Outfront Color -- No Birds . . .

What does it mean that we have observed NO birds in our yard this year. Every year prior to this we have had so many birds that it seemed that we were making special trips for bird seed and hummingbird liquid.

This year the seed level has not decreased in the feeder nor has the liquid gone down one bit. We have seen some crow type birds a couple of times picking at things in the street but none of the usual birds like Jays or Sparrows or Robins. What is going on?

The above collage shows some of the color in the front yard with some appropriate bee action, not too much but some. The thought crossed my mind to maybe add some bee hives out back for fun -- until the report from yesterday's news about killer bees taking over hobby hives . . .

Speaking of numbers and busy-as-bees, the election candidates continue
their activities like crazy.

California, for the first time in many elections may play a role in the Primary. We just sent our mail-in ballots for the June 7th voting day here in our state.

All the news-persons are commenting on how different this election has been so-far -- it may get even more-so in the General Election.

What surprised us on the ballots here were the amazing number of people listed that we have no idea of "who they were" . . . for Presidential candidates.  Then, not to be outdone there were ten times that many of "who are they" folks running for the Senate . . .


For me, I try to escape the issues of the day by doing genealogical searching and it usually starts with working on my iPad using the mobile app for Ancestry.com. I eventually get to the desk-top app and continue my searching -- below is an example of how Ancestry displays part of our tree:

This is just a tiny snippet of the tree which as of this morning had 12,983 folks in it. I guess it would take quite a bit to display that. But if any of you would like to view this tree in Ancestry.com please let me know and I'll send you an "invite".

This is how Family Tree Maker displays the snippet of the tree.

And, since I now synchronize the two trees through that feature, the FTM tree at this moment has 12,938 folks in it as well.

I can work on the iPad, and the Ancestry.com website and in Family Tree Maker and have the trees be synchronized.

That is a big time-saver, though there is some lag time when the sync process is taking place.

One of the really great features is that in both Ancestry and in Family Tree Maker, hints are offered and I can't keep up with the number of them.

I also use RootsMagic and they offer hints as well -- that is nice that while I'm working on something else, these programs are digging around for clues and documents substantiating the folks in the tree.

Lastly, is a picture of how my own website, www.danhiles.com displays some of the tree.

The big difference here is that there is no syncing up with this tree, though I could utilize a gedcom created from FTM and upload it to the site.

On this site there are just under 5,000 folks in the tree AND it does not offer hints as it does not search like the other sites do.

But there are so many other benefits to having your own site -- it all takes greenback $'s  time . . .

Earl, from "Pickles" has a good way of illustrating the dilemma of the numbers in the tree:

And so it goes. Coming up this week is the return of another favorite genealogy TV program:

It returns on Tuesday night on your local PBS stations. It is loosely a format like "Antiques Roadshow" but the preparations are done in advance and are very thorough and often very revealing.

That is bit of our week, it is Sunday and that means another roast for dinner, this time a beef pot roast along with rice and broccoli.  See you all "in a few"!