Category: Birds

No golden escalators here

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Going up. …

Herself and I slipped out for a short trail run before lunch yesterday, hoping to dodge the predicted rain.

She was taking a break from work, which continues although the feddle-gummint mostly doesn’t. I was taking a break from being indoors, the Monday Geezer Ride having been canceled due to the weather forecast. We are not Portlanders, ready and eager to ride nekkid in fair weather and foul, aiming wisecracks and buttcracks at Beelzebozo’s buttheads.

Our short-run loop is only a couple miles, and mostly flat — just 268 feet of vertical gain, with one lump going out and another coming back — and we were back at the ranch before the clouds opened for business.

And business was booming. Nothing like the Durango area, where Tropical Storm Priscilla really brung it and then some. The official tally here was 0.21 inch. But it felt like a lot compared with the usual nothing at all.

Just ask the lone bedraggled hummingbird who spent about 15 minutes camped at one of our feeders, which hang out of the weather beneath the back patio cover. Every so often s/he would glance skyward as though thinking: “Jaysis! Where is everybody? I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”

Freecipitation

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Splish, splash, etc.

What a gloomy day. The ceiling is all the way down to the deck and the drizzle is intermittent. Reminds me of Oregon, only without all the ICEholes and Natural Gourds wandering around, growing fungus in their footwear and moss on their north sides.

Ordinarily I’d slip out for a jog between sprinkles, but I’ve already logged two 5K runs this week and fear a third would leave me a smelly puddle of tears, shredded connective tissue, and bone splinters.

Still, slouching around indoors muttering over the news ain’t no day at the beach neither.

That Tennessee explosives factory? Holy hell.

Public “servants” trying to suppress free speech? Par for the course. Public excoriation for thee, but not for me. Shove the First Amendment right up their fat asses by attending your local No Kings! rally on Oct. 18.

Government employees being shown the door because … well, because Rumpleshitskin likes it? Remember his two-word catchphrase from the unreality show he keeps reliving over and over and over again in the throes of his growing dementia. He’s a man of few words, because he can only remember a few, and can pronounce even fewer.

And to top it off I’ve got one lonely, disheveled hummingbird parked at the backyard feeder, like the old soak lost in thought who just can’t seem to hear the phrase, “Last call. …”

Red dawn

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doooo. …

While we await reports from the Thunder in the Tundra, at which Vlad the Impaler will punk The Goldbug at one of our own Air Force bases, we’re enjoying a colorful sunrise behind the Sandias and some spirited aerial combat over the backyard hummingbird feeder.

It’s a good thing rufous hummingbirds don’t weigh 300 pounds. They’d rule us all.

Actually, now that I think about it, it just might be an improvement over what we have now.

Time to flip the bird?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
The oozlum bird, lifted from godsandmonsters.

Is it time to replace the bald eagle as a symbol of what used to be the United States of America?

Not with the turkey, which Benjamin Franklin considered “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.”

Rather, with the oozlum bird.

The oozlum, clearly a cousin of Ed Abbey’s fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird (see “The Monkey Wrench Gang”), flies backwards. This is either so it may admire its own lovely tail feathers, or because while it has no idea where it’s going, it likes to know where it’s been.

And when startled, it will fly in ever-tightening circles until it vanishes up its own asshole.

Though the oozlum clearly has the chops to be our national symbol, it must be noted that the bald eagle remains a distressingly apt depiction of the modern American character. In criticizing the bird’s inclusion in the Great Seal back in 1784, Franklin actually made a strong case for it in 2025. In a letter written to his daughter, Sarah Bache, Franklin wrote:

For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice, he is never in good case, but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: the little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the king birds from our country, though exactly fit for that order of knights which the French call Chevaliers d’Industrie.

“Bad moral character … sharping and robbing … a rank coward.” Good ol’ Ben. Still giving us the bird after all these years.

Not-so-little fluffy clouds

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
These are not the clouds The Orb was thinking about in 1990.

Clouds we got, sometimes. Rain, snow? Not so much.

The mornings are chilly in these early days of the Year of Our Lard 2025, but once the sun finally creeps over the Sandias, shortly before 9, things warm up considerably. The weather wizards predict a high of 60° today.

Yes, I said 60°. Six-oh degrees Fahrenheit. In January.

Miss Mia would like to invite the birds to dinner.

Good for the healthful outdoor exercise, for those of us who take it. Unless we’re talking skiing. Also, not so much for the plants and wildlife and drinking water come summer. See John Fleck for more.

In the meantime, we need not bundle up like the Michelin Man for running and riding so far this winter. It’s been so unseasonably warm that my brother geezers, who ordinarily are traveling to ski or working out in the gym, have called a ride for today.

In the early afternoon, of course. No need to wear the hair shirt. We are not children, with their barely tested HVAC systems fresh from the factory.

Meanwhile, Miss Mia Sopaipilla gets to bird-watch at the patio door, where I scatter a little seed for the house finches and dark-eyed juncos who don’t feel like battling the bigger birds at our feeders.

There’s a little bit of Sylvester and Tweety Bird going on there in her little mind. Bad ol’ puddy tat. …

In other news, the cuckoos in the House of Reprehensibles nearly give their Squeaker the bird. Says NYT’s Carl Hulse: “House Republicans certainly relish their internal drama.” Dinner theater for the insane.