While walking on the nature trails last week I could hear the unmistakable call of the male Red-winged Blackbirds. They migrate south of Chicago for the winter but return every spring.
The males were down in the marshy grass making a lot of noise and showing off their bright red and yellow shoulder patches which presumably makes them desirable to the females.
The females were hanging out in the trees watching them. Their coloring is very different from the males. Their brown feathers blend in with the colors of the wetlands where they nest. Soon they will make a decision, choose a mate and the nest construction will begin.
Every year I go back a few months later with my camera hoping to get a photo of the nestlings. I have never been able to get close enough, even with my long lens. The blackbirds are fiercely protective and will first try to distract by calling from a nearby tree, when that doesn’t work the male swoops down at my head and at that point I get the hint and move on. I always wear a big hat when I am trying to photograph nesting birds!
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Bloggiesta begins today and runs through Sunday, April 1st.
For those who have a blog, this is a three-day blogging party devoted to working on perfecting your blog and connecting with others bloggers doing the same thing. If you aren’t already familiar with Bloggiesta, hop over to It’s All About Books and There’s a Book, our hosts for the fiesta.
I have some ambitious plans for the weekend but realistically don’t think I’ll get to all of them. I also want to use this weekend to visit other blogs for tips and ideas to make my site better and use this list for a basis for future improvements.
Artistic Changes:
• Create a cover image for my Facebook page timeline Done
Self-hosting Project:
• Research templates and how to move my old content to WordPress.org Done
• Back up the blog. Done
Work on the blog:
• Write a post on my new audiobook rating category for ‘Listenability’ Not Done
• Participate in several Mini Challenges:
Pinterest Done
Windows Live Writer Done
Labels/tags mini-challenge Ongoing
Get Noticed by Search Engines Done
Other:
• Join in a Twitter party (I need to be a better twitterer) Done
• Housekeeping: Clean up email and google reader Not Done
Are you planning any changes?
There’s still time to join in. Just add your kick-off post to the linky.
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Divergent
by Veronica Roth
Narrated by Emma Galvin
Genre: YA, Dystopia, Science Fiction
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publish Date: May 3, 2011
Format: Audio, 11 hours | 11 minutes
Listenability: Easy
Rating: 4 of 5
Beatrice Prior lives in a dystopian version of what was once Chicago. Now society is divided into factions with members of each group representing a virtue: Candor (honest), Abnegation (selfless), Dauntless (brave), Amity (peaceful), and Erudite (intelligent).
At age 16 each individual will choose which of the factions they wish to join. After testing and evaluation their choice is announced at a ceremony. Most teenagers stay with their families in the faction they are born into. Some will switch factions and sever ties with their family and friends, as they will be viewed as traitors. But for a few of the teens the test results are inconclusive, it is not clear to which faction they belong, they are Divergent. Beatrice is now 16 and she has a difficult decision to make for her test scores are inconclusive, making her Divergent.
Needing another book for the Magical March Challenge and fresh out of the dystopian world of The Hunger Games, I picked up the audio of Divergent as my next read. After seeing more than a few great reviews of this book my expectations may have been too high.
Did I like the book? Yes, yes, I did! I enjoyed the plot, the adventure, the characters and the writing. The was even an unexpected but tender romance. I listened to it over the course of only three days. At eleven hours long, I can safely say it was a compelling story.
What I didn’t like is what I felt was missing. While the story was great, the world building left a little to be desired. There was an incompleteness for me. The novel is set in Chicago, and there are some Chicago references, but it’s never clear how large an area the factions cover or what happened to the rest of the former North American continent. Is Chicago the only city left? What made the survivors think that forming factions would be a solution? And a solution to exactly what? I wanted more background, but that’s probably because I’ve read a lot of science fiction and have come to expect answers or at least hints. The world itself is always a big part of the story for me.
The audio was very nicely performed by Emma Galvin. Her narration was well-paced through the many action scenes as she seamlessly switched from Tris to the secondary characters, and from male to female. Overall, a very easy to listen to audio production.
Even though I wasn’t thrilled with the lack of world building, it won’t stop me from recommending the book. The story itself was fun and I will be reading the next book in the series, Insurgent.
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Source: Public library
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Almost Wordless: A pair of Mallards out for a swim in the nature park near my home in suburban Chicago.
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More Wordless Wednesday.
Lucky Stiff
by Deborah Coonts
Genre: Mystery, Romance
Publisher: Forge Books
Publish Date: February, 2011
Format: Paperback | 464 pages
Rating: 3 of 5
Lucky O’Toole, head of Customer Relations at The Babylon in Las Vegas, returns, along with the zany cast of characters introduced in Wanna Get Lucky, for another fun-filled adventure in book two of this series.
The story starts out with a bang as Lucky has to deal with an overturned truck blocking the strip and the entrance to The Babylon. To complicate matters, the truck was carrying a load of bees for the upcoming entomologist convention. A million honeybees have escaped and are now buzzing around the hotel grounds.
If the bees aren’t bad enough, there is more to ruin Lucky’s week. The next day Numbers Neidermeyer, a shady bookie, is found dead in the shark tank and Jeremy Whitlock, local private investigator, is the chief suspect as he was seen arguing with her the day before. Then Lucky discovers that her mother, Mona, who runs a brothel, is auctioning off a young woman’s virginity. In the hectic, non-stop world of the Babylon, this is just the beginning. Things are about to get a lot more chaotic for Lucky.
Fast-paced and fun, I enjoyed most of Lucky Stiff. There was just a bit too much romance for me, but in fairness, I’m not much of a romance reader. Lucky’s strong, independent nature so well-established in the first book, now takes a backseat to her swooning over her boyfriend, Teddie, the ex-female impersonator who is now trying to establish a music career. I liked their relationship better in the first book.
The story ended on a fun note and I am looking forward to finding out what happens in the next book, So Damn Lucky. Although this is book two of the Lucky O’Toole series, it can easily be read and enjoyed as a stand alone. The author does a nice job of filling in details about the characters and their relationships. If you are looking for an entertaining, light read, this would be a good choice.
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Source: Review copy provided by FSB.
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The March host is Anna of Diary of an Eccentric.
From Penguin Audio for review:
Blue Monday
by Nicci French
Monday, the lowest point of the week. A day of dark impulses. A day to snatch a child from the streets . . .
The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when a picture of his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein is left troubled: one of her patients has been relating dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew.
From LibraryThing for review:
A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends
by Stacy Bierlein
Quirks of fate highlight this debut short story collection whose characters are women of dazzling ironies and introspections, always in motion and trusting in love—even when it remains out of reach. From the mysterious island in the Atlantic to the crowded highways of Los Angeles and from the Charles Bridge in Prague to the temples of Luxor and the most remote regions of the Myanmar peninsula, the worlds invented here are inspiring and unique, original in the manner through which the physical landscape never fails to inform the emotional one.
How was your week?
March 20th was World Sparrow Day. The house sparrow, one of the most common birds in the world, is now in decline, possibly due to the degradation of the environment. I had read about this last year, but I still see plenty of sparrows in Chicago. However, that is not the case in other parts of the world.
So today I will spotlight the house sparrow. There were a lot of them on Navy Pier last week. While I was taking photos of the Ring-billed Gull this little female sparrow landed on the chain fence very close to me as if to say ‘what about me, take my photo too’.
The House Sparrow is one of the first birds many of us learn to identify. They are cheerful little birds and are often seen hopping around the city streets, backyards and parks, chirping away. They don’t mind people and are called “house” sparrow because they will nest on homes and public buildings.
House Sparrows aren’t related to other North American sparrows. They are chunkier, fuller in the chest, with a larger, rounded head, shorter tail, and stouter bill. They are native to Britain and were introduced into Brooklyn, New York, in 1851. By 1900 they had spread to the Rocky Mountains. 
They are clever, adaptable little birds and will often out-compete native North American species for nesting sites which does not endear them to some birders.
The male can be distinguished from the female most prominently by the black bib on his throat and the gray cap on his head. They don’t change plumage during breeding season and stay the same brown colors.
House Sparrows in flocks have a pecking order. Males with larger patches of black on their throats tend to be older and dominant over males with less black.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
Under My Apple Tree 