by

Our Daily Thread 5-11-15

Good Morning!

The header and the pics below are from a nest-building couple I watched on Saturday. It was pretty cool. They worked fast weaving the stuff in and then flew right off for more.

5-9-15 0585-9-15 103

5-9-15 0415-9-15 085

5-9-15 0875-9-15 094

______________________________________________

On this day in 0330 Constantinople, previously the town of Byzantium, was founded.

In 1812 British prime Minster Spencer Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.

In 1816 The American Bible Society was formed in New York City.

And in 1947 the creation of the tubeless tire was announced by the B.F. Goodrich Company.

______________________________________________

Quote of the Day

“There’s no business like show business.”

Irving Berlin

______________________________________________

Today is Irving’s birthday.

This seems very appropriate for a Monday morning. 🙂

—————————————-

______________________________________________

Anyone have a QoD?

46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 5-11-15”

  5. AJ, it looks like a female red-winged blackbird. Are you sure you saw both partners and not just one coming back a lot? A lot of female birds look alike and it could be something else, but that’s my guess.

    Like

    Reply

  6. I double-checked, and with that species, it is just the female that builds the nest. I haven’t seen their nests, but until you see the male and can confirm, that’s my guess.

    Like

    Reply

  9. In a single morning, without leaving my house, I have taken photos of a singing male cardinal against spring greenery, a hairy woodpecker (much less common sight than his cousin the downy), a single wild turkey (female), and a male Baltimore oriole (he might have been singing, too). I could have gotten photos of several other species, including goldfinches, a singing house wren, tufted titmice, a white-breasted nuthatch, and two or three others. (Actually, I also got white-crowned sparrow, male bluebird, and robin, but those were only mediocre shots.)

    Like

    Reply

  11. Chas, don’t be too sure I wouldn’t take a picture of you. I’m not satisfied with my crow photos yet, so it’s one of the species I would still happily photograph again. 😉

    Like

    Reply

  12. Maybe all of the females are so busy building that we never see them, but we see lots of the males mingling with the yellow headed blackbirds and others. All they do is talk.

    Like

    Reply

  16. Chas is being sexist.

    Another Monday … I haven’t taken pictures of anything this morning, too busy getting a load of laundry finished in the dryer (my dryer is old and inefficient, takes a few rounds to get stuff dry). I lost a runner rug this weekend when I threw it in the wash and it came out shredded. Oh well. It was one of of those I’d picked up years ago at Target, I think. One of the dogs had a rare peeing accident on it overnight this weekend.

    Coffee. I need more coffee.

    Like

    Reply

  17. Great morning song, by the way. I’m lucky as our shifts are late & I don’t have to even use an alarm. But getting up is still hard!

    Like

    Reply

  18. Mumsee, the males come earlier in the spring than the females do, and they go out of their way to be noticed. The females are camouflaged and aren’t trying to show off, so you aren’t nearly as likely to see one. But I think they’re pretty in their own way–it’s just a very different way than the males are! I think male and female are exactly the same shape, from beak to tail, but that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends.

    Like

    Reply

  21. Just went outside and watched the Amgen Tour of California Bike race whiz by. Fun to see all the cars with spare bikes on top and of course all the Highway Patrol cars and motorcycle policemen. Then at the very end were three ambulances. So many others that you hardly notice the bikers. 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  22. Cheryl,

    I found them in my book as well. What I can’t understand is why 2 females would be constructing a nest together. There were clearly 2 different birds, often in the small tree together at the same time. The second in would sit off and wait for the other to leave, and then flew in and did their own work. They were even flying to the same patch of dead grass to retrieve more straw. There was no bickering between them at any time in the 1/2 hour I watched them. I didn’t think they’d do that.

    Like

    Reply

  25. Hello. Life is a little busy around here, what with spring cleaning and gardening and everything else. I just had my doctor’s appointment and she discussed the prospect of my returning to Gambia in helpful detail. She is concerned and wants me to try a new medication for a few months to see if it controls my asthma better before she would allow me to return. I’m so thankful for a Christian doctor who knows about missions.

    Liked by 9 people

    Reply

  26. I hope the new medication helps, Roscuro.

    I saw my first Baltimore Oriole today. Well, first of the season. We’ve had them every year for many years now. And you’re right, AJ, they can make quite a noise! There was only one, but I heard him from a long distance before I saw him fly high over me while I was outside this morning.

    Lovely birds. I wish I saw them more. This is their usual time to show up in the spring, but I don’t see them at the sunflower seed feeder for longer than a week or two at most.

    I should probably set out food more specific to Orioles, but it’s too much to try to put out the favorite things of the different species I’d like to see more. Black oil sunflower seed is probably the best all-around seed to attract a fairly wide variety of species, and that’s about all I can afford.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  29. Oh, I never thought of that! And here I thought 5-10-15 yesterday was so cool because it was counting by 5s. (Could have also been written 5+10=15.)

    So could Linda’s examples be called number palindromes?

    Like

    Reply

  31. the next school year will be interesting. Five of the families that I will be teaching are expecting a baby. That means that they will be out of PNG to have the baby and then wait for the baby’s passport and visa. So… I will potentially have five new students halfway through the year. To compound that, I will probably also have a student teacher for the second half of the year. Life is never dull…

    Like

    Reply

  32. I finally brought out the fans from storage yesterday. We are having hot weather before I want the increased bills from a/c. The fans really help during the transition and should help with not having to use as much a/c once it is turned on.

    The plant I seem most allergic to is ligustrum (sp?) which is blooming now. Thanking God it will be over soon…sniff, sniff.

    Nice lunch with husband and brother yesterday. I gave brother his birthday gifts in the parking lot which is our tradition it seems. Rather funny tradition, but it is convenient for us to meet at the restaurant, have a meal, and then go to the car for gifts. Are we the only ones who do that?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  34. AJ, I can think of several possibilities, all of which I’ve heard of among animals.

    (1) I was wrong about my species ID. 🙂
    (2) The second bird is actually an immature male that hasn’t gotten its adult plumage yet; occasionally such a bird will breed in its first year. But that would still make me wrong about my ID, because year-old male red-winged blackbirds don’t yet look like adult males, but neither do they look like females. (They’re sort-of black but not glossy black, and they may or may not have their colored epaulets yet.)
    (3) Last-year’s juvenile is helping with the nest. Some species help the parents raise a new brood while they themselves are too young to pair up; crows are one species in which this is done, and since male red-wings take two years to mature, perhaps females do too, and occasionally a female helps her mom the second season. ??? (In some species this is very common, but I would imagine it happens occasionally in some others where it is unusual.)
    (4) They are an example of what modern scientists would gleefully jump on as homosexual animals. Homosexual behavior does exist in nature, but it is obviously infertile and non-replicating, and furthermore it isn’t a “normal” thing.

    Like

    Reply

  35. 6 Arrows, wait, you see oriole feeders at your sunflower feeders for a week or two? That’s longer than we see ours at our oriole feeders! Last year I saw the male land on it once (but didn’t see him eat); this year my husband saw the female land on the pole holding it. But so far we just have house finches eating the jelly, hummingbirds drinking the nectar, no oriole activity at all, and this is our second year of having it. Definitely we’ve never had them at the sunflower seeds! I’m beginning to wonder if we have the oriole feeders in the wrong spot. The post they are hanging from is under the tree where we see them most, where they have even nested in the past, but perhaps it is too far from the trunk and feels like it is “out in the open.” But the sunflower feeders are in a place the birds love, hanging from branches in a different tree just a few yards away, and we’ve rarely even seen the orioles in that tree, never at the feeders. (I saw the male there once, three years ago–first oriole I’d seen in my life, right up close outside the kitchen window–and we saw the female there once this year.)

    Like

    Reply

  36. Cheryl, I (6 arrows at the library) should clarify my oriole post. Instead of saying “at the sunflower seed feeder,” it would have been more accurate to say “in the vicinity of the feeder.” There may have been some time that they were up in the feeder eating the seeds, but in recent years I only recall them being on the ground near the feeder, or in one or the other of the two trees nearest it. I don’t remember if they were eating seed off the ground when they were below the feeder. I just remember them hanging around the feeders in the early years that we started feeding the birds, maybe 15 years ago. They stuck around longer in those years (the one or two weeks I mentioned) than they have in recent years. It’s not been unusual lately for me to see them only once or twice, then not again the rest of the season.

    I wish they’d stick around longer like they did in the olden days. 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  37. Aha, 6 Arrows. I know they like fruit and apparently they feed their babies insects (and eat them themselves when fruit isn’t available), but I didn’t remember ever seeing a mention of them coming to seed feeders. I did see something interesting today–apparently orioles only like dark colored, ripe fruit. Other birds that like fruit will eat white grapes, for example, but they won’t.

    My husband told me before we married that he sometimes saw orioles here, and had even had an oriole nest one year. I remember my thrill in looking out the kitchen window and seeing this shockingly orange bird. I had even drawn an oriole in about fifth grade (won a school-district art contest drawing an oriole on its nest), but I’d never seen one, and they looked brighter in person than I had ever imagined. (The one hanging around this year doesn’t look anywhere near as vivid orange–I’m also not seeing him near as close, but he looks more “watered down,” an orange yellow with yellow patches rather than vivid Kool-Aid orange.)

    Later that spring we got an oriole nest (no idea if they produced young) . . . but it was so high up in the tree and hidden by leaves I could barely see it, and could not get photographs of it (with this camera I could–if it wasn’t all covered with leaves again). I’m hoping they nest again, and we have seen at least one of them every day, or nearly every day, for probably more than a week, so it’s possible they will. And they’re said to bring their young to feeders, so we may well see young this year if they ever decide to visit the feeder and if they do nest here.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  38. Apparently not a good day. Editor very grumpy, keeps muttering the same 4-letter word over and over again as he’s reading our copy. 😦

    So it’s official, we’ve come (way) down from our Pulitzer high that made us all feel so happy for, oh, maybe 1.5 days.

    At least Monday’s almost over.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  39. michelle — usc? (new CBS show this fall)

    Code Black: Marcia Gay Harden heads up the ensemble cast of this medical drama, based on a 2014 documentary by the same name. A medical team works in the busiest and most notorious emergency room in the country — the one in the Los Angeles County Hospital.

    Like

    Reply

  42. Found out this evening, although I had come to suspect it, that Chrissy calls the parents in the McK family Mom & Dad.

    I know I need to let it go, & not dwell on it, but for this evening, it hurts.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  44. Karen, I assume she also calls you Mom and Dad? Someday she’ll probably call in-laws that too.

    I understand your not liking some of the influence they have in her life, but nothing good can come of your being jealous of other adults in her life. You do have to let it go. (I remember my own mom’s jealousy over an older friend of mine who was basically the grandmother I never had. I did nothing to hurt Mom by the relationship; it was totally her problem. But she hurt herself by it, and she was unnecessarily rude to one of the sweetest people I have ever known, simply because she failed to understand that other adults in a young person’s life can actually be a good thing.) She’s an adult and free to make her own choices, and choosing to honor adults who are significant in her life is not one of the worse ones she can make.

    Like

    Reply

  45. Karen 8:39, yep. Today someone just got up on the wrong side of the bed. Or something. … 😦 Sheesh. Interesting how someone (esp at the top) being in a “mood” can affect the whole atmosphere.

    On a funnier note, the newsroom clerk who has to deal with a lot of the subscriber complaints every day called back one of the readers who had left her a voicemail this morning. She was being very pleasant and said by way of confirmation that the guy’s issue (whatever it was) was resolved: “So is everything alright? … No, I was just making sure everything is OK now, because on your message you told me to go (blank) myself. … OK then, thanks for calling, goodbye.”

    The guy apparently sounded a bit embarrassed when she threw his own words back at him.

    People.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  46. Beautiful photos AJ…Our birds around here are so very confused…we got nearly a foot of snow yesterday and two little finches were hunkered down under the family room window eve….after a week of rain, hail, lightening and thunder….several large pine branches are on the ground and I am heartsick that my peony shoots are flat on the ground….poor things never had a chance 😦

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to mumsee Cancel reply