Looks Familiar

I saw a link today for an article about work starting on the 17th Street bridge. I clicked on it because I had worked on coming up with plans for the repair. When I got to the article, there is an embedded video and the picture shows a finger pointing to the plans. I drew that!

Here’s the article.

The caption for one of the pictures says:

Georgia Department of Transportation engineers have drawn up plans to reinstall decorative fencing on the 17th Street bridge using what they say is a more secure method involving bolts secured by nuts and steel plating. Previously, the structure was attached by a fast-set epoxy.

But it wasn’t “engineers” plural, it was just me! Actually the vast majority of the plans were drawn by our consultant under the original contract for the 17th Street bridge, and all I did was modify those drawings.

Backyard Oasis

Last week I looked out the back window of my house and saw a baby robin hopping around back there. I have learned that this is normal and they aren’t supposed to be in the nest, so the best thing is to leave them alone. The mom will keep feeding them while they are on the ground until they can fly and feed themselves. It hadn’t rained in a while and I thought maybe that bird could use some water. I put a cookie sheet with edges on it on the back patio and poured some water into it so that there was a shallow source of water. I would look out there but didn’t see the bird drinking. I thought maybe that the bottom of the pan would be too slick and found a pan for a paint roller that had a little traction to it and had varying depth. But it was bright orange plastic and the bird didn’t go near it either. The next day it was supposed to be even hotter and would reach an all-time record of 106 degrees. I told Carol about what I was doing and she said I should put out a sprinkler because birds love sprinklers.

I put my old-fashioned harp sprinkler back there and set the water so that it was only going up maybe a couple of feet in the air (it wouldn’t even move back and forth). When I went back inside I noticed there was a bird already eying the sprinkler and ruffling his feathers like he was imagining taking a bath. Within a half hour a juvenile robin came hopping along. He could fly, just not all that well. He and his mother came along and would drink water off of the wet grass. It is probably the same one I had seen on my patio. Then a juvenile mockingbird and its mother stopped by. The sprinkler was right next to a fig tree in the back yard and the mockingbirds seemed to hang out there. They are territorial and I think they were trying to intimidate the robins away, but the robins are little bigger and there was enough water for everyone.

Continue reading “Backyard Oasis”