I have an update on Sena’s patio tomatoes. The last time I wrote about this, there were virtually no slicer tomatoes although there were a lot of cherry tomatoes.
There are now visible slicer tomatoes in the pot on the right, which I’m sure will make it to our dinner table soon!
Today we saw this cool Red-Tailed Hawk on the fence—sort of, in a manner of speaking. This hawk was definitely not on the fence about getting brunch though. It would fly off the fence a few times and we expected it would come up with a mouse or squirrel or something—empty claws.
The woodchucks are too big for the hawk.
The experts say you can distinguish a male from a female Red-Tailed Hawk because the female is “25% larger.” I guess that might work if you saw them together—doing something X-rated.
On the other hand, there was a Red-Tailed Hawk named Pale Male that was famous in the New York City Central Park area. He got his name because his head was white. He took several females as mates during his life. They raised several eyasses, which was a new word for me today; it means young hawks. Mary Tyler Moore (“Oh, Rob”) participated along with other neighbors in protests about anti-pigeon spikes being removed and eventually they were replaced by “cradles.”
If you don’t remember the “Oh, Rob!” quote it was Mary Tyler Moore’s (as Laura Petrie) frequent complaint about husband Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) on the Dick Van Dyke show (sitcom in the 1960s). Give yourself a gold star if you thought of the X-File episode “Arcadia” in which Agents Mulder and Scully took the names of the Petries.
Anyway, the Red-Tail Hawk is an impressive bird. It was just not a lucky day for hunting.
Yesterday I noticed a hummingbird hovering about the flower pots on our porch. I hurried to get my point and shoot camera and shot video, through a window as usual and it was getting a little late in the evening too, so light was low.
Can I blame the bird for always looking like a blur—or not? Anyway, the video looks similar to others I’ve managed to capture in years past, except this one was the closest I’ve ever gotten to one. I tried messing with the clip using my video editing software, but I ended up believing it best to leave it mostly unmessed around with.
On the other hand, the one I got about 6 years ago was pretty fair for an amateur backyard birder. Same camera, same software although I was closer to the birds and I’m pretty sure I was sitting outside and very patient. They were very interested in our little feeder.
I think the hummingbirds we’ve seen are ruby-throated species partly because that’s the most common in Iowa. Typically, I think it’s just the males who have ruby-colored throats; our visitor didn’t.
I guess the usual way to attract hummingbirds is with a feeder but other people say there are other reasons hummingbirds visit us. More common to the indigenous peoples, they may be thought of as the spirits of those who recently died and are visiting those they were close to.
I don’t remember the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” so well but I’ve glanced briefly at web articles which connect it with hummingbirds, which has something to do with their ability to fly backwards or in a figure 8, maybe connecting that with reverse aging or infinity. Other symbolic connections are with joy, healing, and partnership. There are so many connections they seem to blur together—sort of like the bird itself as it hovers and flits from flower to flower.
I think this hummingbird just really liked Sena’s flowers.
Sena got some video clips of the backyard garden. The woodchuck was out there but pretty much left her stuff alone. She caught a clip of what looks like a house finch as well.
For some reason, possibly involving extraterrestrials, there was some guy juggling out there.
We were distracted from our cribbage match today when Sena saw a couple of goldfinches out in the back yard. One of them was clearly a male, bright yellow all over except for his black wings. The other was probably a female because it was olive colored. The sunlight must have varied because at times it looked like it had colors more like the male.
At one point the male seemed to be distracted by something we couldn’t see shaking the bushes behind them. They sure were hungry. I took the video with my Canon point and shoot. Sena reminded me about the Nikon DSLR and I rushed to get it. By that time, the goldfinches were gone. I have to remember to leave both cameras out after this.
I won the cribbage game today, for a change.
Just like a few days ago, yesterday evening while we were playing cribbage, Sena spied a slim indigo bunting. This one flew right up to our window! It was probably not the same one we first saw. That guy was buff, likely because he’d been branch pressing in the gym.
This character was slim and trim and looked like a lot of other birds we saw charging at their reflections in our windows last month. He really wanted to tell that other bunting where to fly off. I think he should work out more if he’s going to strut like that.
If we’d been sitting by the window all day long with camera at the ready, we’d have been unlikely to ever catch Slim Indigo peering and posing like he was on the bird walk.
It’s a random surprise when lucky breaks like that happen. It can take your breath away. I’m not sure why we’ve been lucky enough to catch a look at Slim, especially after over 20 years since seeing the last one. One answer to that might be here. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. By the way, that reminds me; Sena won the cribbage game—this time.
The one thing I couldn’t get by shooting video through a window is Slim’s voice. Clearly, you can see he was chirping at one point. So, here’s a link for that.
We were playing cribbage this afternoon and Sena spotted a blue bird perched on top of our crab apple tree in the back yard. I rushed to get the camera and got a quick video about 7 seconds long before it flew off. I pulled a few images of the back of the bird; it never turned around. We’re both pretty sure it’s a male indigo bunting, which Sena probably spotted about a week or so ago.
Click each image and then click the little “i” icon, which will open up to instructions on how to enlarge the image.
According to my field manual, it’s actually a gray bird without actual blue pigment in the feathers. They look blue because of how they refract light, similar to blue jays. I have personally not seen an indigo bunting in over 20 years.
And I won the cribbage game, which is pretty rare because Sena will not be defeated! How much excitement in one day can I stand?
Sena took video this morning of a pair of goldfinches having breakfast in our backyard garden. They were all about getting the seeds out of the thistle or knapweed, whatever that is out there. The female is harder to see, naturally, because of its muted coloration to make it less visible. The male is loudly dressed as usual.
Today’s essay by Dr. Moffic was pretty interesting about the role of video gaming in health for men and women. Computer games were emphasized but it got me thinking about hands-on games that you might thing of as being more old-fashioned—like cribbage.
I wrote a post about cribbage already today, but there’s another angle on it that’s readily adaptable to considering its role in promoting mental health for both men and women.
That reminds me that until yesterday and today, I was on a major losing streak in cribbage with Sena. Cribbage wins and losses seem to occur in streaks and I was beginning to wonder if I’d lost my touch.
There’s a cribbage connection with the electronic gaming realm in that we also play the computer video cribbage game Cribbage Pro. There are three levels, Standard, Challenging, and Brutal (the toughest opponent). We always play Brutal, and often win. There’s a way to play internet cribbage on Cribbage Pro, but we don’t. I prefer playing live. I think the popular view of cribbage is that it’s an old guy’s game. I suspect people think it’s a card game old men play on their lunch hour at the factory.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s very popular with women and kids and my guess is that no matter what your gender preference is, there’s a greater diversity of cribbage players out there than anyone realizes.
Playing cribbage promotes and maintains brain health by requiring you to practice basic arithmetic by counting your scores and pegging. You lose a little of that in Cribbage Pro although you can turn on the feature allowing manual counting of scores.
And the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) accommodates internet cribbage tournaments. It’s very popular and competitive. By the way, expanding on my other post today about how to verify your luck in getting a 29 hand in cribbage, you can easily prove it on Cribbage Pro by taking a screen shot of it!
Computer games are fine, but I like to manually shuffle the cards for cribbage. Sena likes to use the shuffling machine—which is very loud but gets the job done. I’ve not yet found a way to “accidentally” lose the shuffling machine (Can’t imagine where it went; must have grown legs and walked downtown!).
We always help each other count our scores. The one time we tried muggins rule, which involves penalizing each other for missing scores by taking them from each other, we just couldn’t seem to get it straight. And it wasn’t as much fun.
There are local cribbage clubs that you could get involved in although they might be hard to find. The nearest one to us is several hours away.
I used to play computer games years ago (although not Nintendo), but nowadays I feel more like Agent K in Men in Black II as he’s trying to quickly learn how to steer a spacecraft using what looks like a PlayStation 2 controller (I used to have one of those).
after K turns on the auto pilot during the chase…
Agent K: It is not automatic pilot.
Agent J: He doesn’t work when we’re in hyperspeed.
Agent K: I could really use a steering wheel!
Agent J: We don’t have no damn steering wheel! This is what we got! [turns off auto pilot] Didn’t your mother ever give you a Gameboy?
Agent K: What is a Gameboy?!?
I finally got pictures of gray catbirds this morning! They’re swooping around our back porch, like a lot of other birds have been doing lately. See my video from yesterday about the sassy robin!
The last time I got photos of them was about a year and a half ago. As Mr. Charles Muntz said in the movie Up: “I’ve spent a lifetime tracking it. Sometimes years go by between sightings. I’ve tried to smoke it out of that deathly labyrinth where it lives. You can’t go in after it.”
OK, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little. On the other hand, catbirds are more often heard than seen. Many times, all you hear is a mewing noise reminiscent of a cat, but raspy and mixed with a lot of other noises it mimics from other birds (which might be one reason why the literature says it’s related to the mockingbird). And while it doesn’t live in “deathly” labyrinths, the catbird can be almost invisible in thick shrubs where it builds its nest.
The catbirds have a rusty color under their tails, which can be hard for amateurs like me to get a snapshot of. But you can find a lot of excellent videos out there, like the one below:
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