I just saw her. Even though she’s lost her cover thanks to the dastardly White House, she still wears her mask. She didn’t have the three teenagers with her. I think they’re hiding in the tree because they’re afraid of the noise from the high school football game about 10 blocks away. She snacked on some purple grapes and dog kibble and then ran off, probably to watch the teens.
Just so you know, she doesn’t like peanut butter sandwiches and — as often happens in families — her teenagers don’t like them either. All of the other coonies love peanut butter though. And they all adore those small dark Italian plums, but those are out of season now, sigh. I also feed the wild birds. We’ve been stopping at Wild Birds Unlimited on Highway 101. Their bird seed is so much nicer than what’s sold in grocery stores. We get the “Olympic Mix,” specially formulated for birds on the Olympic Peninsula. It attracts every kind of bird — from quails to blue jays. Which creatures of the wild do you feed and watch? . . . O P E N T H R E A D . . .
Salman Rushdie is on Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria … I’m off to watch TV and read … see you all in the morn!
I hope BooMan’s home survived the RugRats he was entertaining tonight. I think he was feeding them dog biscuits.
Ever try sunflower seeds with your night prowlers?
It’s in the mix i get … but i’ll check out the price at the local store that sells raw sunflower seeds!
And last night I gave Valerie P. some raw peanuts, still in the shell, that were in the bird mix…. she loves those!
My mother grew up in North Dakota. She loved the owls.
As far back as I can remember there’s been a pair of Great Horned Owls at the farmstead(hutte’ to you Scandanavians).
Besides the usual hoot, hoot, hoot-hoot; these owls make another call which would be impossible to describe, but so unlikely sounding for an owl, that I had to track it down one night.
I feed nothing but oil-type sunflower seeds in the shell to the birds there, I get them free from the local co-op farmers elevator. All species seem to like those, even the wild turkeys. Only trouble is they fly up to the upper deck and then “leave their calling cards” as my mother says. Ha, ha, but they’ve only been around the last couple of years, so I don’t mind too much.
One more thing … posted this on the jazz diary too …
I have a little treat for you all.
Go to the official site for the new film about Edward R. Murrow….
On the intro page, you’ll hear Edward R. Murrow as portrayed by David Strathairn.
Then click on Skip Intro … and you’ll hear some lovely jazz. It’s so nice, soothing, softly sexy … calming … wonderful.
…just how much I LOVE David Strathairn? SO sexy!
THIS is a problem.
Darcy loves David Strathairn. I think she’s rented every movie he’s ever been in!
Ever see Limbo? Good one… set in Alaska. Gorgeous scenery too.
Seeing this picture makes me realize that I saw Valerie’s young twins. They were peeking out of a culvert near my house early one morning. I know they must be her twins, ’cause they look just like her picture, only littler.
Would you tell those stinkers to be careful? And tell them that I miss them? They loved playing in their “swimming pool” — a big unused cat litter pan that i’d fill with water and then drop grapes and plums in. They were sooo funny. They’d sit in the water, fight with each other over the grapes…
I am underneath the direct flightpath a group of Canada geese take from their overnight roosts in a wetland area near Greenwich to their grazing grounds in central London. They can be really annoying at 5 a.m. as the pass over at low level honking. Thankfully the parakeet that used to sit outside my window squawking seems to have become cat food and none of the other flock have taken his place. I look out over the Thames so often see cormorants sunning themselves on the bouys used to tie up ships and the occasional crane scooping up fish is the shallows.
The most I see (and hear during the mating season) are our local foxes. Just next to where I am there is a tiny area for wildlife – less than an acre. A pair live in the undergrowth there and are very successful at raising cubs. A couple of years ago at twilight I was walking through the park next to the nature area and the vixen came out and sat down looking at me. I kept very still and the dog fox did the same. Then one by one the teenage cubs ventured out of the undergrowth until I had seven foxes sitting virtually in a row watching me.
This by the way is about 4 miles from central London though it is not unusual. Often in the early hours you can catch sight of a fox trotting across Westminster Bridge.
hey,on TV today I saw one of the foxes running around inside an art gallery somewhere over in your neck of the woods.
Have not seen that one but if you go to some of the open parts of the Underground – where the tunnels are open to the air – you find that there are pidgeons with regular commuting patterns. Victoria to South Kensington on the District line is quite popular. You often see one hopping into a train carriage and off again a few stops down the line at regular times each day and using the same stations.
You just have to wonder sometimes when there’s some human quality to their logic patterns.
Maybe we ought to have a diary for bizarre animal/bird stories some slow weekend this winter. I’ve no doubt there’s a few around.
It’s been more decades passed than I care to admit since I’ve traveled the tubes. Do they still look like they did in all the old WWII movies, or have they been modernized some over these intervening years?
ve been a large number of changes to the internal and external designs. Virtually all the rolling stock is post 60s and most is fairly new. The main changes are to allow a lot more standing or luggage room near the doors. If you are in real anorak mode this .pdf file shows all the designs and has historical stock at the end.
I found the PDF very interesting, thanks. Might even print it out when I get some new ink cartridges.
I most likely traveled on the 1938 Tube Stock, and/or the O/P Stock. There probably weren’t that many of the 1959/1962 stock in use in ’66, and I don’t remember them being silver colored.
Last tubes I was in was in NYC, Feb of this year. Since I’m from the mid-west I felt like I was part of a movie set there too.
I wish we had foxes here, although peopel would probably flip out.
How is the fox hunting issue going?
the variety and numbers of critters I feed around here are probably not believable to most. There are the racoons, the squirrels, the muskrats, porcupines and skunks. . .chickadees, Canadian Honkers, cedar waxwings, Warblers, an amazing variety of Finch and of course, the deer and the moose. I have three apple trees that I leave most of the apples on and the deer and moose come to my front yard from the acres back behind me that front the river, and munch away on the apples.
Maybe I’ll put up a pic of my Moose family that visited a few years ago….
Night Susan. .
You are so lucky! If I lived in the country, I might see the Roosevelt elk and, of course, deer.
Skunks are SO cute!
And it sounds like I need you to pop over and help me identify some of the birds I feed. (Used to have a book that identified them and sometimes I have luck finding them on the ‘net.)
They are cute, adorable and they grow big here. . .in the 40 to 50 lb range. . .maybe it’s what I feed them. . .hmmm
One of my favorite moments that I wish I had a picture of, was one night I took out the bag of kitty crunchies to refill the outside cats dinner bowl (there were 3 of them at the time). As I went into the barn/shed where I fed them, I noticed they were all around their one large feeding dish, munching away. . .one, two, three, FOUR of them. . .Huh?. . .there, cheek to jowl with the three kitties, was a lovely large black and white skunk just enjoying the buffet.
Since I was directly behind the business end of the skunk, I quickly walked backwards out of there so as not to be forced to wear his/her odiferous perfume….eau de skunk! But it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. . .right next to the moma moose pressing her huge muzzle against my living room window to check out what I was watching on the TV.
We have quite a few critters and feed them. We have a possum, but rarely see him. The West Nile knocked out all of our magpies and crows but I feed the Blue Jays every morning. I go out on the patio and whistle and they come to the tree, and if I’m late they come anyway and screech. They come back later in the day if they haven’t had a successful hunt. They hide a lot of peanuts in the lawn and the rain gutters. Later the squirrels show up and hunt for their peanuts like some easter egg hunt.
I buy the costco bird feed, cheap and no filler and the finches and snow sparrows and titmice feed from a suspended feeder next to the window while the doves peck around eating the spillage below. And then there are brilliant hummers, gray, geen irridescent, vermillion headed also right next to the window. Good show, better than tv.
It’s so great to know that Costco’s seed has no filler! Wow…. we’re thinking of getting a card because we could save a lot.
Within two years, Costco will have built a new store near here. It’ll be on 14 acres. (This area, sigh, is growing what with all the rich Californians and East Coasters coming here to retire.)
Yea, one big surprise to me too after having spent on the grocery store stuff. It’s a 70% millet/30%sunflower seed mix which our finches prefer to the rape seed feeder nearby. You get 40 lbs for uh, like $8.00 or so iirc. Lasts a looooong time.
The three teenagers (god help her) may also be gone because this is the time when momma boots them out in the Racoon cycle. Sadly this is also when the racoon teenager mortality from cars is high. The teenagers are haveing to find new territories and they are inexperienced. One year I had two teenaged brothers hanging around all winter. When spring came we saw them less and less as they figured out how to live in the canyon.
One early summer night, one of the no-good teenage racoon boys, all grown up, snuck by to see if he could cadge some dog food. Following him was our local tan Western Fox, probably with the idea of stealing whatever Junior found. Following the Fox with exactly the same idea was Shithead the skunk! We closed up the house so fast! That was the summer the hoot owl moved in up the ridge and did away with the skunk infestation. Owls, being all optic nerve, have no sense of smell. Nobody mourned Shithead, he had long earned his name. We never saw the teenage no-good racoon boys again, but we’d see their tracks in the stream mud.
Rolfie, you know a LOT about raccoons! You might love the Yahoo list I’m on … they’re all nuts about raccoons, and a lot of them are licensed rehabbers so I learn so much from them.
The rehabbers taught me to stop feeding the raccoons cat food, which has too much fat for coons and can give them kidney problems, and instead to feed them dog food.
They also recommended lots of fruit and vegetables but my guys are BAD like your teenagers wee! They won’t eat any vegetables I’ve tried except, once, corn on the cob (that I also buttered for them). And the only fruit they’ll eat are grapes and plums. I’ve tried apples, peaches, etc. No go.
Tracks … that’s how I knew Valerie P. was around. I could see her wet footprints on my top step. She comes up and stands on her hind legs, looking up at my back door window. (I wonder how many times she has done that and I haven’t responded … I should teach her how to use the doorbell.)
I like to share some donuts with my kids and the pigeons and squirrels in the park. Not much else by way of wildlife in my neck of the (non-)woods.
They love you!
When Darcy was little, she’d beg me to take her to Ivar’s seafood bar on Lake Union in Seattle … she’d order a giant size order of French fries and end up throwing most of them to the ducks and the seagulls!
I don’t usually whore my diaries here but this story is just too outrageous to miss: Bush Blackmails the Senate.
Which creatures of the wild do you feed and watch?
Well, my wife and I both feed our 3 kids… That qualifies doesn’t it?
Also there are some racoons, rabbits, birds, and skunks that live around here, and they steal fruit and veggies from my garden.
I planted twice as many tomatoe plants as I needed, and added more strawberries to my little patch this year just so there would be enough for all of us!
I like to plant things like beans, strawberries, raspberries, grape tomatoes, etc., in the backyard more for the fact that the kids can get a snack right out there whenever they want.
The “other” wild animals seem to like it too.
There are lots of predators around here, so it’s not unusual to see a momma deer staying close to our barn/house area with her fawn(s) in the spring and early summer. There is a large group of momma turkeys raising their young in our woods and pasture. In the colder months, I feed anything that comes to my yard: ring-necked pheasants, deer, racoons, rabbits, all kinds of birds… I even have a sharp-shinned hawk that treats my winter feeders as it’s own personal taco stand. Predators? Black bear, bobcat and coyote are common predators. Saw a mountain lion once, while driving near here. Have pics of cougar prints, and hubby and I heard one scream/snarl one night. Had to check my pants for brown spots. Get this: I live in North Eastern Pennsylvania!! “Mountain lions don’t exist here.” Yup.
I have had the cutest little baby possum on the property lately…up in trees, in the bushes, scampering across the lawn. Sometimes just hanging and looking at me like a deer in the headlights. My 3 dogs have been going nuts over it. I was afraid it was going to eat my little long haired Chihuahua…I am sorry to report after spending the last 3 searching for its mother…the possum committed suicide. I found it dead in the pool this morning. It was so sad. I had to scoop it out with the net. Broke my heart. It was so cute, but without it’s mother it just was lost and couldn’t make it in the big city. It had a proper burial at twilight with the ash from the fires and the smoke covering the sun. My poor dogs keep going to the door and crying wanting to get out, hoping their new friend that they chased and barked at is still out back. They will spend the next few days looking for the little possum and then finally give up on finding it. That is my sad animal story for the night.
sorry about the big picture- I don’t know how to delete it LMAO- Hey it’s early..Sorry.
That’s what my only pic posting looked like! You deserve a 4 for that anyway!
Anyone using Firefox can delete it. It looked interesting but it seemed to expand beyond my screen onto my wall. I think Susan can fix it.
You can always e-mail me a photo and, if i’m around, i’ll resize it for you. And I can upload it to the BooMan server.
And I think KatieBird and Diane101 are also very good at resizing images…. probably others here too!
thanks for the tip. I used Image Host and that usually works pretty well so I think something went wrong at that end.
But there should be a comment delete or edit selection like for diaries.
I’ve got papa possum, momma possum and one little baby possum. Don’t know where other babies might be, surely there should be more than one. They come up nightly, one at a time to get the catfood and fresh water I put out for the three feral toms I am trying to tame down enough to catch and get fixed. So far 2 Toms are letting me barely scratch their heads, and all three are now staying on the porch talking to me while they wait for the food. Good signs. I’m up to 9 cats inside right now, so we can’t take them in ourselves, but the friendliest cat is really very tame now. I”m going to try to foster him out to a student of mine, if possible.
The other big wildings are pheasants. Here, in the middle of Detroit, are gorgeous, ring-necked pheasants. I can’t say we truly feed them, but even in our tiny yard, we make brush with seeds for them to eat. We don’t use any pesticides on our yard (only ones on our block), so we find them scratching the gravel on our paths like my grandmother’s chickens. And getting worms, seeds from the bird feeder when it’s up, or from the seed heads of some of the plants.
I wish I had pictures. Only have one, blurry one of the baby possum, none of the pheasant, and you’ve all seen feral cats galore. We have many other birds too, with the cats I’d expect fewer birds but our “warning cardinals” seem to follow the Toms and sound the alarm.
Pheasants are gorgeous! My dad used to hunt them and take me along when I was just 3 years old…. I have the photos. And when he butchered them, I’d peer inside them and was fascinated by the bright colors of their various internal organs. But, I never liked the taste of pheasant, and still don’t. And now I’d protest him slaughtering them! 🙂
And, you just reminded me of something I read in the newsletter from Wild Birds Unlimited.
They suggested that, since winter is coming, we make small piles of twigs and some brush… it makes a great place for the birds to snuggle and stay warm.
One more thing I didn’t know.
My dad took me hunting, too, but not for pheasants. I’m not sure there were any around where we went in the MO Ozarks. I loved the going and even the shooting at a target – but not killing or eating, and never would do it.
The twigs and sticks are a good idea. We have just the place, under our barberry “security” hedge. The cats don’t like it because it is stickery, and some of our downed branches from the park underneath would make a nice little place with some break from the cold winter wind as well. I’m not sure the pheasants stay here in winter, but we have a lot of wildlife that do.
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Democrats’ rising star
Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party
◊ by Barack Obama @dKos
I read with interest your recent discussion regarding my comments on the floor ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) during the debate on John Roberts’ nomination. I don’t get a chance to follow blog traffic as regularly as I would like, and rarely get the time to participate in the discussions. I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country.
Maybe some of you believe I could have made my general point more artfully, but it’s precisely because many of these groups are friends and supporters that I felt it necessary to speak my mind.
Nearly 800 comments!
Good-will is slaughtered by comments and ratings, I just cannot comprehend this —
Please communicate this with Dean.
You will keep each other in check and win 🙂
by jrdigre on Fri Sep 30th, 2005 at 14:06:03 PDT
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BooMan :: Please invite Senator Barack Obama to cross-post here, we’ll debate with due respect.
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I fear that people had the wrong expectations about Obama. He’s no firebrand or rebel. He’s strikes me more as a reflective, philosophical person.
And it’s very hard for first-term junior senators… they’re under a lot of pressure to go along and get along because their future in the Senate depends on cooperation and compromise.
It’s also a bit sad that people have put such expectations on him because he is so brilliant, so good-hearted, and because he is black. He needs time to grow into his role as a senator….
still undercover.
I thought I was feeding hungry feral cats but it turned out, it was fat, black and white “Sylvester” who was munching the left-over chicken and salmon. Actually, I call him that because of his habit of stalking bird feeders, and drooling while trembling with anticipation. I have not seen him catch anything though. No one owns Sylvester, he sort of belongs to the apartment building, as I recently found out.
Thanks for the bird feed tip, Susan. I am presently using millet on a recommendation from a nature site but the Olympic mix might work for Vancouver Island too. I’ll use that when I move to my new house. I now get small birds because the feeder is close to the building in a pine tree: the tiny pine siskins, chickadees, song sparrows, and the usual house sparrows.
I have a couple Sylvester types too that i feed. I put their food out in the morning so that they have a chance to eat before nightfall, when the raccoons come and finish it off.
I wish I knew the names of the birds like you do, Sybil!
So I can buy plain old millet for them too? I think that that’s very cheap in the bulk bins at the locally owned market — Sunny Farms — near Sequim.
A couple months ago, I bought raw peanuts at Sunny Farms, and put that out for the bigger birds like the blue jays. They seemed to love them. Nice to find another use for raw peanuts besides peanut brittle! 🙂
Wonder what else we could find .. about 20 years ago, I read an Audubon recipe for birds in the winter.
I think the ingredients were:
margarine
oatmeal
raisins
lots of peanut butter
honey (???)
and ???
It’s very sticky and icky. I’d put it in a big pan, or smear it on the frozen fence posts, and they’d eat every morsel.
I’m an avid bird feeder (none / 1)
So much so that I designed a special bird feeder Tri-Pad Bird Feeders.
The feeding post is outside my computer window and watching my birds is far more entertaining than TV, blogging etc.,
We also get bear, deer, skunks and one day a big porcupine walked through the yard while I snapped pictures of it (which I would love to share but I had the mini-cam button on so my pics move LOL)
“Time is for careful people, not passionate ones.”
by roseeriter (roseeriter@yahoo.com) on Sat Oct 1st, 2005 at 03:53:35 AM EDT
(Sorry! but the image was wide and i couldn’t read what people wrote … that’s what happens when you get old! You set your monitor to 600×800!)