take off.  He hung around until some other robins showed up and then he joined them to do ...well, to do robin things, I guess.

This next picture is of something that's a bit of a puzzlement.  Apparently it's a bird's nest.

It's on the downspout on the front of the house; I took the picture through the front window, so you may have to click on it to get a good look at it. It looks like it's made of chunks of mud, but it's just perfectly constructed.  We think it's a bird's nest, but have no idea what kind of bird.  Any birders out there who may have an answer?

That's it for this Sunday evening.  We've been working overtime at work -- mandatory OT last week and maybe more this week until we get caught up -- so it hasn't left much time for stitching.  I'm hoping that this week will be better, even with mandatory OT.  Hoping everyone has a great week -- happy stitching!