Thinking in vain...

A bird ballet | Music Video from Neels CASTILLON on Vimeo.

I've already written 1.4.09 four times. I'm sure it'll get better.

A webcam in Szentgotthárd, Hungary captured this curious bird looking into the camera. The webcam is set to shoot only one frame in every minute, so what are the chances?

Via citynoise

OK, no I don't have a mockingbird that can mimic ambulance sirens - but I do have a loud, fat cardinal that wakes me up at 4:45am.

Alison Talbot, a sales assistant, says she has been woken up at 5am every day by the bird since it arrived in April.

She said: 'It's only a tiny bird but the sound is so incredibly loud, there is no drowning it out.

Full article.

Apologies for the lack of usual meaningless posts. I'm trying to be productive. :)

I am not a fan of Daylight Saving Time.

It's too dark. And it will only confuse the birds for a little while.


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The photo shoot went well. More later.


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I learned that Fed-Ex drivers need their own lane. This would be in addition to a lane for just truckers.


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The 5K training is going "meh." If any of you are runners/walkers and can tell me why my right knee is now popping and hurting at the back of my knee, I'd appreciate it. Oh, and also the side of my knee seems to be swollen. This is in fact, not the knee of the knee cap I broke, but the other one.


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Interestingly enough - this blog turned 1 year-old over the weekend. Thank you, Jetpacks :)

I really never thought I'd have people who check my blog daily, so thanks. :)












[Image from Pink Cake Box's Flickr Stream - I wish I could make cakes that looked like that.]

It's... back.

And it's loud. And it's acting odd. At 6:20am every morning this week, he lets out an excruciatingly loud and 2 second long call and then... nothing. Other birds start at around 7:00am... but he just chirps once. Perhaps he is know officially the King of All Birds in my little area of the neighborhood and he doesn't have to show off like he did last year.

This also reminds me that I need to trim the holly bush. Because this makes him go away.

UPDATE - 2.21.2008: I spoke too soon. He went all out this morning. Damn bird.

Cockatoo adopts a bowl of Creme Eggs

Like every devoted mother bird, Pippa the silver crested cockatoo is ready to defend her clutch of eggs to the death. Sadly for her, however, they will never hatch. For Pippa has adopted a bowl containing 20 Cadbury's Creme Eggs, which her owner Geoff Grewcock had intended to hand to friends and family over Easter.

Protective: Pippa won't let anyone near her Cadbury's cream eggs. The confused Cockatoo thinks she can hatch them

The 17-year-old bird squawks and flaps whenever anyone approaches. "When I first saw her perched there I thought it was hilarious but now I'm a bit worried about her," he said at his home in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

Mr Grewcock runs the Warwickshire Wildlife Centre and had kept Pippa there until two years ago when he decided to take her home as a pet.

He added: "She's always been a bit nuts but this is beyond belief. If you try to take one of the eggs she goes absolutely crazy.

"Now I'll have to go and buy some more so that my family have something for Easter Sunday - I'll be keeping the new batch well hidden."

Even Mr Grewcock's 12-year-old niece Megan felt the cockatoo's wrath when she reached for one of the eggs.

"She wouldn't let me have it," said Megan. "She went mad and started making a lot of noise -it made me jump."

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.

Roland Hilgartner at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen, Germany, and Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, witnessed the apparently unique sight in the island state’s Kirindy forest.

Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the moths. Birds can fly away.

But not when they are sleeping. The Madagascan moths were observed on the necks of sleeping magpie robins and Newtonia birds, with the tip of their proboscises inserted under the bird’s eyelid, drinking avidly (scroll down for images). This was during the wet season, so the scientists think the insects wanted salt, as the local soils are low in sodium.

But sleeping birds have two eyelids, both closed. So instead of the soft, straw-like mouthparts found on tear-drinking moths elsewhere, the Madagascan moth has a proboscis with hooks and barbs “shaped like an ancient harpoon”, Hilgartner says.

This can be inserted under the bird’s eyelids, where the barbs anchor it, apparently without disturbing the bird. The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears.

Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0581)

Via NewScientist.com

I do. And I finally got some. Ear plugs are fan-ta-bulous.

I also found out the little brown birds are common sparrows and we have catbirds. Which were mating yesterday (or fighting) and nearly flew into my head.

I've figured out the bird. It's a cardinal. A very loud, fat cardinal.

Of course, I also have a robin, a blue jay (which I thought was a crow), a woodpecker, and these little brown birds that I haven't been able to name yet.

The cardinal is also a bit of a bully, he won't let any of the other birds in the bird bath. He'll chase them all away and then plop himself in the middle and won't move.

So this is what I hear each morning over and over and over again: cardinal song

I did try the forest setting of my noise machine - it worked until I slept with my window open. I think the owl made him very territorial this morning. He was literally sitting on my windowsill "singing."

I even pointed the little guy out to a neighbor walking by and they agreed with me that he was abnormally loud.

"Failure to Launch" was recommended to me for one reason. Because the main character's room mate has a mockingbird outside her window that keeps her up all night.

And she tries to kill it... I can't kill mine. 1) I could never do that and 2) I live in a bird sanctuary.

I don't think I have a mockingbird, in fact I'm now on a mission to find out exactly what kind of bird it is exactly.

My bed is about 4 feet from a very large window... abnormally large on the second floor of my house. Right outside my window is nature's own apartment complex for bird's - a holy bush. Directly beside my window is the roof to our front porch. Birds like to perch there too.

I can not sleep past about 6:00, restfully. And this morning the bird was up extra early about 5.

So far a pillow over my head and a white noise maker at max volume to drown out this little bird has not worked.