Stewart Family Eye Care

05/01/2026

This is the heart of a Blue whale. Weighing in excess of 1,300 lbs (±600 kg), it is the size of a small car. The gigantic heart beats 8-10 times per minute, and each heartbeat can be heard from over 2 miles (3.2 km) away.

More details/photos: https://hja.li/fodr

Credit: Royal Ontario Museum

04/30/2026

Blog Update: A Super Common Cause for Your Itchy Eyes

Ocular allergies are among the most common eye conditions to hit people of all ages.Though typically worse in the seasons of Spring and Summer, some people suffer with allergies all year. This is especially true for people who have allergies to...

04/30/2026

I am not a thief. I am not aggressive. And the metallic scream from your oak tree is a warning, not an attack.

I'm a Blue Jay. That flash of cobalt and white through the branches, the one your neighbors call bossy, the one everyone blames for driving smaller birds away from the feeder.

Most of what you've been told about me is wrong. I am not a songbird bully — the smaller birds arrive and leave on their own schedule, and I often share the feeder without incident. The scream you hear is mimicry. I imitate Red-shouldered Hawks and Red-tailed Hawks with startling accuracy, often to warn other jays that a real hawk is nearby. Sometimes I use it to clear a feeder for a few seconds. Usually I'm telling the truth.

I am also the reason oak trees moved north after the last ice age. I cache thousands of acorns every autumn, one at a time, pushed into soil across a territory that can stretch over a mile. I forget enough of them that forests follow me. A single jay can plant 4,500 acorns in a single fall.

I recognize individual human faces. I remember who refills the feeder and who chases me off the porch. I hold the grudge for years.

🌿 The next time I show up in your yard:
- The hawk scream is usually a real warning — the other birds are listening
- The acorns I bury in your lawn are how oak forests walk
- I return to the same yards for generations, and I remember who fed me

I am loud. I am also planting your woods. 🐦

04/29/2026

I am not being rude. I am not confused. And the song at 3am is not random.

I'm a Northern Mockingbird. That gray bird on your fence post, the one with the long tail and the loud opinions, the one singing at midnight like the rules don't apply.

The rules don't apply. I can learn over 200 different songs in a lifetime — other birds, frogs, car alarms, squeaky gates. I stitch them together into sequences, each phrase repeated two or three times, on loop. The male who sings at night is unpaired. He's advertising to every female within earshot.

During the day I hunt. Beetles, grasshoppers, ants, caterpillars, spiders. Half my spring diet is the insects chewing holes in your tomato leaves. I flash the white patches on my wings to startle them out of cover, then I take them.

The territorial swoop at your cat, your mailman, your large dog — I'm defending the nest. It's not personal. It's the species that survived by treating every threat like the last one.

🌿 The next time I show up in your yard:
- The wing flash while walking is a hunting tactic, not decoration
- I'll return to the same territory year after year — often the same shrub
- Half the spring diet is garden pests, taken before they multiply

I sing at night. I hunt by day. 🐦

04/29/2026

04/29/2026

Your birdbath has smooth ceramic sides and deep water. Birds love it. Everything smaller than a robin can't get out of it.

Bees land on the water to drink and can't climb the glazed edge. Chipmunks that slip in can't grip the surface. Butterflies, beetles, and tree frogs that misjudge the rim slide in and have no way to escape.

The problem isn't the water. It's the texture. Smooth wet ceramic creates a surface tension seal that tiny legs can't break. The difference between drowning and escaping is whether there's something rough to grip.

The fix takes thirty seconds.

🌿 The water ramp:

Place a rough flat stone in the birdbath so it breaks the surface — half submerged, half above water. Lava rock is ideal because even wet insect legs can grip the texture

Or lean a rough stick or a piece of broken terra cotta from the rim down into the water at a shallow angle — this gives anything trapped a ramp to climb

For deeper baths, stack two or three stones to create a graduated slope from the bottom to the rim

Scrub the stone weekly — algae makes it slippery and defeats the purpose

Butterflies and bees drink safely and stay longer. Tree frogs use the ramp as a basking spot. Small birds like warblers and kinglets that avoid deep water will wade on the shallow stone instead.

Same birdbath. One rock. Completely different outcome for everything that visits it 🌿

04/26/2026

The lawn outside your window has a shift change at four in the morning.

You don't see it. You are asleep. But most mornings for the past week and through the next six months, a scheduled handover takes place in the grass twenty feet from your bedroom.

The night crew is clocking out. The day crew is clocking in.

🦇 Night crew, still active until about four fifteen.

A big brown bat is making her final loops over the yard, eating moths and beetles attracted to the porch light. She has been hunting for seven hours. Her stomach is full. She will return to her roost under the eave within the next half hour.

A red fox pair is finishing a hunt at the edge of the property. They caught a meadow vole at three eleven. They will carry it back to the den for the kits.

A raccoon is walking along the top of the fence, heading home. She has been in your trash can, the neighbor's compost, and the drainage ditch behind the yard. She is the last mammal moving.

🐸 A gray tree frog has stopped calling from your oak. He will descend and tuck himself into bark by four thirty.

A great horned owl is carrying a cottontail rabbit back to her nest. She caught it at four oh four. Her chicks will eat in about twelve minutes.

☀️ Day crew, starting at four fifteen.

A cardinal is giving his first song from a perch on the fence, pre-dawn. The cardinal is usually first — something in his biology pushes him to sing before the sky is even lit.

A mourning dove is cooing from the neighbor's gutter. The robin is not yet up.

By four thirty, a song sparrow is singing. By four forty-five, a robin is on the lawn. By five o'clock, the warblers are calling from the canopy. By five fifteen, every diurnal songbird in your yard is awake.

🐦 The fox pair is gone. The bats are asleep. The owl is on her nest. The day belongs to the birds.

🌿 The shift change happens five hundred feet from you, most mornings.

You have probably missed it. You could see it once. You probably won't see it twice.

Set an alarm for three forty-five. Sit outside with a blanket. Do not use a phone screen. Listen.

You will witness something happening in your own backyard that has been going on at the same time, in the same sequence, for longer than humans have been in North America.