Category: Nature

BRIEF wildlife encounter

If I remember to get a camera, I’m not in the moment, so this is unrecorded in video.

Small brown bird, dapper despite being distressed, greets me by flying through my hair as I go into the media room. I set everything down (I was carrying NOT ONE BUT TWO ARRAYS OF HOT LIQUID GAWDAM AND IT WASN’T EVEN FIVE AM AND I’D ALREADY ALMOST WIPED OUT IN THE BATHROOM) after congratulating myself at not tossing the entire array at the ceiling with an unhinged scream, and considered my options.

While the bird flew pretty much nonstop across the room, NEVER CHEEPING or making any sound not associated with flying, I turned the light behind the TV off and the room light on. That accomplished, I turned on the light into the games room and turned the room light off. The bird obligingly flew into the lit room, whereupon I closed the door, which was the first point at which I could be guaranteed that the bird would not fly up the stairs, into Jeff’s room, and shit on his head as a conversation starter.

And then THE JAPANESE NOREN that has scowled across our living space from various doorways ever since mOm gave it to John in the mists of time BALKED THE CRITTER. It couldn’t fly under it and instead it perched on it – repeatedly, glaring at me.

Talking and moving slowly and carefully, I remonstrated with the bird. “Sister – the door is that way!”

I opened the back door and folded back the noren so the bird could get through the second-last door, and then, scant inches from the open door, the bird communed with my laundry and went all Disney like it didn’t want to leave.

“You may not nest in my underwear, there is a cat in this house, which you already know, dumdum.”

I advanced on the bird and it flew off into the morning twilight. I closed the door and thought, “I didn’t take pictures. I didn’t try to catch it. I just tried to find the fastest way to get our unintended guest out of the house.”

Now I have told you what happened. I supposed one morning I’ll come downstairs and there’s a raccoon going through the trash and then you’ll really hear me screech.

Kitundu took this picture

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It’s a song sparrow. Gentleman who took this is a Black birder residing in the US – among MANY other things, me calling him a birder is like calling Miles Davis a trumpet player. His website is kitundu.com, and it is full of wonders. Including the video of a phonoharp study. I had no notion there was such a thing as a phonoharp until today. It’s great music. Nature photos galore. A thought-provoking designer too.

Training Buster

I thought of training Miss Margot

to be a circus cat but she wasn’t really ept enough. Buster,

however, has the combination of smarts, suckiness and athleticism which makes for a perfect circus cat. His contemplation time is 5-10 seconds, as opposed to the 18-20 seconds it took Margot to work anything out. (All cats have a response time to inputs, unless you’re dropping something on them or they’re actively in danger. It’s not the only thing I gauge intelligence on but it’s quite indicative.)

This morning, he announced (body language, he’s a quiet critter normally) that he wanted to train. He flopped on the rug (which our mOm made….) and I bounced a couple of treats over to him. It seems weird to start training by offering treats for no harder a task than showing up in the kitchen, but Buster wants to know if I’m going to keep loving him even if he’s feeling lazy, so I bounced the treats. Then he got up and wound himself around my ankles making very quiet mews, so I asked him to jump for treats. And he did, twice. Then he jumped onto the tuffet and stared meaningfully at me. When he sits nicely on the tuffet he gets a reward. I gave him a treat and he dropped it from his paw onto the floor. He just stared at it and I picked it up and put it back in front of him.

He mewed after he finished eating it, and then I put the next treat in the air above the chair next to the tuffet. I said jump, and HE DID, HE JUMPED OVER TO THE OTHER CHAIR, and then jumped up for his treat. Then we did the ‘cool down’ which is him running after treats along the kitchen floor, which can be marvellously entertaining, and then I gave him a pat, told him he was a good boy, and gave him the sign language for ‘all done’, so he knows it’s over (I’m trying to do that all the time now when I’m done with whatever activity, cleaning him or treats or grooming.)

It’s May and it’s just so frikking cold all the time. It’s not my imagination I just checked the data for May 2019. If this is another ‘no sun summer’ I’ma gonna be choked. I think we had the aircon on this time last year at least once.

My current fave pic of Katie

My current fave pic of Keith:

My fave pic of Paul, or among them anyway.

batman go slap

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I literally slept all day yesterday, and then slept the usual amount at night. I’ve either got trypanosomiasis or I’m sickening with something or I’m depressed, and how would I know. I do know that I sleep to get away from my allergies, and the pollen count right now is higher than Cheech and Chong.

 

One of my fave Gorillaz song with a marble machine mashup.

current mood GARBAGE TRUCK BREAKS HYDRAULIC LINE kabooom

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google earth image of Mongolian rivers

alex on Skype alex on walk

Social distancing walk today with Katie and Alex. It was brief, he was very very rangy and needed a nap. He got his little mask.

I’m on skype at live.allegra.sloman. I know the fOlks don’t want it, but it sure would be nice.

 

Felids get coronavirus, so do ferrets, according to a different source.

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Peter Kropotkin.

don’t Pyotr have the most excellent beard tho

Condorama

Picture my amusement when I looked into this face

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and it turns out he’s a 61 year old Andean Condor inspiringly named Andy. Personally I think he should bear the name “Fuckyou Lookingat” since them big yellow eyes hold no sensitivity. And yet his fashion choices, comblined with the shiny glory of his oddly hunky beak, give him an air of relaxed sophistication much at odds with his glassy stare. I’m trying to tell if I find him attractive? I mean Christ Risen, he’s the same age as me.

Didn’t let Paul into the house today; sat on the deck with the sun SO FINE so excellent, speaking of nothing, letting the ick of this ludicrous situation fall off us as the fluffy clouds developed and imploded.

so warm and glorious

Finally we took a tour, almost everyone wearing masks, avoiding us on the sidewalk, crossing the road….

but Kima has no bones

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165 million year old fossil octopus from France.

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Isn’t this wonderful? I’m not a fan of the show; merely its surfaces and cultural impact, to the extent that I wrote a desperately bad original filk tune about it, which I’m not even going to bother to renounce since I have no idea what someone more savvy than a girl like I might do with it. Anyway, I likes it, and there were distinct choices that went into its makeup that show comfort and skill.

Giri Haji is not a show about Japanese gagsters

I am liking this show SO MUCH AND WE ONLY HAVE ONE EP LEFT wail

Did you know coyotes and badgers have been known to hunt together? There’s video on the internet that looks like the first shot of a movie. Further pics.

Storage Jar (1858), David Drake.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Stoneware vessel (1858), David Drake At the Stony Bluff Manufactory in Old Edgefield, South Carolina, the enslaved potter David Drake made stoneware vessels of extraordinary workmanship, often inscribed with short poems describing their owner and function. ‘When you fill this Jar with pork or beef / Scot will be there; to get a peace’ is carved into one side of the vessel, among other lines. This is of 40 known surviving ‘poem vessels’ by Drake, and the first to enter the Met’s collection.

 

 

This is just for mOm everybody else ignore it

So I realized in minutes that nobody else on the bus gave a shit about birds (reindeer, foxes, sure) so I quit calling out stuff I was seeing on the bus…  so this is my post about birds. I am a potato photographer so no pics.

On my lifetime list now:

Common wagtail. They are ahem common.

I did NOT see a skua. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a skua. Skuas are fucking ginormous and whatever this was it was much smaller.

Ravens every day.

Northern Diver – saw that one SUPER close, from the bus, under perfect light, breeding plumage like jewels nested on a grey silk pillow.

Waders (they like to sit on posts next to the shore so they were easy to spot)

I saw TWO ptarmigan, once the first day and once the second last day; first one was snow white and the other was coming into breeding colours.

So many arctic terns, including in a nesting area, and man do they squeak.

I never saw a golden plover to identify it but the little fuckers never shut up and are beloved as the Icelandic sign of spring.

Pink footed Goose

King Eider!!!! man you cannot miss those suckers. Those I only saw on the East coast, right on the ocean.

BARROW’S GOLDENEYE they breed in the Lake of Midges and I saw a breeding pair in still water at the side of the road in that part of Iceland. They went by pretty fast but there’s nothing else in the Icelandic bird pics that matches.

so there you go mOm you can start looking at the pics on line.