Survey Day

A week ago, four days before the big snow storm, we had a surveyor and his helper come to the property to survey the hoped-for building site and the area surrounding it. The final product will be a contour map of Greene View Springs with more detail in the area we walked. The rest of the property will also be shown using data from aerial photos.

The most important tool of a surveyor is called a "total station," named as such because it incorporates both a distance meter for measuring distances and a "theodolite" for measuring angles. Here Andy has set up his station on the hill north of the pond looking back toward our hoped for home site.

 

It sends a beam of infrared light toward a prism, shown here supported by an extendable pole held by the surveyor, Eric. The light reflects off the prism directly back to the total station, and, by measuring the time it takes to return, the station calculates the distance, direction and vertical angle between the two.

 

The information from the total station is recorded in a data collector for later downloading into a computer in the office.

Eric also directed me as we tried to get "shots" at representative spots on the property. I'm not running in the first picture; I'm tripping over one of our %&#$! grape vines! The second picture shows the prism a little better. The last picture shows just a few of the many large trees we marked so they would be shot and shown on the topographic map, our final product.

   

And while we were having fun thrashing through the woods, Sandy was working so hard she didn't need her jacket, cutting rose bushes I had cut off earlier in the week into small pieces so they can be more easily removed when the weather allows.



Behind that mass of brush is the mouth of our small spring. If the house will fit close enough we'll be able to see the spring from the house's west side.

Birds in the snow

OK, here's the truth. Earlier this year I lost my camera. I think I owned up to that a month or so ago. (I found it in the pocket of a coat I hadn't worn since spring a few weeks after my sister bought me another one as a gift.)

In December I lost the cable used to download pictures from the new camera. I found it today, pretty much where it was supposed to be. (Too darn many pockets in the carrier I use for the laptop and its accessories.)

I've been taking pictures all along, though, so I'll post many of them now, not necessarily in the order they have been taken.

I'll start with some of the birds that are emptying ours feeders a few times a day.

	One can see all of our feeders from the apartment windows. This shows three of them at the first floor level. The thistle feeder is not shown, but it is rarely used by the goldfinches when sunflower seed is available. There are at least 20 shown here but we have counted between forty and fifty at times.
	We usually have two suet feeders hanging at the upstairs windows. Here's a little Carolina wren that has been visiting occasionally.
	This red bellied woodpecker is a new visitor. He seems the least skittish of our moving near the window.
	And finally, a male downy woodpecker. There are also a female downy and a male and a female hairy woodpecker who are coming each day. One can really tell the downy from the hairy by their sizes after seeing them both on the same nearby feeder.

NOTE: Apparently it's not as easy as I said. Sandy tells me the last picture is the hairy woodpecker, not the downy.