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Good grief, this was the title of an email I got from iVillage today. I don’t even know why I get these emails, I rarely look at the contents. But how do you read a sentence like that?

What kind of mom are you? (You know, are you a disciplinarian? are you the fun mom? etc, and probably the true intention of the sentence)

or

What kind of mom are you? (You know, ACCUSATORY! This might as well say, What kind of monster are you?!)

Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m feeling touchy about my “maternal competence” since we let my dairy-sensitive daughter eat pine nuts… and then watched her suffer for 2 days with hives.

What I want to know is, what does it matter what kind of mom you are? Why do we need labels? And why does iVillage care?

The only thing good about this email was that it reminded me to unsubscribe to future emails.

As I was getting ready to leave for class Friday night, I saw a movement in the backyard that looked unusual. I peered out the window and saw this:

S/he flew to the wire, and we took several pictures of him/her there:

I couldn’t tell what it was by looking at The Sibley’s, so I asked some online bird and urban nature communities. The verdict was:
Cooper’s Hawk, unless it was a Sharp-shinned Hawk (they are easily confused). I have a lot of pictures of this guy’s tail, and I’m pretty sure it was a Cooper’s Hawk.

Living in Philadelphia, you would think you would see pigeons and rats before you’d see a cooper’s hawk in your backyard. But that is the beauty of our neighborhood. We live very close to the Wissahickon and Fairmount Park, and even though we live in the middle of a long string of row homes, and have a postage-stamp sized backyard ourselves, we get to gaze out upon the backyard of the house behind us. The yard’s lot would normally have at least 4 row homes on it, but instead, there is a grove of evergreens.

For my first grad class in 2006, I created a powerpoint guide to enjoying nature in the city. I just uploaded it to my website, if you are interested: Exploring Nature in the City: A Guide to Finding Natural Resources for Philadelphians

The cooper’s hawk sighting is a new addition to the list of wildlife we have seen in our backyard. Here are a few we have caught on film:

A Deer! To be truthful, that is not OUR yard– the tree in the foreground is our boundary.
Here is the deer with our cat, Boo:

A Pheasant! When was the last time you saw a pheasant wandering around the city? I suspected this guy was a pet, but who knows!

This guy thinks he’s a bird, huh?

And a Downy Woodpecker… taken through glass/screen with digital zoom, sorry for the quality.

We’ve also seen other hawks (probably red-tails), and opossums.
We regularly have goldfinches, house finches, chickadees, mourning doves, juncos, sparrows, cardinals and squirrels at our bird feeders. A few grackles showed up last week– they are very cool looking, but I don’t like to seem them on my feeder– they are much too big and awkward. When our mulberry tree has berries in May, we will have Cedar Waxwings.

What wildlife have you seen in your backyard?