Please enjoy the sight of these two Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks stepping down from a muddy riverbank:
They were here this morning for some hawk drama (see Twitter for details) and are still hanging around. We see pairs and small flocks flying past daily (and hear them whistling while they fly). But I’m always pleased to see them make themselves at home in our lagoon. They’re so elegant and beautiful in an understated way, compared to, say, their flashier cousins, the Wood Duck.
Open thread!
cain
I won’t do it Betty! I just wont! :shakes fist: I need MAGA tears!
SiubhanDuinne
Need moar knitted scarves!
LuciaMia
Does the whistling sound come from their wings
mrmoshpotato
@LuciaMia: I think the whistling sound comes from them being up to no good.
Suspicious whistling ducks. :)
dexwood
@LuciaMia: It comes from their farts. Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m 69 going on 10. Speaking of going, I must, just a drive by. Have a good afternoon all.
SiubhanDuinne
Biden is giving a speech in Lancaster, PA right now, and he’s doing a great job so far. MSNBC is carrying it live.
:: Searches for remote ::
But not CNN.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s all over the whiner!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
And the second he’s done speaking, he puts on his mask!
Gin & Tonic
We’ve had a cat coming by the yard the last few days. Not sure where it’s from, as we know all of our near neighbors. It runs away when we go out, but if we leave a bowl of food it will eventually come back and eat the whole bowl. I think my wife believes it’s in the process of becoming our cat.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: I believe that your wife is correct.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
You might just as well start thinking of names.
Uncle Omar
Covid-19 = Heroin
When it was in the cities and killing city people, especially the ones of African descent, it really wasn’t too important. Now that it’s moved to suburbia and ruralia and Republicaniana it’s time to do something about it, isn’t it Ron DeSantis?
germy
Look at this face
MazeDancer
@Gin & Tonic:
Congratulations! It may take a while, but you have a cat. Just keep moving the food dish closer to the door.
It took two years for me to get the late, wonderful Abigail to come inside. Turns out she was already spayed. Someone’s lost cat gone a little feral.
But then she turned into a total love muffin.
trollhattan
@germy:
Fierce birb is fierce. Also, having none of your shenanigans.
Daughter did a zoo camp one summer where the kids helped the keepers with critters, behind the scenes. There’s an adorable shot of her holding a young whistling duck, which they raise there to share quarters with the flamingos. Too adorbs.
Her other favorite thing was mixing the red panda food and then feeding them.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic:
We have a kitty been spotted up here on the mountain that seems to be a thriving feral. Wish I could leave food out for it and coax it to be our kitty, but between bears, mountain lions, and our dogs, no bowl of food would last long enough for kitty to come by and claim it!
Hungry Joe
From the Timothy Snyder (“On Tyranny “) interview on the Gaslit Nation podcast (my transcription):
“Any historian of Eastern Europe will tell you that statues come down all the time. That’s what you do. In Ukraine … there’s even a term for it — ‘taking down the statues of Lenin.’ Are we really supposed to say that because there was a statue of Hitler somewhere that it should be there forever, or that a statue of Stalin should be there forever? … The people who make statues are engaging in memory politics. That’s what a statue is all about, that’s what you try to make permanent — some expression of your values or your power at a certain time. The idea that statues are some kind of objective history, that they are history as opposed to memory politics, I find very, very strange. What humans do and record — that’s history. If we put up a statue, okay, that’s history. If we knock down a statue, that’s also history. But the statue itself is not history. It doesn’t stand beyond reality or the facts, it’s just a piece of marble or a piece of stone which humans put up and which humans will eventually take down.”
Couldn’t agree more. Confederate statues/memorials are expressions of values and power at a certain time. Those values are being rejected. And the people who put those things up no longer have the power to stop us from taking them down.
Mohagan
@trollhattan: I’ve been watching several of the zoo shows on NatGeo lately and the two big discoveries for me:
1. Rhinos are cute and personable
2. Red Pandas are SO CUTE and adorable. They look like stuffed animals.
I envy your daughter
ETA: the flamingos are charming too. One bird raised from the egg by a keeper will always run over to her, honking all the way, whenever she visits their pond.
Gin & Tonic
@Hungry Joe: Snyder is a smart guy. And somewhere in his storage stuff my son has a piece of a Lenin statue from Kyiv.
Mohagan
@Miss Bianca: Theoretically, it’s possible to leave food in a small sturdy box or enclosure with an entrance door only large enough to permit entry by a cat. (Under the house, say?). And cats, remember, can get through anything if their head will fit. Their shoulder blades aren’t rigid like humans. But of course, this might not be possible in your situation. Just a suggestion.
Also, a Hav-A-Hart trap could be considered …
Kropacetic
I suspect the people making the “history” argument mostly recognize this but also recognize that they can’t defend the statues on the values they represent, as much as they’d like to.
Miss Bianca
@Mohagan: Hmm, maybe I will get Pal D to work on this idea. He loves a good engineering challenge!
Mary G
Jeffro
Story for the next three weeks, unfortunately: Texas, Arizona, and Florida all going down the tubes, swamped by Covid cases.
All leading up to two very different nominating conventions.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
It took me about 5 minutes to get it
That’s like “Moran.”
Mohagan
@Miss Bianca: Good luck! If you go the trap route, feed in the trap several times before setting it to snap shut, to allow for familiarization and getting comfortable with the space.
Kropacetic
@Mary G: I wonder if it’s wrong to hope the Onion sent that person there.
TaMara (HFG)
@Mohagan: I have had the pleasure of being up close and personal with Rhinos and have hand fed them, given them a good scratch and been rewarded with a snuffle. When feeling safe, they are just big puppies. I’d rather not be around a grumpy one.
hueyplong
Maybe I’m just late to the game and it was discussed in an earlier thread, but it’s nice to see on the Intertubes that the judge dismissed the case seeking an injunction against President Internet Troll’s niece’s book being published/disseminated.
Would consider the order to be Schadenfreudelicious if anyone has a link.
kindness
@Miss Bianca: I have friends who live up above Sonora in the Sierras. They were feeding the deer oat/molassas mix you give horses for a treat. They ended up with a whole herd living on the property. Problem is around here mountain lions follow the deer herds and people’s critters are much easier to catch and eat than the deer. They stopped feeding the deer when they finally figured that one out.
TaMara (HFG)
I was just outside and the ducks were happily wandering the yard, then suddenly they skedaddled under the bushes. I suspect a hawk but didn’t see one. Hoping the neighborhood Great Horned Owl has not found our house.
Martin
California has a new Covid dashboard and it’s very good.
Lots of nerdy data, but presented in a digestible way. For the state and each county they give an effective R0 value for right now. Most places are slightly over 1, so cases are growing, usually slowly. A few places are well over 1 and need to take urgent action. We need to be below 1 so everyone needs to be doing more.
Also includes forecasts for deaths, hospitalizations, etc.
Mohagan
@TaMara (HFG): Wow, I envy you too. I always saw rhinos only as prehistoric remnants who are precious because they are so rare, but after seeing individuals on the zoo shows I’m a rhino convert
ETA: Yes, on the zoo shows there is always a strong fence between the rhino and the keeper, just because they are huge and dangerous because of that. Nice trend in zoos to keep keepers out of harm’s way by separating them from dangerous animals, no matter how good the relationship is. Specifically Elephants, Tigers, Rhinos.
HumboldtBlue
@Gin & Tonic:
I heard that pronounced Keev, is that the proper pronunciation?
Also, Reds fans and soccer fans, 0-0 (35 mins) at Stamford Bridge as City try to stay alive.I was incorrect, it’s 1-0 Chelsea after Pulisic goal.
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: Let’s see, would those jeans be Levis?! Cuz white Levis were all the rage once upon a time.
@Kropacetic: If that’s wrong, do you really really want to be
whiteright?Betty Cracker
@TaMara (HFG): Lord, I hope it’s not a big owl!
The hawk referred to in the post is a juvie Red-Shouldered that frequently dive-bombs smaller waterfowl. I think it just harasses them for fun. Even moorhens and such are probably too large for it to regard as prey, let alone a full-grown duck.
Mohagan
@Martin: Thanks for the link!
ETA: Unfortunately, info for Mendocino is not available. But otherwise the site looks great.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue:
It’s two syllables.
hueyplong
cnn.com: Judge Peter J. Kelly of the Queens County Surrogate Court in New York, where a motion to obtain a temporary restraining order was filed Tuesday by Robert S. Trump, dismissed the case citing a lack of jurisdiction.
Apparently Trump’s crackerjack legal team filed in the wrong court. They say they’ll file a new lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court. For those of you who are not lawyers, in New York “the Supreme Court” is not the highest court in the state (as it is everywhere else). So it wouldn’t be an appeal. It would just be starting over, presumably with a court that in fact does have jurisdiction
Would still enjoy seeing the opinion itself if anyone uncovers a link to it. Trump’s lawyers filed in the Queens County Surrogate Court because apparently that’s where the settlement agreement (with confidentiality clause) at issue said jurisdiction would lie.
raven
@Miss Bianca:
My boyfriend’s always wearin’ white Levi’s…and his tennis shoes and his surfin’ hat and a big plaid Pendleton shirt.”
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Ducks knee deep in the Big Muddy
Miss Bianca
@hueyplong: That “presumably” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there…
raven
Before they were the Beach Boys, they were the Pendletones. This shirt is why.
Kropacetic
No one ever knew the legal system was so complicated. /Trump
Miss Bianca
@raven: OMG, how have I missed this *classic*?! LOL!
LarryB
I knew a cat that had moved twice before coming to roost at my friend’s house. It would stay someplace for a couple of years and then move on.
Kelly
Oregon’s mask mandate took effect yesterday. Today I picked up a couple things at the hardware store and was pleasantly surprised to see 100% compliance. The hardware store owner is a wingnut and masks have been rare. The mandate announcement said no tickets will be issued, really no enforcement mechanism in the announcement. Perhaps the increasing case counts are sinking in. Mandate only applies to 7 counties with about 40% of the population.
hueyplong
@Miss Bianca: Ha ha, anything describing a Trump action without using profanity is going to include an innocuous word doing some heavy lifting.
HumboldtBlue
@zhena gogolia:
So they we’ve always said it, Kee-yev then, OK, thanks.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Kropacetic: I knew this would happen the minute Dump hired Lionel Hutz
Gin & Tonic
@HumboldtBlue: It’s two syllables, accent on the first. The phonetic link at the beginning of the Wikipedia page which unfortunately (still) refers to it as “Kiev” is not bad. Nina Jankowicz gives it a try here on Twitter, but I don’t like the way she does the first vowel sound. Language Log gives it a shitload of detail here. It’s a hard word for a non-native to get right.
raven
@Miss Bianca: It caused me to hit the Pendleton site and, lo and behold, they have a sale going on and I got a new board shirt! I’ve bought a couple on eBay and they never fit so this one probably won’t go to my bride!
Kropacetic
Doesn’t help that i and y make very similar sounds
If one throws on a fake accent for affect, does that tend to make their pronunciation better or worse?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Every time I think twitter needs to be shut down, I run across a gem like this:
It includes the terms fleshlight, necrosis and neosporin, along with a description of a “shorted out by fluids” monitor.
Enjoy.
jackmac
There’s so much to despise about this current Administration, but it’s the combination of ignorance and arrogance that seems among the worst attributes. Case in point today is Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic official, who was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that new COVID-19 increases and outbreaks are something Americans are “just going to have to live with.”
Jan. 20, 2021 just can’t come soon enough.
HumboldtBlue
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks.
Kropacetic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Obviously an argument for mandatory head-to-toe garbing for all females.
Certainly we can’t hold men accountable when one displays no self-control.
hueyplong
Found the order (hope the link works), and it is in fact Schadenfreudelicious. If you were the person who had filed the case, you’d be saying the judge just called you stupid.
https://www.gibsondunn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Fred-C.-Trump-File-No.-1999-3949-A-002.pdf
The court at issue lacks jurisdictional ability to grant the relief requested. But the settlement agreement (if I recall correctly) says that disputes about the agreement will be held in the court that just dismissed the case. A NY Supreme (remember, not appellate) Court judge with injunctive powers who wanted to screw Trump could say, sorry, but the agreement has a forum selection clause that picks a forum other than this one. Having drafted a non-disclosure agreement in derogation of common law, I’m obligated to interpret its terms narrowly, so, in legal pig-latin terms, Uck-fay U-yay.
Let’s see what kind of judge gets the new filing. Meanwhile, the countdown to disclosure continues. Start leaking.
JCJ
Don’t know if this has been on here already, but Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (professional handegg player) had a surprise from representatives of one of his former teams
https://www.instagram.com/p/CByd1uHp73j/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again
raven
Anyone heard the new Dylan album? 16 minutes on the JFK assassination. Murder So Foul.
Patricia Kayden
Sab
I want a duck. Not forever, but I want a pair to come paddle around in my yard for an hour a couple of times a week. Rent a playdate with ducks.
hueyplong
@jackmac: new COVID-19 increases and outbreaks are something Americans are “just going to have to live with.”
“Live with” is, shall we say, doing some heavy lifting there, Larry.
Gravenstone
@hueyplong: Interesting that it’s a brother and not the beast itself behind the attempts to stop the book. Guessing the family portrait the book paints is not going to be a pleasant one for anyone involved.
dnfree
@HumboldtBlue: from previous discussions here I think it’s like Keev but with a little “y”sound after the K, so like “Kyeev” but with just a hint of “y. But I could be wrong.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kropacetic:
Slatternly wenches, leading that poor decent soul to lustful excesses of self abuse with their rock and roll music albums and jungle rhythms.
Martin
@Mohagan: Well, you need people to build a statistical model, and y’all don’t do that.
NotMax
@Sab
Rice gardener?
;)
SiubhanDuinne
@Sab:
I … don’t think it works that way :-)
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: The first time I saw that I said “I bet they aren’t a dark wash.”
Kropacetic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Wonder if some sort of lubricant or lotion would have helped.
Jeffro
Almost like it’s just going to “wash over America”, isn’t it?
Barbara
@jackmac:
Or, you know, die with.
I think it incumbent on journalists to ask the Kudlows of the world what they are personally doing — are they wearing masks? Have they been to the grocery store or are they working remotely? Fuckers like Kudlow probably don’t even do their own shopping.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: I am sure their is an escort agency that would oblige.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kropacetic:
One would assume. Maybe even just the neosporin, applied before.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: THERE!
Martin
@hueyplong: If anything good comes out of this, I hope its that NDAs are only enforceable against people in your employ or for trade secrets.
This ‘we paid you $20, therefore you cannot write a book about how I murdered 30 people’ bullshit is intolerable.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wait, are we talking about the same series of posts?
Martin
@Kropacetic: And why doesn’t Twitch ship every sub a bottle of lotion each week?
Boy, that would be really hard to explain to the wife.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: But why in the world would his niece sign an NDA in the first place, and not just say “fuck you?”
Kropacetic
@Martin: As long as we all know the fleshlight is not to blame.
J R in WV
The ducks are gorgeous creatures!! So lucky to have them all around you.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hahaha
Omnes Omnibus
I am going to channel s_c and wonder why there had been virtually no discussion of today’s SCOTUS decision on immigration. I get the feeling that it may not be a high priority issue for many commenters.
Miss Bianca
@hueyplong: Or, you know, “die with”, Larry
@Barbara: Jinx!
Omnes Omnibus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hey, a commenter wanted to schedule some time with a couple of ducks, but didn’t want a permanent relationship.
Abnormal Hiker
@Gin & Tonic: It is hard to get the proper pronunciation of foreign cities. Last year on a walking tour in Italy I told a local that I was from Toronto, pronouncing each syllable. I was told:”You’re saying it wrong – it’s ‘Tronna’. ” He apparently has friend in Tronna who told him the common pronunciation.
Sab
@SiubhanDuinne: Seriously? You guys sexualized me liking ducks? They are cute and all, but really?
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: No one sexualized it. We were just trying to think of a way to get you what you want.