hobbies – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Thoughts on House Finches

This morning, I got a snapshot of a male house finch sitting on the back porch fence post. He’s a proud looking fellow. I saw the female a minute earlier but could not catch a picture of her.

It’s spring; they’re probably a mating pair and we saw them last year. So, there will soon be eggs somewhere out in the woods past our back yard. There will probably be chicks soon.

Maybe the chicks will survive. I remember during the month of May in 2019, I was keeping watch on a nest of house finches just outside of my office window. I would go out every day to a skinny little juniper tree, part the branches, and snap pictures of the eggs and later, the squirming hatchlings.

One day, I heard a noise like the flapping of big sheets outside my window. When I finally looked out, I saw the biggest crow I’d ever seen, just taking off with all of the nestlings clenched in its beak.

The mother house finch arrived minutes later and searched frantically for her chicks for over half an hour.

It wasn’t until then that I learned I was at fault for exposing the hiding place of the nest in the tree. I went there daily and spread the branches, probably while the crow watched me from high above in the sky.

I thought I learned my lesson, but I didn’t. In May of 2024, a mating pair of house finches built a nest in our artificial Christmas tree right on our front porch, a step away from the front door. The ruddy male would feed the female, who had laid 4 eggs.

I set up a critter cam on a tripod and filmed them for days. Every time I hustled out there to get the camera to download the videos, I scared the birds off. We watched for 17 days. The typical time to hatching is about 14 days. I finally tossed the whole thing out in the back yard.

There are a red tail hawks, turkey vultures, and crows all over the sky. I hope the house finches know better than to build a nest in any of the big pots on our porch. I know better than to draw attention to them now.

First Sight of Robins Today!

I caught sight of a couple of robins today and managed to get a fair snapshot of one. They’re casing our back yard for nesting sites. I’m also wondering if they’ll attack their reflections in our windows now that Sena covered them with plastic overlays last year.

So far, they sit high up in the trees-and they just eyeball me.

Fractured Numismatics

I saw this article on the web about certain coins (state quarters) that might be worth a lot of money. I just raided our piggy bank for pennies and other chicken feed a couple of months ago and knew we had some quartesr.

As it turns out we have a couple of the year 2000 S. Carolina quarters; one was a P and the other a D.

“2000 South Carolina quarter

The 2000 South Carolina quarter was one of the first State quarters to be released. It may have extra value if it has extra strikes during the minting process instead of one strike.

A 2000-P 25C South Carolina (Regular Strike) had an auction record of over $3,000, according to the PCGS, valued due to its MS69 grade. Very few coins in this condition exist.

Estimated worth: $500-$2,500”

I peered at them with a magnifying glass but couldn’t really tell if it was valuable. We looked for a coin shop on line to see if we could get some assistance with grading the coins. There’s a coin and gun shop right here in town. Apparently, coin shops often deal in guns as well. The neighborhood looked a little rough.

So, I checked on the internet on a couple of coin collectors web sites and found an interesting YouTube on S. Carolina state quarters alone. There was a quarter worth about $3,500.

I saw another one on eBay that somebody was asking $2,500 for. On the other hand, I found another seller who had a quarter going for $23.

We’re not sure if one of our quarters is worth grading. Here’s a picture of it:

Saw a Banded Red-tailed Hawk in Our Back Yard!

I got a picture of a banded Red-tailed Hawk today in our back yard. It was pretty exciting. I can’t remember ever seeing one banded. I’ve gotten pictures of them occasionally, most recently before this in July, 2025. That one wasn’t banded.

I checked on the web for any reports of who might be tagging Red-tailed Hawks in Iowa. In recent months there have been a few sightings posted on social media sites. Other birds are being banded as well. There are people who are licensed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to tag birds.

The Hitchcock Nature Center in Pottawattamie County is located in Honey Creek, Iowa, which is near Council Bluffs.

The Iowa Raptor Project is involved in conservation, education, and rehabilitation of birds of prey.

OK, until I saw this video, I admit I thought the snipe was an imaginary bird, an idea I got from the movie “Up.”

Tango Boxing a New Hybrid Sport?

Here’s how I got off on a tangent about Tango Boxing, which honestly did sound like a hybrid sport combining dancing the Tango and boxing, you know, like chess boxing, in a ring with gloves and sustaining head injuries and dancing the Tango. I was amazed when I at first misread something in an article in Medical News Today about how to live to be 100 after age 80.

In the article some fitness person actually said: “From tango to boxing and everything in between….” I read it too quickly and thought she said “From tango boxing and everything in between.” You’re not going to give me a hard time about misreading that are you? It could happen to anybody, no matter how old you are.

Anyway, it set me down the rabbit hole and I even managed to confuse the AI assistant Gemini (give me a break, I never ask for this joker to help me; it just pokes its nose into all my internet searches) yet here’s what it said on one of my searches for Tango Boxing (my question was “is tango boxing about a combination of boxing and dancing the tango?”):

“Yes, “tango boxing” is a form of fitness class or exercise that combines elements from both tango dancing and boxing techniques.

It is not a traditional martial art or a specific, established combat sport. Instead, it is a workout designed to provide a low-impact, full-body fitness experience, leveraging the unique aspects of each discipline for exercise and well-being.

Key Aspects of Tango Boxing

Combination Workout: It blends the core elements of boxing (punches, jabs, crosses, hooks) with basic tango dance movements (box steps, pivots, coordination drills).
Focus on Fitness: The primary goals are to improve physical fitness, including cardiovascular endurance, strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination.
Rhythm and Timing: Both boxing and tango require a strong sense of rhythm and timing, and the workout emphasizes developing these skills for effective movement and body control.
Mind-Body Connection: The class format is designed to engage both the body and mind, as learning the routines and movements requires focus and quick thinking.
Improvisation and Expression: Much like traditional tango and individual boxing styles, the fitness class allows for personal expression and improvisation within a structured format.

This type of class, sometimes marketed as “Tango Fitness,” is a creative way to stay active and healthy, offering a unique alternative to standard gym routines.”

That’s the danger of AI and it could not be clearer why it’s answers should not be appearing at the top of any web search result. And you can’t turn it off.

Here all I was doing was chasing down my mistake and you see how easily AI gets misled. Some would call this an example of an AI “hallucination” although I prefer to think of it as confabulation.

I found out later that the Tango involves doing something called a “box step.” Those of you who know the Tango know what I’m talking about, even if I and AI don’t. Actually, let me correct that; AI could describe the Tango box step, which involves a dance pattern that forms a square on the floor.

So far am I OK? There’s no such hybrid sport as Tango Boxing? On the other hand, who can forget Muhammad Ali dancing around his opponents in the ring? He actually did sort of dance.

When all is said and done, the main point is how to live to be 100 years old and still be cool, strong, graceful, and joyful.

Starlings and More!

Sena got a video of a large flock of birds flying around in the outlot beyond our backyard. We thought they were all starlings, but I couldn’t focus enough on individual birds to tell for sure if there were other species mixed in with them. I couldn’t even confidently identify a starling although I’m pretty sure that’s what many of them were.

I think it’s not unusual for other small nondescript blackbirds to mingle with starlings. While we can’t make a case for the smallish flock being a murmuration, there was an impressive number of them. Trying to identify specific species by repeated attempts to focus and magnify using video editing software mostly led to my murmuring under my breath—mainly curses.

Starlings are often called pests and web sources say they are among several species of birds that spread disease. The Iowa State University Extension calls them “nuisance birds.”

My usual resource, Birds of Iowa Field Guide (2023 edition) by Stan Tekiela is a little more generous in the description of the European Starling, calling it a songbird which can mimic the songs of up to 20 species and can even imitate the sound of the human voice. Other web resources compare them to mockingbirds. Large flocks of starlings commonly mix with other blackbirds in the fall. Starlings were introduced to New York City in 1890-91 from Europe.

See if you can pick out the starlings in our video and other birds. I got mostly eyestrain from the effort.

A Few Thoughts on Calvinball Cribbage

OK, so Sena and I have been experimenting with a few cribbage variants in the last few days and I ran into this Calvinball comment on a Reddit cribbage thread about 10-card cribbage. Yes, people play that! I’m afraid to look on the web for 11-card cribbage although Sena asked about it.

Briefly, 10-card cribbage is usually a two-player game. Deal 10 cards each; 2 cards from each player go to the dealer’s crib; each player divides the remaining 8 cards into 2 four card hands, one for pegging and either one or both for the show.

As an aside, the Reddit thread person who started the thread about 10 card cribbage asked if anyone else ever played it. One commenter facetiously replied “Yes, there have been many many posts of Calvinball crib.”

You have to know where that term “Calvinball” comes from. I’m pretty sure it’s from another social media forum which plays a game called Calvinball—which is a whimsical, forever evolving game which has nothing to do with playing cards, is based on the comic Calvin & Hobbes and has no real rules whatsoever. Participants make it up as they go along. So, I think what the commenter might have meant was that 10-card cribbage is yet another of the many proliferating variants (some better than others) of the more well-established game, usually identified as 6-card cribbage.

Anyway, we found out later that there are two sets of rules for 10-card cribbage. The intent is to make the game play faster and yield higher scores.

Given that context, we played it both ways to 121. In the one set according to AI, you deal each player 10 cards and both throw 2 cards to the dealer’s crib. Each player divides the remaining cards into hands of 4 cards each. You play one hand only during the pegging phase and the other for the show (scoring the hand). It was pretty slow and didn’t yield high scores, partly because we used only the four card hand for the show.

And then there’s a Wikipedia article which says you peg with one hand and score both for the show. We got higher scores all around, the game was faster, and we both enjoyed it much more.

As a reminder follow up to the post about the 9-card and 8-card cribbage games, Sena still likes the 9-card variant but doesn’t care for the 8-card (neither do I) because it seems clunkier, probably because you need to bury cards under the deck. The 9-card variant has an on-line scorer which didn’t work consistently. We seemed to fare pretty well without it for the most part. The suggestion to play to 323 (up, back, and there again on a 121-hole board) seems like overkill. I’m retired but not that retired.

We Are Muddling Through 7 Card Cribbage!

We’ve been working pretty hard today trying to teach ourselves how to play 7 card cribbage. There’s not a lot of information on the web about the game. The gist of it is that you play to 181 and each player gets 7 cards with 5 cards to the dealer’s crib. You can have 4, 5, and 6 flushes but the 4 and 5 card flushes have to be in your hand. We found out about it on a website called Masters Traditional Games.

We’re not used to playing past the 121 hole in cribbage. We struggled over it until Sena finally got the idea that it must mean we just go back to the starting hole when you get to 121. We’re not sure why the goal is 181 points to win. Other goals are to play to 151, 121, or play to 61 three times.

The opportunity for big scores is higher in 7 card cribbage and they can be difficult to count. The highest score is 46 with cards 4,4,5,5,6,6 which includes the starter card. It took me a while to count it. One person said it was easier for him to get that than a 29 score in the 6-card cribbage game—which is very rare.

We also got new long sleeve cribbage shirts for the occasion. Mine says “That’s What I Do, I Play Cribbage And I Know Things.”

I’m not sure how often we’ll play 7 card cribbage. The games should play pretty fast because the scores tend to be higher than in the 6-card version. On the other hand, you can get pretty bogged down figuring out your score!

I Made a New YouTube Channel Trailer!

I made a new YouTube Channel trailer today since it’s been a couple of years since I made the previous one. Thanks for watching!

James Amos, MD (who prefers to be called Jim but his YouTube handle is @JamesAmosMD) is a retired psychiatrist who graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, did his residency, practiced and taught at University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC) in Iowa City, Iowa for about 24 years. Since retirement in 2020, he’s enjoyed bird-watching, taught himself to juggle, and plays cribbage. He co-edited and published a book with former UIHC psychiatry chair Bob Robinson, “Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry” in 2010 which is still available for purchase. Bob passed away in 2024 and all who knew and learned from him remember him fondly. Jim and his wife have made Iowa City their home for over 3 decades. Jim’s been blogging since about 2011 and you can read his current blog at Go Retire Psychiatrist. He’s mainly a humorist and has a certificate from Dad-joke University of Humour (DUH), even though he’s never been a dad and doesn’t really tell jokes per se.

My Balls Glow in the Dark!

Here’s another video on head stall juggling, this time using glow in the dark juggling balls. They’re heavier and I drop more often. On the other hand, when one hit the glass top coffee table, it didn’t leave a scratch! It did make a heck of a racket, though.

I did switch off between left and right for the off the head trick. It’s a lot harder using larger, hard plastic balls.

Juggling is quite a workout, too.