Birdland

Here’s one for your birding life list!

On Dec. 30 my friends David and Connie Carter reported seeing a very rare albino pileated woodpecker near their home in Pocopson. 

Connie said: "The typical pileated woodpecker is a remarkable 16 – 19 inches high, has black and white feathers, and is the only woodpecker with a flaming red crest. In flight their large wings flash black and white." 

She said the albino pileated they saw on several occasions "is almost pure white, retaining the flaming red crest on the top of its head.  This is a different bird from the “extinct” Ivory-billed woodpecker found in the south."

"One birder from the West Chester Bird Club said he sat at Shaw’s bridge last year after one was seen last January for over 4 hours – excluding the time he went for coffee - and never saw it."

Connie was kind enough to share two photos of this remarkable bird.

Competition

For the past few years the Tally-ho family has played a post-Christmas dinner game called Greedy Santa (I've also heard it called Yankee Trader). Everybody buys and wraps five small inexpensive gifts; I stopped off at Staples and came home with packages of binder clips, rubber bands and sticky notes. All the gifts are piled into the center of the table, and the hostess sets the timer for an hour. The players go around the table rolling a pair of dice. When you get doubles, you get to take a present from the center, and you get to roll again. If you get snake eyes, you get two presents! (The presents stay wrapped until the end of the game.)
When all the presents have been taken, then the fun starts and people's cut-throat natures emerge. You continue rolling the dice, but you get to take presents from each other! A present with a particularly intriguing wrapping will get taken frequently. My sister-in-law kept taking one from me because it was wrapped in a tin she liked; of course, when I rolled doubles, I would immediately take it back from her.
A senior family member attempted to protect his stash of presents by hiding them on the floor; he was quickly found out and denounced and his wealth was systematically redistributed.
My sis-in-law adds a wrinkle to the traditional rules by requiring players who roll doubles to don a silly alligator hat.
At the end of the hour the presents are unwrapped. The large package that attracted such attention was a four-pack of toilet paper. I went home with two packs of (my own) binder clips, a bag of candy, a tin of cookies, a windshield broom and a tablet for writing grocery lists.

Suet

When I woke this morning there was a coating of snow on the ground, which reminded me that it's time to start putting out suet for the birds. I make my own; it's easy and fun, although in the end it's probably less expensive to just buy the pre-made squares.
Here's my recipe: Melt 1 cup of peanut butter and 1 cup of lard. Mix in 2 cups of quick oatmeal, 2 cups of cornmeal, 1 cup of flour and 1/3 cup of sugar. Pour it into whatever small individual plastic containers you have (I just re-use old suet containers) and freeze. It's easy to pop the suet cakes out of their containers and hang them on a tree; I have a little cage for the purpose.
These seem to be a special favorite of  woodpeckers, flickers and nuthatches.

Fail

I heard a funny story at a most amusing Boxing Day brunch in Kennett Square. It seems some police officers had arrested a not-too-bright criminal and brought him into the station for questioning. They lifted up the lid of the photocopier, had him put his hand on the glass plate and told him the machine would light up every time he told a falsehood.
He promptly gave a full confession.

Turning of the table

This morning I was doing a postmortem review of the holiday season with a Unionville socialite, and we discussed the perennial plight of getting cornered by a frightful and garrulous bore at a party. How to escape? Of course, at a cocktail party you can look over the bore's shoulder with sudden interest and remark that a fresh plate of hors d'oeuvres is just that instant being brought in and you MUST have one. Or you can resort to the hoary empty glass ploy, saying you are parched and need a refill. 
But what about when the person sitting next to you at dinner is the relentless bore? This is not a new problem, and a few generations ago they even had an accepted way to solve it: it was called "turning the table."
According to Emily Post's 1929 etiquette book, the hostess "turns from the gentleman (on her left probably) with whom she has been talking through the soup and the fish course, to the one on her right. As she turns, the lady to whom the `right' gentleman has been talking turns to the gentleman further on, and in a moment everyone at table is talking to a new neighbor."

Directions

All of us Tally-hos love maps and are precise about directions -- a good thing, given that two family members are pilots. So perhaps it's not surprising that the only family dispute over Christmas was a geographical one: whether the new Bancroft Elementary School on Bancroft Road is north or south of the Route 1 bypass.
"North," said I. "It's right near New Bolton."
"South," disagreed my brother, "and it's nowhere near New Bolton! It's near the New Garden airport."
After a few increasingly heated exchanges my mother brought out her Chester County atlas and proved us both sort of right.
Yes, the school is south of the Route 1 bypass (what was I thinking? It's right at Pemberton Road!), but it's also near the New Bolton Center. My brother explained when he thinks of New Bolton he thinks of the entrance off Route 926 and didn't realize it stretches all the way down to Line Road. And as far as being near the airport, he was thinking as the crow, or a pilot, would approach the landing strip. 

Thinking outside the door

A local woman named K. M. Walton has written a contemporary young-adult novel called "Cracked" and has a creative way to promote it: a big sticker on her car door. I spotted it at the food store a few weeks ago and just got around to visiting her website.
"Cracked," which was released Jan. 3, is about a high-school boy who is the victim of bullying. Chester County Book & Music Company in the West Goshen Shopping Center is having a launch party for the book on Saturday, Jan. 7, at 7 p.m. It's published by Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Schuster.
Although "Cracked" is her first novel, K.M. also wrote "Teaching Numeracy: 9 Critical Habits to Ignite Mathematical Thinking."

Coexisting

The Christmas spirit was everywhere this year. Foolishly, I waited until Friday to go food shopping at the Giant supermarket in New Garden, and of course the parking lot was jammed with people buying provisions for their feasts. But inside the crowded store, nobody seemed to be ornery or in a hurry; indeed, they seemed eager to smile and chat. It was a nice surprise.
The spirit of cooperation and good will continued at the Y. People who aren't used to using the track will often walk on the outside lanes, blocking those who are moving more quickly, or kids will walk two or three together, oblivious to anyone who wants to pass. But these minor irritants just didn't happen on Saturday, the day before Christmas. Parents were actually on hand supervising their kids and ordering them to stay on the inside lanes. Yes, two young women were walking side by side, but they were paying attention to the people around them and automatically changed to single file when a runner approached.
Wow! Wouldn't it be wonderful if such courtesy continued all year?

Great meal at the Greathouse

I've raved before about the Farmhouse, the nice restaurant at Loch Nairn Golf Club, but I'd never been to the Greathouse before, the other restaurant at the club. I'm glad to say that it's every bit as nice. Eight of us gathered there for a family day-before-Christmas luncheon. It was beautifully decorated, the food was wonderful and the service -- not just the delightful waitress, but everyone there -- was perfect: gracious and thoroughly professional.

When he made the reservation, my father arranged to have the bill charged to his credit card, outsmarting the other senior member of the party (who conceded defeat gracefully, not that he had much choice).
The Greathouse overlooks the golf course, which was busy on the sunny and not-too-chilly afternoon. Some of the golfers were even wearing Santa hats.

The Year that Was

Some highlights of 2011, in no particular order:
1. Doe Run Farm creator/Urban Outfitters founder Dick Hayne showed up at a West Marlborough township meeting, even if (a) he didn't speak up and (b) it didn't concern one of his projects. Here's hoping that he attends more meetings rather than just sending his representatives as not-always-accurate mouthpieces.
2. I traded in my German sports car for a Honda mini-van. Lesson learned: Prestige means nothing in Unionville if you don't have decent ground clearance.
3. It was such a wet spring that we had to wait til the end of May to plant the garden, and then the beginning of the school year was postponed because of flooding. We had snow at the end of October, but the week later it was the warmest Pennsylvania Hunt Cup I can remember (the course had to be quickly reconfigured because of the mud).
4. There were a few stink bugs, but nothing like the horrible invasion of 2010.
5. My dear friend Paul turned 50, got married, bought a house in Seattle and won an international wildlife photography award (walruses in northern Norway, a bear catching salmon in Alaska). (I know, Paul visits Unionville maybe once a year, but readers seem to enjoy hearing about his adventures anyway. Go figure.)
6. The sign at Blow Horn was erased, prompting lots of media coverage and a peaceful Saturday-morning "Occupy Blow Horn" motorcade. I hadn't blown my horn at Blow Horn in years, but now I do, every single time.
7. The earth shook. I missed it because I was in my car.
8. Con man Tony Young finally got his comeuppance, and his mansion was razed.
9. The Whip Tavern and the ongoing litany of complaints by some of its Springdell neighbors led to a series of beyond-tedious township zoning hearings. As an audience member I got a lot of knitting done and earned my "Aging Whipster" T-shirt. As a taxpayer and as a Whip fan, I hope that the popular restaurant can figure out a way to solve its parking problems. As a planning commission member pointed out recently, the township has spent more than enough time and money -- taxpayers' money -- on this issue.

10. The Unionville Community Fair had a rodeo! Very exciting.
(Thanks to one of my best pals for helping me come up with this top-ten list over a quiet Boxing Day/End of Holiday dinner at Sovana Bistro!)

Scoop

"Beating Tilda" seems to be a new and popular sport at parties this season, and it's one that I love.
Here's what happens: A neighbor or friend grabs my elbow, marches me over to a quiet corner and breathlessly says in a confiding voice, "Have you heard ..."
If I have heard the news, we swap stories and details and compare the reliability of our sources (they vary widely).
But the REAL fun happens when, perchance, I haven't heard the news.
"YES!" exclaims my informant. One otherwise dignified social leader actually pumped her fist at this point. Another chanted, "I beat Tilda! I beat Tilda!"
Honestly, who needs that national magazine's "Most Interesting People of the Year" when you live in Unionville?