Not much (outdoor) gardening left for most of the country. Ever-helpful commentor Max steps into the breach:
It snowed on Wednesday, so Penelope the Demon Dog had to go out, because she likes the snow, even if the other dachshunds do not.
As it wasn’t snowing today everyone came out to eat (and maybe play some baseball). The bluejays…
The whatever it is…
The woodpecker….
The turkey vulture…
The cardinals…
The orioles…
And a big fat starling.
What — if anything — is going on in your gardens, this week?
ixnay
Even with some poetic license, how can you be so mistaken? The “whatever” is a junco, the “woodpecker” is a chickadee, the “oriole” is most likely a robin, and the “starling” is some sort of sparrow.
Maybe I am simply being humor impaired this morning, in which case I apologize for the low batteries on my snark meter.
Montarvillois
@ixnay: Right you are, you beat me to it on the bird IDs.
JPL
@ixnay: Maybe it was a test.
Anne Laurie
@ixnay: Junco! Dammit, that’s the name I couldn’t remember!
I took Max’s IDs as a joke (mouse over the pics) but I blanked on the junco (aka, “grey bird at winter feeder that is not nuthatch, grosbeak or titmouse”)…
Mustang Bobby
I was going to jump on the bird ID train, but ixnay beat me to it. I have my 50-year-old dog-chewed, well-worn, and marked-up coup of Roger Torey Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds on the bookshelf that gets used whenever an unidentified visitor arrives in my yard. In Florida, juncos and nuthatches have been replaced by ibises and egrets. The book was a Christmas present in 1962 from my dad.
I learned birds thanks to my dad; to this day at the age of 88 and even having to use a walker, he makes sure the feeders are full, and he regales me with tales of who is at the feeder. It was a bonding time for us, and still is.
OzarkHillbilly
The last is either a Field, Chipping or Swamp sparrow. Any way Max, job well done on getting all of the overly anal birders’ panties in a bunch.
OzarkHillbilly
And speaking of sparrows…
I once was awakened from my slumbers in the back of my truck by a chipping sparrow… Yanking hairs from the top of my head! Liked them so much he came back for more. Needless to say, I was done sleeping after that.
Keith G
Snow kitteh!!!
TriassicSands
A freakish cold snap and unusual, early snowfall have left local birds running for cover (or their fur coats). I used to live in Colorado where turkey vultures were ubiquitous, but here in western Washington they only appear for a brief time in the summer. The rest of the year I rarely see even a single turkey vulture circling above, wings in a vee, rocking unsteadily back and forth. Bald eagles, on the other hand, are as common as starlings. They frequently perch in the top of a large Douglas fir just across the street from my house and seem to be keeping watch on my property. I’ve always worried about the safety of my indoor-outdoor cat, Annie, who is oblivious to any potential threat from above, while she focuses on the ground and lower branches of trees in her never-ending quest to free the area of small mammals and birds. I hope some day that the instinct to kill everything (smaller than them) that moves will be bred out of house cats, whose destructiveness is terrible. But that will never happen.
I once saw a turkey vulture migration in Joshua Tree National Park (Monument at that time). An amazing procession of the large birds stretched from out of sight in the south to out of sight in the north — a breathtaking sight.
Darren Wilson has resigned, effective immediately, from the Ferguson police force. Apart from any criminal charges that might (or might not) be filed when a police officer kills an unarmed civilian, unless there are extraordinary mitigating circumstances, I strongly believe that police officer should be fired. Killing an unarmed person is arguably the worst offense any cop can commit.
Darren Wilson may have “resigned,” but he should have been fired. He should also lose the right to own firearms. If he’s not a murderer, he’s still probably grossly incompetent.
Mike S
@Anne Laurie: Yes, The pic’s file names are correct. The last one is a European house sparrow. I’m glad I wasn’t the first person to see this or my snark meter’s failure would have been obvious. Now I’m off to walk the dog and then go for a birdwalk. (Really!)
MikeS in PA
satby
Our early cold gave way yesterday to temps in the 50s, overnight low was 44. So the snow melted and it was a lovely day but I spent most of it driving to and from Chicago. Today will start nice and then plunge into cold again. Mother Nature is such a tease.
Gvg
and this is why I will always live in Florida. I really hate snow and cold. I finished planting the last of my new sod yesterday. Very late even for here but the dog was having skin allergies severely so I had treated a suspicious patch of weeds and needed to cover the Dirt to keep them from coming back. Night comes too early so only weekends for sodding. then I got strep. Today is artistic preparations for six year olds birthday party next weekend also behind as we all got strep.
My grandmother had a red tabby raised with dachshunds that thought he was one. It was odd to see a cat playing with doxies imitating their odd hopping run over tall grass style. family members have had a lot of doxies over the years.
raven
Nice shots. Off to get coffee and then one more day at the beach. It’s already in the low 60’s with no wind and light surf, I hope I don’t get another one that breaks my line.
chopper
As I’ve said before, no garden this year. But it should be nice today at least.
Steeplejack
And that “turkey vulture” is clearly a tufted Siberian condor. Didn’t know they wintered this far east.
COB
Ok, now you’re just f*cking with the bird watchers. Well played.
JPL
@Steeplejack: The only way to be sure would be to ask Max whether or not he saw it three days.
henqiguai
@JPL (#17):
If he did, boy better be in the wind…
donnah
My middle son, age 25, was home all week and I have enjoyed every minute. But one of his requests was for me to prepare some of his basic home-cooked favorites. I haven’t cooked this much in years! Pot roast, chili, spaghetti, a big Thanksgiving dinner, plus desserts like banana pudding and caramel apple crumble. I’m exhausted!
I had never seen the show Chopped before, and so some of our evenings were spent power-watching episode after episode. I love it! But it made my cooking more challenging. I was afraid if the banana pudding didn’t set up, I would be chopped, and what if I didn’t serve enough sauce? How was my plating? It was kind of intimidating.
So he goes back to Charlotte today and I’ll miss him terribly, but I’m not setting foot in that kitchen until Christmas.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Heh. Always thought it was funny that the original novel was Six Days of the Condor. Hollywooden reductionism in a nutshell. Still, a good movie that holds up pretty well.
Mike in NC
Road trip today. Leaving the land of Rick Scott to return to the land of Pat McCrory. Assholes all the way!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Excellent trolling, Anne! :-)
Nice pictures, Max.
Cheers,
Scott.
moonbat
Improbably, it is warming up here, so today I am going to play in the fallow garden to get it ready for next year: new soil and some moss and whatnot to raise the acidity.
danielx
Garden is long gone. Time for Christmas lights, which of course are unfinished, even if only the burning bush remains to be…wrapped? Illuminated? Enlightened? Whatever, it ain’t done yet. I am becoming increasingly convinced the spousal unit wants to kill me, given her predilection for having me spend large amounts of time on top of a ladder while she steps back and say, no, move that strand down by about six inches.
Also, too – Christmas light strands are one of the most obnoxious human inventions ever. Test them before you put them up, everything looks fine. Get them up with a lot of grief because they get caught, get tangled just generally make things difficult… and plug them in and half the lights don’t work…..arrrrrgh.
max
@JPL: The only way to be sure would be to ask Max whether or not he saw it three days.
I have seen a bunch of them and for more than three days.
@Mike S: The last one is a European house sparrow.
Is it? {checks Google} Looks up picture. Um, nope. Right about the robin though.
(I dunno, I was busy cooking dinner for Thanksgiving. I was cooking turkey because my mother demands turkey on Thanksgiving. I don’t even like turkey. At any rate, I’m doing all this prep work, and I was pestered for a picture of the cardinals. So I kept going outside and trying to shoot pictures of the bastard cardinals. They kept flying away when the autofocus motor would kick in. Meanwhile, the entire morning, there was a fog. So I’m trying to shoot the bastard cardinals through the fucking fog and cook dinner at the same time. But every bird in the world had shown up to mob the feeder, so I’m shooting bird pictures the whole time for no real reason. I did manage to snag a picture of a bastard cardinal (facing the right direction) after like six hours of trying.
So I’m done with cooking, I go to find the picture of the bastard cardinal and I realize I have a not half-bad photo run, so I sent it to Anne Laurie because while the hell not? The picture of the turkey vulture would have been better if I hadn’t initially given up on the birds and switched lenses. So then I switched back.
Turkey came out perfect. Even though I don’t like turkey. And I got a picture of the bastard cardinal. So I got that goin’ for me.)
What — if anything — is going on in your gardens, this week?
Since it stopped dropping below freezing, I’m trudging a bunch of plants outside. And the on Monday, they’re all coming back inside. And then, they’re all going back outside for a week.
max
[‘I just like taking pictures. Don’t really care about the bird watching.’]
MomSense
It is coooold this morning and the sky is a dark gray with a sort of purple cast. I haven’t looked at the weather but I can tell we are going to get some kind of snow or ice today.
The garden is under about a foot of snow and a lot of fallen branches. The neighbors’ garden is under a fallen tree that hit their house on the way down. We had lots of tree damage in the area in the last storm.
And we have been adopted by a cat. It’s a strange story and I’m not entirely sure how to make it official. The cat followed my youngest home during a snow storm when his owners were on vacation. Someone left some bags in front of the car door making it impossible for him to go inside. He spent their vacation with us. Then when we tried to bring him home they told us that he is unhappy because they have a cat who is older and dominant and mean to him. Apparently the cat belonged to a daughter who moved with her mom to another state and couldn’t take him. They said it was fine if he stayed with us when he likes. I got the impression they don’t want him. Anyway what he likes is to cuddle with my youngest. He actually gets under the covers with his little face peeking out.
JPL
@max: Except the St. Louis variety of cardinals, I haven’t used the term bastard to describe such a beautiful bird.
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
Sometimes the cat picks you, like Bianca did with me. (And sometimes the dog picks their person too, as Rosie did with John Cole.) Have you picked a name for the new arrival?
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
He looks just like a Holstein so I’ve been calling him “the Holstein” but the kids were thinking Bo for bovine. He is a big cat and very sweet. He lets the girls around the corner dress him in doll clothes and take him for rides in their baby stroller. His given name is Grimm but it doesn’t suit his personality at all.
HRA
Yesterday the back yard was covered with snow. Today the snow is gone and the leaves we didn’t have a chance to rake are there to aggravate me. The front still has piles of about 3 feet at the road from our 71 inches of lake effect snow fall in a day and a half. Sadly we have a few broken trees in the back yard. One Cleveland Pear was chopped in half. The tree with branch thorns at the side of the garage that I have to yet identify had a break right through the center of the trunk. My magnificent butterfly bush is in a tangled ball on the ground. I have yet to take a real close tour of the grounds. Hope you all have a great day! Go Bills!
pat
@OzarkHillbilly:
My guess would be House Sparrow. They are a plague at my feeders this year, keeping the goldfinches away.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
And you get to go through the lands of Nathan Deal and Nikki Haley en route! Assholes all the way indeed. Safe travels.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@HRA:
A honey locust perhaps? Those things have amazing thorns…
Cheers,
Scott.
biff diggerence
Correct on the Junco. And the last one does look like a house sparrow (known locally as a “spebbie”). And the upside down feller is a black cap chickadee.
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks. Was trying to block that out.
biff diggerence
And the oriole looks like a robin.
Schlemazel
The unseasonable – even for here on the frozen tundra – cold & snowy weather broke for exactly one day yesterday. It got up to a more seasonal 40+ and the sun actually came out, something it has not been doing much. We did get out to run a couple of errands but both of us are dragging the tail ends of a nasty cold. Today it is back to the freezer.
We have had a group of cardinals winter in our yard the last few years but they appear to have disappeared with this recent stretch, I hope they found a warmer habitat.
Schlemazel
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
If it is honey locust it has some really beautiful wood, worth seeing if someone could save & use it. Its a devil to work with, you’ll dull a lot of tools but it is unlike anything else.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Schlemazel: Yup. It’s an amazing tree with amazing wood. A friend in Ohio has it growing wild around an old abandoned canal. His father had a short timber of the wood that he was hoping to use for something – it weighed a ton and was really hard to work, but was beautiful even in its raw state.
Cheers,
Scott.
jeffreyw
@Schlemazel: We have them.
scav
Proper leftover day — boney bits making broth. Smelling coxy. Should be able to keep that going for a solid part of the day. And good to see the LBBs getting their due and all their names adjusted. I can manage the junco and chickadee, but the innumerable variety of sparrows . . . . right up there with the plethora of wrens I vaguely remember hearing.
Schlemazel
@jeffreyw:
WOW! We felt lucky to have 5-6 of the boys that is a mob!
Reminds me when we lived in Florida, came home one day and found hundreds of robins in our yard. I have never seen robins in a flock and here were hundreds of them all at once. So rare its very nifty to see,
pat
@biff diggerence:
The oriole IS a robin.
pat
@jeffreyw:
It seems to have been a good year for cardinals, the birds, not the conservative ones that Pope Francis has been getting rid of… or was that a bishop? Anyway, at least three broods of cardnals were raised in our yard this summer and are hanging around now, tussling with the house sparrows over the bird seed.
jeffreyw
We have a couple of sick doggies, both the girls are puking this morning. Annie was up all night and Katie just horked up a was of grass. Hoping it’s just from a change of chow or too many turkey tidbits. Jack is as perky as ever.
jeffreyw
@Schlemazel: Cardinals are much too refined to be a mob! Grackles, on the other hand…
mainmati
@pat: If your mix has millet as many commercial mixes do that will bring hordes of sparrows crowding out other birds. Find one that is just sunflower and safflower seeds and the sparrows will give up and allow the others back in including the furry squirrel birds.
mainmati
@pat: Onithologically, robins are a kind of thrush and orioles bleong to the blackbiurd family so no they superficially look similar but they are actually from different families.
Schlemazel
@jeffreyw:
We would get grackles at one house we lived in. Idon’t mind that they are not around me here. We do get ravens though & they will throw up a noise particularly if they see we are out with the cats. I have turned the hose on them to get them to shut up a couple of times but that scares me because they have a good memory & recognize people years later.
PurpleGirl
@MomSense: Yup, you have been adopted by a kitten. S/he likes you and your son and your home. Have a great future with the critter. The kitten comes to you, cuddles with youyr youngest… it’s official.
pat
@mainmati:
Thanks, but the sparrows were gobbling up the thistle seed in the tube feeders. I moved the feeders away from the bushes and that helps with the sparrows, but the goldfinches haven’t come back. And I put the cheapest feed in the one next to the bushes, so the sparrows flock there. And yes, I know about the millet. And the safflower. And the sunflower. The sparrows are not picky.
And ROBINS DO NOT LOOK A BIT LIKE ORIOLES.
The person who labeled those pics must have been trolling us.
HRA
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Thank you! Yes, that is a honey locust.
Just One More Canuck
@Schlemazel: And as we all know, ravens are tricksters
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/native-american-mythology.php?deity=RAVEN
Citizen_X
Clearly an Ivory-billed, right?
@Schlemazel: Heh. Don’t fuck with the ravens!
Betsy
Junco, aka snowbird
chickadee, not woodpeck!
what the hell, who thinks a robin is an oriole! .. wait .. were we being trolled with these labels?
Citizen_X
@Just One More Canuck: Once in Big Bend, I saw a Chihuahuan raven near my truck, which had a (drawstring-type) bag of camp trash in the back. Hearing a clunking sound, I turned around to see him fly off with a crumpled beer can.
He had neatly untied the bag.
Betsy
House sparrows (English sparrows) are vicious .. they rapaciously kill other birds, especially bluebirds. Not native, are an aggressive invasive species.
But your pics don’t show one. The last pic is a Field Sparrow by my lights. A fine bird
Mnemosyne
With all of the identifications in this thread, I’m surprised no one mentioned that the “dachshund” on the left in the second picture may not even be a dog at all.
ETA: snark
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@HRA: Excellent. Glad to help.
Cheers,
Scott.
chopper
@Schlemazel:
Could be black locust. Similar but the wood makes great fence posts as it takes forever to rot.
SWMBO
@Mnemosyne: I’ve owned (been owned by) many dachshunds over the years. Clearly a mixed breed because of the ears. lol
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@ixnay: I’m glad to hear I wasn’t hallucinating with my opinions on the actual bird IDs!
Terrific photos, for which many thanks.
ETA: Late to the comedy party. Duh. I should have known that those were humorous descriptors!
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Probably beat, but the upside down one is likely a brown nuthatch.