Pre-Ramble:  In an effort to keep the baby-birds-in-nest habitat near the front door of our house as tranquil as possible, I’ve taken to re-routing all nonessential traffic to one of our alternate entrance/exit sites — much to the consternation of my girls, (who are perfectly happy to run around the neighborhood with their peeps for hours on end, but ask them to take ten extra steps to the back door and their tail-feathers get all bent out of joint.)

Also, to minimize disruption, I’ve cut back on the number of times I check on the nest to just 50 times a day. Still, each time I think I’m sneaking up on the foyer window as my stealthiest self, I’ll focus in on the nest only to find Mother Chipping Sparrow looking directly at me with her death glare, all, “Seriously? … You’re looking out here again?” 

In spite of the suboptimal accommodations, the Chiplets seem to be doing just great. Mom and Dad have been fetching take-out – bugs mainly — and all four chicks are looking discernibly fuzzier.

The other big buzz today centers on the 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee which moves into the nationally televised semifinals in Washington D.C.  If you haven’t seen the award-winning film, Spellbound, you have no idea just how … well, spellbinding, the National Spelling Bee can be.

… one of the highest-rated specials on ESPN (a sports channel), … a nail-biting face-off among hundreds of teens who train as rigorously as any Olympic athlete on their heroic quest for glory.

A few fun facts about the bee:

• The National Spelling Bee was begun in 1925 where nine students participated in the event
• The program, which hosts a record 293 spellers, is open to students attending public, private, parochial, charter and home schools
• Participants range in age from 9 to 15 years of age; most of the kids are either 13 or 14 years old
• English is not the first language of 33 of this year’s spellers, and 117 of them speak languages other than English
• According to the Bee’s official website, the spellers’ favorite words include Weissnichtwo and humuhumunukunukuapuaa (my spell check just shorted out)
• Most bees are fuzzy and carry an electrostatic charge which aids in the adherence of pollen. (You didn’t think I would get through this post without some stupid reference to honey bees, did you?) 

The Take-Away: I think we can all agree that we are more than thankful that we are not in front of a microphone trying to sound out the word “ameliorate” …   And just to drive that point home, here is a spelling tip from the official spelling bee primer:

One of the hardest tings to remember about werds from Latin is weather an internal consonant (like rr in interrupt) is doubled. To reinforce your memery of the correct spelling, try to remmember related werds all together (like interrupt along wit interrupshun or necessary along with necesscity).

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