Cop Car's Beat

Nesting report

There are several bird nests around our yard about which I know. I visited each of them early this morning.

    Mallard duck (on the ground in nook of front foundation) - Mama was not on nest, total of 5 eggs, 3 eggs broken up. Ferel cat that hangs about our yard may/may not be a factor.

Addition of 5/2/2013 - After not seeing the hen on her nest all day, yesterday, I took a closer look. It appears that there were a total of 6 eggs, 5 of which seemed to have hatched ducklings. (Thanks to HH for suggesting the possibility. I was so convinced that the nest had been there for only a couple of weeks that the possibility had not occurred to me. Duh!) A neighbor had told me of seeing a mama and several fuzz balls cross the street at her house (the most likely crossing that the mama would use to get her ducklings to the pond across the street) and I am now convinced that she saw "our" ducklings!

    House finch (in miniature swing hung near ceiling of front porch) - Nest has seemingly been abandoned for the past two weeks.

    Unknown (in bluebird box in back yard about 20 yeards from house) - A nest has been built within the past week, no eggs. It doesn't look like a bluebird nest to me, but we have seen a male bluebird sitting atop of the house on two or three days. Of course, we've also seen a red-shouldered hawk sitting there and I'm pretty sure it is not a hawk nest!

    Red-shouldered hawk (about 10 feet below tip-top of old walnut tree, near the creek, in the woods) - Mama sitting on nest. I don't have a vantage point to detect any little heads. We have suspected that the nest was there for the past couple of weeks, at least; but, I had not gone back to check it out.

First-of-Season (FOS) Sightings

FOS (for our yard) birds hanging about during my inspection tour included an orange-crowned warbler and a couple of house wrens. Over-flying were FOS for our yard: cattle egret, little blue heron.

Yesterday's FOS birds for our yard: ruby-throated hummingbird, Myrtle warbler.

Poor birds

Previously, we've "discussed" how the bountiful snow (well, bountiful for around here) that fell on March 25 (see Photos) affected the birds. I pontificated that, "The birds are equipped to cope, for the most part; but, snowy weather makes it easy to gather a goodly crowd at our feeders." Freezing rain is another matter. Here are the words that another birder posted to the Kansas bird list (published online and maintained by Kansas State University - I subscribe to email delivery), yesterday.

"This morning I had to rescue two of our purple martins who had become stuck to their metal house by the tips of their wings and tails because of the frozen rain we had last night.  I freaked them out when my husband lifted me up to their house with the tractor bucket. The female lost a couple tail feathers and managed to get herself unstuck.  The male was more quiet and allowed me to pull the tip of his wing loose from the porch of the house.  He was stuck pretty good. 

"They are all fine now but cold."

Another birder had replied:

"Kinda like sticking your tongue on a frozen ice tray I suppose.  Very tired of this strange weather."

Yet a third birder wrote about a bird in Manhattan KS (about 150 miles NE of here):

"Two minutes ago I saw an ill-timed Blue-gray Gnatcatcher outside my office window in Manhattan. Poor little guy was hopping around like crazy, probably trying to warm himself, wondering where the heck all the gnats are.  I don’t like his prospects for survival the next 24-36 hours.  He didn’t look particularly plump like he could go on an extended fast.

"I love snow.  In December, January and February.  Not so much on April 23."

The weather channel, last evening, presented the data for March 2012 versus March 2013, here in Kansas. In 2012, average temperature (whatever that means) was 46+ degrees; in 2013, 32+ degrees. Average of all years is about 34 degrees; so, this year was actually closer to "normal" than was last year. Last year produced the warmest year in 120 years, here.

In March of 1967, we moved back to the Wichita area from the Seattle area. The day on which we drove into Derby (the 8th), the temperature hit a low of 0 degrees (Fahrenheit), as reported at McConnell AFB about three miles north of Derby. On the 11th, the temperature hit a high of 88 degrees. That is what I call "strange" weather.

Addition of a few hours later:

I saw a blue-grey gnatcatcher in our back yard - first of the season. Obviously, it's not likely to have been the little bird from Manhattan; but, at least one blue-grey made it through the 25-degree temperature of last night.

Photos

Below are some photos from Monday morning. The first two are of a male slate-colored (dark-eyed) junco and a female house finch.

Below is the scene on our patio (the rain gauge on the table).

Below is one frosted pane of the little bay window in our kitchen.

Below is the scene through the breakfast room sliding door.

Looking forward to seeing passenger pigeons

From slashdot.org:

"Lazarus Project" Clones Extinct Frog71

Posted by samzenpuson Monday March 18, @09:39AM
from the welcome-back dept.

cylonlover writes "Australian scientists have successfully revived and reactivated the genome of an extinct frog. The 'Lazarus Project' team implanted cell nuclei from tissues collected in the 1970s and kept in a conventional deep freezer for 40 years into donor eggs from a distantly-related frog. Some of the eggs spontaneously began to divide and grow to early embryo stage with tests confirming the dividing cells contained genetic material from the extinct frog. The extinct frog in question is the Rheobatrachus silus, one of only two species of gastric-brooding frogs, or Platypus frogs, native to Queensland, Australia. Both species became extinct in the mid-1980s and were unique amongst frog species for the way in which they incubated their offspring."

From WPClipart, a picture of a female passenger pigeon, below.

Hawks & Ducks

Hunky Husband yelled for me to "Come - quick!" When I got to the living room, he wanted me to look at a hawk that was perched on a wrought iron feeder-support staff at the edge of "my meadow". I couldn't see it because I had my computer glasses on. By the time I retrieved my driving glasses, the hawk had moved but was still in sight. It wasn't obvious to me the species we were watching (in our yard I expect it to be either a red-tailed or a sharp-shinned), so I tiptoed over to get a pair of binoculars. I still didn't have the species pegged; so I went for my camera, put the longer lens on it, and started snapping pictures.

While I was screwing around with the camera, a second hawk (just like the first) alit near the first hawk. I did not get a picture of the two together, but I did get a dozen frames (not all in focus) of one of the pair. I have tentatively identified the hawks as a species that we've not seen here, before - (see below the fold after you've decided what you think it is.) I would appreciate your opinion either confirming or denying my identification. In posting the photos I have cropped and lightened them; but, I have not changed the coloration. Colors are rather dull due to our overcast sky. The hawks were southeast of my position (I shot through the kitchen window, looking straight back into the back lot) and the sun is hidden but behind the hawks and to my left as the time was about 8:20am.

By the way: HH concluded, and I concurred, that the hawks were worming - pulling worms from the wet ground.

I eventually tired of holding the camera in readiness to catch the hawk in flight (or at least with its wings upraised) and left the scene. The hawk left, too. About an hour later, the hawk returned and stuck around for another 30 minutes or so - of which we know. Here are three photos of the hawk - the last one taken through rain.

The next photo was added at 5:15pm

Note that both hawks are in this photo. They have hung about all day!

The hawk action was in our back yard. In the front yard were three mallard ducks - two drakes and one hen.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 Feet!

No, that's not how much new snow we received last night (which was about three inches), but the maximum length between bounds of which a deer left tracks in the snow. Hunky Husband and I were amazed to see the long length between tracks, as seen from our windows; but, I just went out to measure and it was almost precisely 14 feet. There were shorter intervals between some tracks; but, that was the maximum.

The following photo shows the tracks of several deer as they visited our feeders and frolicked about the yard. (The tracks are more easily discerned in the larger version that is observed by clicking on the photo.)

Below is a photo showing the front of our house and how pretty the foundation plantings are with their coats of snow.

To add some spice, we close with a photo of a lady at her bath.

Birds in the snow

Our bird feeders have been hosting a fair number of birds these snowy days. For anyone who hasn't already seen quite enough of my bird photos, here are some more.

On occasion, a small flock of rock pigeons wheel above our yard on their flights between commercial places and farm fields. Unusually, this one (two photos, below) stopped in to peck around the seeds that had been scattered for ground-feeding birds, on our patio.

Earlier this afternoon, I spotted a sparrow skritching about in the underbrush (they repeatedly leap a few inches into the air while scraping the detritus - snow, in this case - backward with both feet), where I had tossed some seed while refreshing our feeders next to the woods. It took me a while to identify it and its companion who showed up later as fox sparrows. In the shadows of the brush, the coloring was pretty non-descript. Fox sparrows are usually pretty secretive; but, one of them showed up under the feeders below our living room window.

Also out of hiding, today, came an American tree sparrow - of which I have no photo. From yesterday, however, come more photos. First, one of our resident Carolina wrens.

While considering the wren, the next photo was taken Thursday - wren with peanut firmly in beak.

Next, an aerial ballet for siskin and house finch.

A split second later, I got this shot of the pine siskin flashing its yellow more blatantly!

And the finches settled back in to snarf up more black oil sunflower seeds.

 

Undergraduate physics lab for felines

Thanks to Math is ʃexy for having embedded the following video on their blog.

Grandmother Hall's comforter - plus a turkey photo

The first photo, below, shows the front of a comforter that (my mother told me) my paternal grandmother made from her (and Grandfather's?) wedding clothes. Over the years (about 100 of them, give or take - the wedding was in 1908), the batting had clumped and shifted and torn so badly that the comforter was unusable. As my sewing machine was clattering and skipping stitches (as opposed to its usual beautiful stitching), I knew that I wouldn't be using it for a while - until it had been serviced and, possibly, repaired. (I took the machine in for servicing, yesterday, and they said it would take about one week.) Thus, I started disassembling the comforter. My intention is to keep the front and back as intact as possible while making the comforter into a quilt.

The lighter pieces are from muslin. If you are familiar with old, old fabrics, you know that muslin had about the weave and heft of well-made cheese cloth. Thus, many of the lighter pieces have holes worn through by abrasion of cloth edges at the seams. The large, black squares are a hefty, highly textured material that is in good shape. The smaller, navy pieces are a plain weave; but, are a little tighter, heftier weave than the muslin and are almost all in good shape. (For those who wonder at the bits scattered over the surface of the quilt: they are tufts of thread. Grandmother had used two strands of yellow-ish tan and two strands of rusty red threads to tie knots - intended to keep the batting from shifting.)

The back of the comforter, below, is a twill woven of a fine-gauge yarn - wool, I think. The back is sewn from the gores of a skirt - alternating direction to provide uniform width. I suspect that, at some point in its life, the comforter spent time (perhaps years) folded at the foot of a bed - which would account for the bleached look of one end (which is the "foot" end). Originally, I believe that all of the panels were of the same, deep green. (Note the patch in the foreground.) One panel is badly spotted and has several holes (some of which had been patched on the inside), so I am pondering the adviseability of replacing the whole panel or of applying one large patch (probably on the inside, with top hand stitching around each of the holes - the way that Grandmother taught me to make a neat patch!)

Today, at the office, I was unable to work (computer problems that were not solved within a couple of hours); so, I dropped by a quilt store where the owner is having a going-out-of-business sale. (The owner, at age 87, has decided it is time to retire!) They had no woolen fabrics; but, I was able to pick up wool batting (photo, below) for the quilt that the comforter is to become.

Finally, because I know that one of my blog friends grooves on turkeys, a photo of our turkey family that has recently returned after an absence of several weeks. Originally, we had a mother and nine chicks (see Young Turkey Family). Now, the family is down to seven, total, and I can no longer tell the hen from the chicks. Unfortunately, one of the turkeys has a lame leg.

Cranebow

Mike Umscheid, a wonderfully talented photographer recently had a photo shoot at Bosque del Apache (Woods of the Apache), a bird-watching sanctuary that I frequented when I lived in Albuquerque, a drive of about 1.5 hours North of the bosque. As Umscheid's photos are copyrighted, I won't upload any of his photos; but, this is the link to his photo (taken earlier this evening) that he titles Cranebow. (I recommend clicking on the photo to fill the screen.) This photo is one of the more spectacular photos of a rainbow that I've seen posted, and has the added benefit of showing off a few sandhill cranes.