A hummingbird and a goldfinch

There's no question that I spend way too much time sitting in front of the computer. It's bad for my back (which has been giving me trouble lately) and it keeps me indoors on lovely summer days.

But there are occasional rewards. Just behind and to the right of my screen is a window that looks out into the branches of a large Northern Red Cedar (so called; it's really a kind of juniper), which various birds visit from time to time. This morning I saw something with rapidly moving wings that I quickly decided was way too big to be any kind of insect, and therefore had to be a hummingbird -- presumably a ruby-throated, which I'm pretty sure is the only species that ever comes this far north, but it was moving too fast (and was in my line of sight for too short a time) for me to see any distinguishing characteristics. But while I was looking at it, a goldfinch flew in and sat in the tree for a minute or two, giving me a very nice view of it. Neither of these birds is particularly surprising in this region in late July, but we don't, in fact, see either of them very often; so getting both of them at once, while sitting here reading LJ (or whatever I was doing at the time) was a nice treat.

Smilax

Yesterday afternoon, jwg and I were discussing cat names, I think because we had been talking about comic-strip cats and neither of us could remember the name of the cat in Rose Is Rose -- when he asked me if the Latin name for catbriar (with which we have rather more experience than we would like) would be a suitable cat name, but I didn't know it off the top of my head, so I couldn't tell him.

Today I remembered to look in my wildflower guide, and discovered that the genus of greenbriers (as the book spells it) is Smilax, and that the Common greenbrier or Catbrier is Smilax rotundifolia.

I think Smilax would be an excellent name for a cat. (John suggested that it would be especially good for a Cheshire cat, which might be a painting the lily just a bit.)