Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

Often when I sit at my workspace I look out the window and see several big black ravens (each about 24-25” long) swooping between the tall pine trees.   I feel like I’m in the middle of a sci-fi movie by Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock! Sometimes the Ravens huddle in trees or on the ground.   Other times they will be alone or with their mate.  Today there were 15 of them (an unkindness of Ravens) foraging at the corner where our street intersects another.     Evenings bring the ‘raven patrol’ where they fly and land in their favorite trees.   Quite a site!   Once in a while, one will come to the feeder and grab a peanut! They communicate with each other using an amazing variety of calls that range from a low gurgling croak to harsh grating sounds and shrill alarm calls that can be heard a mile away.  The Common Raven has a very thick bill, shaggy throat and a wedge-shaped tail.   This member of the crow family is incredibly aerobatic, tumbling and rolling, in mid air.   Many scienti

Arizona has many beautiful parks and this one is found near Camp Verde AZ.   It is one of 380 parks in the National Park System.   Tuzigoot is an Apache word for crooked water.   This prehistoric community was built between 1125 and 1400 and sits on the summit of a long ridge 120 feet above the Verde Valley.   In some places the original buildings were 2 stories high and there were 77 ground floor rooms.   There were about 50 people settling here in the 1100’s and that apparently doubled in the 1200’s.   The Southern Sinagua people lived by farming corn, beans, squash and cotton using canal irrigation.   We don’t really know why the people left their homes – perhaps overpopulation, disease, conflicts or weather pattern changes.     What we do know is that they were fine artisans and made stone tools – knives, axes, and hammers.    Their pottery was generally undecorated and often coated with a red or black color that was highly polished.   They made bone awls and needles, woven cotto

Often on a Sunday Peter and I go birding.   Today we spotted a Kestrel sitting on a telephone wire.     .   Kestrels are the smallest falcon and they have very sharp eyesight.   We watched this bird sit quietly looking on the ground for food.   All of a sudden he swooped to the ground and then flew to the top of a telephone pole with an insect.   He stayed there and ate his snack   – probably a grasshopper.   I enjoyed his feather patterns of peach, reds, gray, brown, and yellow mixed with beige.   The Kestrel is the most colorful of all raptors.   He has a pair of vertical black stripes on each side of his face often called a moustache or sideburns.   He is most often seen in deserts and grasslands that extend to alpine meadows I was reminded of the Kestrel we saw in the desert near Picacho Peak AZ.   We noticed a bird making several trips to one of the trunks of a dead palm tree.   Kestrels use other bird’s nests for their homes and this Kestrel probably had babies in the nest.   Qui