McKenna-Tessman.com Home Page
All good things come to an end and that included our stay in Randall, MN. For the last 2 years, Jerry was only a part-time resident but he misses it all the same.
We are in Memphis now. We live just outside of the city boundaries in an area zoned for agriculture and here that seems to be horse stables. The weather is ridiculously warm for winter. The average high this month has been 42 degrees and the average low 24. Still, for Memphis, this has been a cold month. There was a cold spell from the beginning of the month. A low of 9 was reached. We had a frozen pipe that has been a major disaster. 
Many others were affected. Given the low building standards, there was real discomfort. Pipes burst in houses and the poor couldn't heat their homes.
Shawnne has had her ups and downs with her reading business. She has made a number of good local contacts but the online business that was buzzing in the Summer has died off. She reads at a local boutique, Fortunate Insights, every other Sunday. Jerry lost the job he had for 2 years and we are struggling now. Gray hair is no help.
it is the fact that we can do things together again. We have done more bird watching in 7 months here than we had done in 4 years in Minnesota.We do miss the local MN birds. We don't see Big Red at our suet feeders anymore, but we do hear him on our bird walks. 
We don't see the Hairy Woodpecker that was so skittish at home. It is fun to see birds that we never see in 'winter', we have had a visiting Pine Warbler for a few weeks. You can even see the remnants of the snow in the pictures.
We have had visiting White-crowned Sparrows (a relative of the more familiar White-throated Sparrow that favors us in MN). I've seen more in the last few weeks than I have seen in 20 years of birding.
Most of the birds we see and here are the same we get at home. We hear the Red-shouldered Hawk but mostly we see the Red-tailed Hawk, flying overhead. We also hear the Barred-owl but less in the Winter than in the Summer and Fall.
We have expected to see a lot of Winter ducks, but the numbers are lower than expected. As far as Gulls we are limited to mostly Ring-billed Gulls. Most of our recent birding has been at Shelby Farms, a local park less than 10 miles from home. The distances we need to travel every day and every week are far smaller than we were used in Minnesota.
Memphis is no picnic, but it is easy to traverse. The distances are small. We miss our local birds but given the warm Winter, there is a lot more activity at our feeders.
Our Pages
- Shawnne's Page
- Mr. Blue's Page
- Birds page
- Sierra's Page
- Our Pets
- Archived Pages (most are not linked elsewhere)
- Raven's Fancy
- Wild Wings Rescue a Memphis Bird Rehab Site
- William Anthony Photography
- Fortunate Insights
- Upper Midwest Web Design
