The planes must go!

There have been so many stories lately of planes hurting birds. It's insanity! We can't let this go on a minute longer.

Here's what we must do -- we have to stamp planes out at their earliest stage, when they're just "babies". This means closing the factories that build the planes. We must! If we allow them to build more planes, who knows how many innocent geese may die? Surely it's clear that we have to act now.

I urge you to call your congress-critter and tell him or her to lash out at the airplane companies! Kill their incentives. Stamp out their financial streams. And insist that the world bank freeze their assets so they can't start making baby planes elsewhere!

Keep the skies free for birds!

PS: The geese had eight babies last night. They're so cute! I'll take photos soon.

Things swooping out of the sky

Speaking of the birds (and squirrels) that I feed, I experienced a first the other day. I was just opening the curtain to see who was eating at the Bountiful and Fertile Feeding Ground, when . . .

All the creatures scattered for their lives! In an instant, they disappeared into the shrubbery. And in the femtosecond after they disappeared, a huge, winged shadow passed over me as a hawk swooped down and, having missed his prey, shot back up into the sky.

Nature red in tooth and claw! And I seen it fer myself, maw! It's brutal out there, just brutal!

But back to fun and games -- I'm getting a kick out of the squirrels, all eight of them. Most scatter when I open my door but one heads right up the stairs to meet me, and then he sits up and begs. I can actually hand him a peanut! Now, this may not seem like news from outer space to some of you non-city-bred folks, but to me it was like feeding Godzilla a raptor. It was way jungley. I liked it!

Guess I'd better come up with a name for him, huh? Rocky? (As I've mentioned here before, I'm not good at naming animals). Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

Talkin' crow

Note: On my graphics blog (which you can see here), this post is accompanied by a photo of a crow sitting on an ice-covered pond, surrounded by snow. Here's the post:

This is my friend Crow sitting out on the ice in the morning, waiting for me to wake up. It may be the holidays but not for crows. Every day is about getting that next meal. Look at this poor guy! It's scary. As I understand it, birds have to maintain an internal temperature of about 105 degrees. How does a bird survive northeast winters? I don't get it.

Some mornings he'll be waiting for me high in a tree, perched on a leafless branch that provides no cover. He just sits there, constantly buffeted by the wind, and waits for me. How do they do this?

Ah, but this post is about talkin' crow so I'd best move on. And by talkin' crow, I mean me talkin' crow. Here's how it happened. I noticed that one crow (who I think is my original pal, Crow) alerts the others when I throw out the peanuts. He gives three short, almost connected caws: "Ca-ca-ca!" This means, "Dinner is served!" (or possibly, "The fool is throwing away perfectly good peanuts again!" I'm not sure.)

So now when I throw out the morning's peanuts I announce it with their call, doing my best impersonation of, "Ca-ca-ca!" I must say Crow looks at me oddly when I do this. He tilts his head to the side and locks eyes with me for a moment. But then it's all peanuts all the time, so it's not like my language skills hold his attention for long.

I will feed Crow and his family until the day I die. He can count on it. And I sure wish Spring would come soon so he could be warm again (and I could watch baseball).