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2815. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:08:34 PM i hate grackles and starlings....junkie birds in my book
2816. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:10:39 PM For a pretty black bird, you can't beat a red winged
 2817. Magoseph - 3/29/2005 10:19:57 PM Wonk, that is a great picture you took, my friend. thoughtful, we have this bird here. Flexy says we have these birds here because of the river and the swamps. 2818. wonkers2 - 3/29/2005 10:26:39 PM Thanks, Mago. Haven't seen any Redwing Blackbirds yet this spring. But saw a couple of Robins yesterday. Grackles can be nasty birds. According to the Cornell ornithology website they sometimes kill and eat small birds. The four or five I've seen in my yard seem to get along with the sparrows and wrens. 2819. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:26:44 PM but for striking color, i love the american goldfinch in summer plummage
 2820. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:33:59 PM yes i used to see the r-w black birds where i grew up a lot as we had a lot of ponds and brooks around. I've been surprised to hear them over the past few weeks on my a.m. walks.
It's very strange.
I walk down this back street, up the hill and back the other way on the main drag on my a.m. walks so the back yards of the houses on the back street meet the back yards of the houses on the main street. It's kinda wooded in that area, but not overly dense. Anyway, just in that one section, maybe 2 houses wide, it's always full of birds. Most of the time I'll see maybe a dozen crows or more. Then there was almost a week with a huge flock of starlings...easily a hundred or more...there with the crows, and it's in that section that I hear the r-w black bird too. I have no idea why the birds are so attracted to just that one narrow section, but there they are. This a.m when I walked past there I heard, though couldn't see, a number of gobbling turkeys too. 2821. thoughtful - 3/29/2005 10:36:24 PM In fact, as i recall it was in that same section that i saw three seagulls too. Go figure. We're probably 15 miles from salt water. 2822. arkymalarky - 3/30/2005 12:00:11 AM We went for a country drive yesterday and saw a beautiful gray heron. 2823. wonkers2 - 3/30/2005 12:05:44 AM  Squirrel portrait (last fall)
2824. jexster - 3/30/2005 5:09:15 AM Back in the Good Ole Daze, the High Life on Park Ave./Upper East Side, I took my dad to Le Bernardin. Now 81 he says he "will remember the evening the rest of his life"
Sent this NyT review
Still 4 stars after all these years 2825. Macnas - 3/30/2005 1:31:03 PM Birds in the garden at the moment:
A wren! Not often seen in my garden, in fact I cannot recall seeing one before.
Robins, always here, I think they are nesting in some ivy.
Black birds, always hopping in and out, nesting in the hedgerow behind our garden wall.
A Mistle thrush, a grand big fellow too, nearly as brazen as the robins.
Starlings, now and then will mob the back garden, you look out and there are 20 of them hopping and jumping around the place. 2826. Macnas - 3/30/2005 1:36:08 PM What did I see the other day but one of these:
Carrying a rabbit 5 times its own weight by the look of it too. Although stoats are common, it's rare you'd see one, as they are quick, furtive creatures who do not stand much observation. 2827. jayackroyd - 3/30/2005 2:45:35 PM Mac's robins aren't the same as the US variety.  2828. Magoseph - 3/30/2005 3:03:17 PM 
2829. arkymalarky - 3/30/2005 8:38:40 PM Oooh, Mac, how cool! I've seen a mink once around here, years ago, and a ferret in CO once when we were camping. They are so neat. To see one with a rabbit would really be wild.
We saw our first snake--a black one--on the road yesterday. I wish I could do a garden this spring, or at least spruce up the landscaping. We haven't done anything to the yard in a long while. 2830. arkymalarky - 3/30/2005 8:39:39 PM Those robins are really pretty. I'd have never guessed that's what that was. 2831. thoughtful - 3/30/2005 9:46:43 PM we caught a weasel once in a live trap... not sure the difference between weasel, ermine and stoat if there is any. Anyway dad took it to the dump to let it go, but man did it let out the most awful stench. Fortunately, it's not "sticky" like the skunk and the car smelled fine as soon as he let the thing out. 2832. Magoseph - 3/30/2005 10:21:15 PM Flexy last year was trying to live-trap the squirrels that were tearing holes in the roof and running around the attic chewing up everything. What he ended up trapping were vicious raccoons that were very unafraid of people. After an encounter with a particularly large one that went after him, he gave up the endeavor. It turned out he met an old-timer in the grocery store who told him to obtain a pail—fill it with old towels, soak the towels in ammonia and put the pail in the attic. He said, “You won’t have squirrels for very long,” and he was right. Squirrels have an unbelievable sense of smell and simply cannot tolerate ammonia. 2833. Magoseph - 3/30/2005 10:22:07 PM We had to replace the roof, though. 2834. thoughtful - 3/30/2005 10:50:40 PM That's good to know...a friend had a similar problem with squirrels in the attic..don't remember how he solved it though.
I love simple common sense solutions like that one though.
Another fellow I worked with was hit with carpenter bees. I'd never heard of them but apparently they can be very destructive on wood houses, like carpenter ants. Here's a shot of the damage they do to wood to make their nests.
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