What do 94% of the people who donated to embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election campaign in 2015 have in common?
They’re all white.
Amid controversies over cuts to public services and education in disproportionately poor and minority neighborhoods, and months before suspicions over the mayor’s role in suppressing inquiries into the police killing of 17-year-old black teenager Laquan McDonald became a major controversy, Emanuel was financing his $24.4 million campaign almost exclusively via white people, a new study finds.
About 94% of donors to Emanuel’s campaign were white, even though white people comprise just 39% of Chicago’s total population, according to the new report, from progressive think tank Demos. Emanuel’s donors almost entirely (84%) gave large contributions of $1,000 or more. A staggering 80% of his donors had an annual income of at least $100,000 or more, despite just 15% of Chicagoans making six figures.
“What’s so extraordinary about the Chicago donor class is for such a diverse city to have such a white donor class,” study author and Demos policy analyst Sean McElwee said in an email. “Though data are still preliminary, Emanuel’s donor class does appear whiter than the other mayors of diverse cities I’ve examined.”
Additionally, just 36% of Emanuel’s donors actually lived in the city of Chicago.
@satby: I keep a bird journal and by my informal observations the hummingbirds should be back to my place next week. I’ve got the nectar in a jar in my fridge ready to go.
5.
SoupCatcher
I giggle like a schoolboy every time I see a quail run.
6.
Betty Cracker
@redshirt: It is a birder’s paradise for sure, so we’ve got that going for us. Just about every morning, a three-bird flock of sandhill cranes fly (noisily!) over my yard on their way somewhere to the west and then fly over again on their way back east at sunset. I don’t know for sure that it’s the same birds, but I like to imagine them clocking in at a golf course to peck through the greens for bugs all day and then clocking out again to fly home.
Flickers. About as cool as I can get to a feeder in my urban hellhole. But had a Sharp Shinned chowing on a junco winter 2014-15. Got a couple of crappy phonecam pics of it. (Birder friend pretty sure it’s was a sharpie not a Cooper. Hard i.d.)
8.
A Ghost To Most
Crows and ravens, because they are so smart. It’s a good thing they don’t have opposable thumbs.
9.
JCJ
I love it when scarlet tanagers and indigo buntings show up in the back yard. I also like seeing sandhill cranes in flight.
As to Betty’s question, my favorite bird, by far, is the black capped chickadee. It’s the only bird that hangs around my house all year long – how they survive in -20 degree temps in winter I can’t fathom – and they’re friendly as heck. I’ll often be working in the woods and they’ll gather in the trees around me, talking. Sometimes quite close. Also, they’re the forest leaders in arboreal forests, as many other species follow them around, relying on their communication network. I think even squirrels and chipmunks rely on their warning calls.
Married women, who turned out for Mitt Romney over Obama by 53 percent to 46 percent, have an overwhelmingly negative view of Trump. Seventy percent of them view Trump unfavorably, according to Purple Slice online poll conducted by Purple Strategies for Bloomberg Politics and released earlier this month. Married women choose Clinton over Trump 48 percent to 36 percent. (The married female vote would be split 43-to-43 percent if Clinton was facing Cruz, according to the poll.)
“There’s a 21-point gap between where [Trump] is and where he needs to be just to match Romney, who lost,” Douglas Usher, a pollster for Purple Strategies, told TPM.
An early April Democracy Corps poll conducted for the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund found numbers not quite as ugly but still troubling for Trump. He beat Clinton among married women, but by only 3 percentage points. Meanwhile, Clinton slaughtered him among unmarried women 73 percent to 21 percent.
“Married women are supporting Trump by a slight margin and unmarried women are giving Hillary Clinton a 52-point advantage. That’s huge,” said Page Gardner, president of the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund.
Considering that the electorate is likely to be majority female, losing the largest demographic by these numbers is completely fatal. Trump would need to win men by even larger numbers, and that’s incredibly unlikely unless only white men vote.
12.
A Ghost To Most
@p.a.:
Flickers are a royal pain in the ass at my house. They have learned that if they drum on my metal chimney cap, they can make much more noise, both outside and in.
13.
chopper
boobies!
wait, what’s this about birds?
14.
Cacti
If I had a spirit animal it would be the crow. Intelligent, mischievous, resourceful, and not likely to win any beauty contests.
@Betty Cracker: Heh. Reminds me of an old WB cartoon where the sheepdog and the coyote clock in for a days work, all friendly.
16.
Mary G
We almost lost all our pelicans in the 60s and 70s due to DDT, but they’ve made a major comeback since it was banned. There are now hordes of them hanging out around the harbor and beaches. I love to see them suddenly plummet into the water and come up with a fish flopping around in their pouch.
Depends on the mood. Usually happy with LBBs because; like the streamline deco nuthatch look, titmice, juncos and there were some fun crows in Sweden with grey and black bits. Stellar Jays because they’re the squawk of childhood.
18.
? Martin
My favorite bird is probably the SoCal wild parrot. They’re a bit hard to find and it’s just such a surprise to find a few dozen parrots flying around.
19.
Wiesman
My favorite bird is the Baltimore Oriole because of Brooks Robinson.
20.
grascarp
Bald Eagles at the dump, filthy from scavaging and you can walk right up to them…and get the full-frontal stare.
21.
Cermet
@? Martin: As I now understand the rules, as set down by the previous inferior court (not minus scalia), only white males should be allowed to vote. There, problem solved for the Rump.
@A Ghost To Most: the other thing about Flickers: they love carpenter ants. If the birds really like your yard, it may be a bad sign re: the ants. Beware planting peonies. Carpenter ants love the nectar, and they may decide to nest near that food source. I tore all mine out years ago.
23.
A Ghost To Most
Also, pileated woodpeckers, cause damn, they’re big.
just 36% of Emanuel’s donors actually lived in the city of Chicago.
That’s disturbing. What do they want from him? Or what are they paying him back for?
26.
A Ghost To Most
@p.a.:
Thanks for the info. I see flickers in my yard almost daily, and we do have some peonies. I like having them around, except when they are drumming on the chimney. That can rattle your fillings.
@efgoldman: Definitely no cardinals. The bluejays come and go. I get the idea one flock flies south while a flock from further north stops by briefly, then continues on.
Unlike any previous winter I’ve been here, the finches, both gold and purple, were here since December. I assume my birdfeeders kept them here, but also obviously the incredibly mild/tame winter.
The Mountain Chickadee, also known as the “cheeseburger bird” because of its three-syllable call (“chee-err-err”). When I lived in the Sierra, it was the welcome harbinger of spring, and its call was nearly always accompanied by the sound of snow melting off roofs in a constant patter.
Also the African Gray parrot. I had one for years, until Mrs. Elmo’s COPD made it impossible to keep a bird in the house any longer. She would sing, “You are my sunshine,” (although it mostly took the form of “sunshine, sunshine, ha-PY SKIES!”) and she would yell at the dogs, and we started a call-and-response with her where we would call “Marco!” and she would respond “Polo!” that my wife and I continue with each other to this day. She was unusual among hookbills in that she never, ever, not once not even a little bit, offered to bite any other living creature. All parrots will bite, but not she.
I agree — not the most beautiful, but certainly one of the brightest and funny. Also crows are excellent parents and have clans that take care of each other when crows are sick and die or leave biddies to care for. Remarkable.
36.
Miss Bianca
@satby: I’ve got some hummies (or maybe it’s just the same one who keeps coming back). Got one feeder out. Snowing now – somewhere in a friend’s stash of photos from a few years ago is a hummie at that same feeder, feathers all floofed out, with a little snow cap on his head, looking grumpy as all get-out. It’s hilarious.
@jeffreyw: Speaking of bird photos…That’s a “holy crap!” photo if I ever saw.
37.
Brachiator
OT. Trump is coming to Southern California tonight.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is bringing his campaign to California and has picked the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa for a kickoff rally Thursday night.
The 7 p.m. event comes as Trump gears up for California’s June 7 primary, which could determine whether he reaches the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination in advance of the Republican National Convention in July.
Both backers and foes of the polarizing billionaire are expected at the 8,200-seat Pacific Amphitheatre, where the rally will take place.
@MomSense: Mrs J found it on Facebook, I hope it’s a ‘shop but I fear it isn’t.
39.
elmo
@jeffreyw: Holy crap! Any other info? did the cat manage to get away?
40.
Trollhattan
@grascarp:
Do you live in Alaska? I correspond with a guy living on an island up there where they call bald eagles “dumpster chickens.” How fun is that?
41.
A Ghost To Most
@jeffreyw:
Wow, great picture. One more reason our cats come in before dark (mountain lions).
@elmo:
I know that call from backpacking the Sierra. Always whistle back and can sometimes carry on a lengthy conversation. Assume the response is something like, “You are the biggest, smelliest bird ever! Over.”
46.
currants
@scav: Oh! I’m pretty sure those are magpies–I loved them, but my family thought they were pests. At first I thought they were crows too because they occur in similar places, but in Swedish they’re called skata and that translates to magpie, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the US (not New England anyway). If memory serves, they were (long, long ago) brought by … I want to say Chinese nobility? It was 40 years ago but I still remember that much, so at least there’s that.
47.
JustRuss
Great Blue Heron. Love those huge, slow-flapping wings. Whenever I see one fly by I expect to see a brontosaurus(that’s right, I said it!) grazing in the distance.
@Stacy: No, not my cat. I have been hearing a hoot hoot close by after dark, though. We try to keep ours in after dark due to coyotes, and now another reason, alas.
49.
Origuy
Driving to work this morning through downtown San Jose, I saw a raptor being harassed by a smaller bird. I see hawks all the time, but usually out in the rural areas closer to Palo Alto. Going at 60 mph, I couldn’t identify the type, but it might have been one of the peregrine falcons that nest on a ledge at City Hall. They’ve been there since 2007 and have fledged a lot of chicks, two this year.
50.
Downpuppy
@redshirt: We have a pair of cardinals this spring. The male likes to perch in a still leafless tree to the east of us in the evening, then turn so he’s suddenly a huge red glare. The female showed up in the hedge just outside our living room window a couple weeks ago. I’m still getting mocked for saying Cedar Waxwing.
51.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
1) all raptors
2) cardinals
(limited to birds I actually see)
The Southern California coastal roadrunner, now extinct. Used to have them run around my house when I was a teen.
Also, that bald eagle that just made the news by feeding her chicks a cat. Lotta butthurt over that one. Hey, cats are prey too.
54.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: Wow! Hard to believe an owl could carry a cat off, even a big owl! Can’t fault the owl, though. Lord knows cats kill a lot of birds — maybe it was avenging its species! I bet that cat got away, though.
55.
Trollhattan
@currants:
We have yellow-billed magpies near the rivers and oak groves. They were hammered when West Nile arrived (all corvids are susceptible) but seem to be rebounding. Much fun to watch scrapping with one another. Our other corvids are scrub jays, which hang around the neighborhood and battle the squirrels for food, and crows by metric zillion. Those descend on downtown and beshat the streets and sidewalks all winter long. Lovely.
Bluejays seem to follow me around. G thinks it’s just confirmation bias, but even he had to admit it was a little weird when one landed on a bench next to me at the Huntington and started trying to chat me up.
I blame Mark Twain.
57.
Trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Had no idea California ever had roadrunners. Have seen a few in Arizona and New Mexico but would love so see them here.
When my mom and I were driving from Naples to Orlando, she was really fascinated by all of the bald eagle nests along the highway (at least, that’s what we were told they were). I can’t remember if she managed to spot one in flight since I was the one driving.
60.
Trollhattan
@JustRuss:
Fantasy needs Noah riding the brontosaur, like at the Creation Museum.
@Mnemosyne: I don’t like bluejays. They’re rude, loud, and they eat the eggs of the smaller birds. Plus they scare all the other birds off the feeder.
62.
currants
@Betty Cracker: I know they’re noisy but I love the sound of sand hill cranes. It was one of the first birds I heard and learned to ID in Florida (visiting friends). That and the Chuck-wills-widow: although I never saw it, I loved hearing it at night. Around here (New England) the turkeys crack me up in the mornings, and the sound of wood ducks means spring is here. So no favorite, but the Great Blue Herons might be close: they are so elegantly stately and incredibly narrow for their height, and glimpsing an above-pond flyby when I’m looking out the window is a moment of grace. This past winter we had one who came and preened then napped in the sun out front almost every afternoon, and I never tired of watching its turn, approach, and landing.
Hummingbird duels in particular. Most of the videos on youtube are just around feeders which are boring. Duels (birdfights really) can extend over 100 feet. Here’s a duel (don’t know if it is ruby throats) that shows a little more scale.
@Mnemosyne: Could have been bald eagles and ospreys too if you were near water (which you almost always are in FL). We’ve got tons of ospreys in my neighborhood. The power company puts nest platforms up for them so they won’t fuck up the light pole doohickeys with their nests.
66.
currants
@Trollhattan: So where are you? We have West Nile, but we don’t have scrub jays here, just blues.
An ump who was watching Brooksie take ground balls in practice before an O’s game famously remarked, That guy plays like he came down from a higher league.
68.
Bill Arnold
Burrowing owl
(Have only seen them once, south side of the Salton Sea)
Hummingbird duels in particular. Most of the videos on youtube are just around feeders which are boring. Duels (birdfights really) can extend over 100 feet. Here’s a duel (don’t know if it is ruby throats) that shows a little more scale.
American Kestral
In particular, the “steady-cam” head movement that allows them to hover and still see prey. (That’s really real!)
(Similar comment in moderation can be deleted)
@currants: I love their racket too. People who haven’t heard them before are always impressed by just how loud they are. Ever seen sandhill chicks? So cute! A little ball of fluff on stilt-like legs!
71.
Bill Arnold
Burrowing owl
(Have only seen them once, south side of the Salton Sea)
Hummingbird duels in particular. Most of the videos on youtube are just around feeders which are boring. Duels (birdfights really) can extend over 100 feet. Here’s a duel (don’t know if it is ruby throats) that shows a little more scale.
American Kestral “steady-cam” head movement that allows them to hover and still see prey. (That’s really real!)
(Similar comment in moderation can be deleted)
72.
Miss Bianca
@currants: they are a big fave out here in CO. I saw/heard my first sandhills not too long ago, flying very high above in formation.
Crummy detail due to massive cropping. Didn’t know what either was until I uploaded them, and took a long time to figure out the combatants in the second. Had assumed it was crows after a redtail and was flabbergasted to realize the hawk was a golden eagle, something I’ve never seen outside an aviary. Kites aren’t small and were dwarfed here.
75.
arielibra
Open thread? Please talk about Panda Man, so we can get the speculation out of our systems.
(Breaking news now in Baltimore.)
With the caveat that the perpetrator surely seems mentally ill, and that’s not funny — still. Berniebro driven over the edge by Tuesday’s results?
I like all corvids, including jays, but they seem to like me even more. I also saw one at Hearst Castle — that was a Steller’s Jay, not the scrub jays we get here in the foothills.
77.
A Ghost To Most
@currants:
My wife and I drove to the SW corner of the San Luis valley in March(?), and managed to see several hundred Sandhill cranes migrating to Nebraska up close and personal (took photos,obv)
After winning The War on Squirrels my birdfeeders now have a new enemy: Deer. For about a week I’d wake up and the feeders would be empty and I though it odd because birds don’t feed at night, and then a week ago I saw the reason – 2 deer knocking the feeders with their heads and then eating the seed off the ground. Never knew deer would do that, but it makes sense I guess.
I don’t know if I can win this war. I just bought a taller poll but if they can rear up they’ll get to that too.
I felt so bad as I took my bird feeders away for 2 days and 3 nights, and that seemed to get rid of the deer, but yesterday morning I look out and there’s 5 of them that just got there. So back to the drawing board.
80.
NotMax
Nothing attracts scads of birds of all types like running the lawnmower. Within minutes of beginning to mow they show up. Quite the sight when a half dozen of more of these swoop in simutaneously.
81.
Trollhattan
@currants:
Sacramento Valley. West Nile arrived…five(?) or so years ago and killed a lot of birds and quite a few people. Zika should add to the fun when it inevitably shows up.
I don think we were terribly near water, but I could be wrong. It looked mostly like pasture and farmland. And I think they were on the platforms that the power company builds and in trees.
83.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Had no idea California ever had roadrunners. Have seen a few in Arizona and New Mexico but would love so see them here.
@Trollhattan: Still out to the east and inland, hard to find. They used to be pretty common at the coast – but there’s really no coastal scrub habitat left between Ensanada and Ventura, save for the small stretch at Camp Pendleton.
Second this. If you can, try observing crows up close without them knowing that you’re there. (They can count and remember and recognize faces, so this can be tough.) Then listen; you will often hear … chatter is probably the best word for it. Vocalizations that you don’t normally hear, for sure.
87.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I used to like cardinals but the last house I moved into had a cardinal that literally followed me from room to room by hanging on the window screens and would tap on the window when he saw me . I called him Cujo. He sat on the car’s side view mirror and tapped at it too. It freaked me out. I can hear a cardinal call anywhere, and wonder if it’s Cujo even though I’ve moved.
And everybody knows by now that birds are dinosaurs, right? As Randall Munroe put it in one of his cartoons, the T-Rex is more closely related to the sparrow than it is to the stegosaurus by just about any measure. The only other living relatives are the crocodilians.
@Bill Arnold: I read an article about “theory of mind” recently which seemed to prove that crows have it. The specific references were crows will often hide food or pretend to hide food, knowing their being watched by other crows. This implies they can not only think their own thoughts, but extrapolate what other crows are thinking.
92.
A Ghost To Most
@Bill Arnold:
I have the strong suspicion that corvids have language,and we haven’t figured it yet,and they know that. They seem to pass information on.
93.
Trollhattan
Love the challenge of sneaking up on egrets. I just never want to see any near my koi pond.
I am still utterly convinced that some Steller’s jays that were watching me knit were talking about me and trying to figure out what I was doing. Smart little bastards.
95.
bystander
I’m now old enough and am exposed to birds enough that I appreciate them in a way I never did in my youth. The Delaware Highlands have one of the largest concentration of bald eagles in North America. I’m sort of glad that my impression is from seeing them fish by diving into the Delaware rather than by running into them at the dump.
We also get a great number of Eastern Bluebirds starting about now. Caught what seemed like eight of them in the birdbath, all ruffling their feathers to work up a good ambient shower. Wished I could join them without tipping over the basin.
Mention of hummingbirds always reminds me of General Stuck, who used to take and post wonderful photos of the little hummies — as did/does jeffreyw.
97.
Trollhattan
@swiftfox:
Seconded! Love watching them and last summer in the Mt Lassen backcountry we saw a mom with two chicks that would bring them out and train them to go into the water. In truth they’re the most fascinating bird I’ve ever watched (and John Muir’s favorite).
98.
Tom Levenson
Betty Cracker, at top: “What is your favorite bird, and why?”
The Snark of course. Except when it turns out to be a Boojum.
No explanation needed, of course.
ETA: not sure if I’d call them favorites, but I can watch hummingbirds for hours.
In your neighborhood, maybe. They’re all over the place in the San Gabriel Valley. They seem to be going after all the loquat trees right now. I was able to photograph this one while standing on the front steps of my old place.
101.
where's my hammer
Big bird with 10 foot wingspan: American White Pelican
When a flock of those monsters fly low overhead, wow.
@jeffreyw: Good to know owls can try to carry a cat away. No coyotes here. Just a fox that regularly comes in our yard to taunt our dog.
104.
Bill Arnold
Wild Turkey mother with poults
This video is a bit tame. When they are in a wary mood, the family (sometimes multiple mom-led families) will move through an area in rapid cautious movements, from cover to cover, to minimize exposure.
@redshirt:
Oh yeah; bunches of papers on corvid … minds is a fair word for them.
Cervantes (is he OK?) pointed me at a few and I started poking at the references.
My favorite place to watch hummingbirds is to eat lunch at the Echo Lake Lodge at the entrance to Mt Evans. Table at a big window, with dozens of several types of hummingbirds 3 feet away, fighting over multiple feeders.
@currants: Those skata were great too (I had no idea what their name was having never seen any – thanks. I think I called them waggle-tails and they may actually be tied with the crows) but I was thinking of the hooded crows and their ilk (I think there are a few types). Some on Götland basically shared our picnic table and tried to share our lunch with us.
110.
Trollhattan
A Kiwi with a real knack for bird photos has a love of kingfishers. I’d watch these little guys all day, too.
111.
RandomMonster
Of course, is there anything more delightful than watching penguins?
@Bill Arnold: I’ve always read that crows and ravens don’t like each other, and yet I suspect I have colonies of each just on the other side of my mountain. I see both groups regularly but they give me a wide berth, and I never see them interacting despite my theory they live close to each other.
It got especially weird for me because one of them disliked me and the other one was fine with me, so I never knew if I was going to get into a weird argument when I replied to a comment
115.
arielibra
My skills are too poor to include a link, but: a guy in a panda onesie and what appeared to be a suicide vest (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) tried to force the Fox TV station in Baltimore to accept his flash drive of !mind-blowing political info!
@Trollhattan: New Zealand birds are the best birds in the world.
Speaking of, I got to watch a purple finch mating display two days ago. The male was by himself in a tree, tweeting irregularly. Then a female showed up and he went into a non-stop trilling song accompanied by vigorous flapping of his wings while shuffling along the branch. Twice he lept off the branch and hovered in front of the female then came back.
I was waiting for them to get it on but then some other dude showed up and broke it all up and everyone flew away. Literally cock blocked.
I had a cat once that probably survived a Great Horned Owl strike – They were nesting about 100 feet away, two adults and two young, and he had big gashes on the top of his head, that developed into an abscess that needed to be drained. Successfully, but he had a bald spot after that.
LOL. Mr. Conster got a huge kick out of it, because it didn’t stalk him at all.
120.
Trollhattan
@grascarp:
Well that’s about as far away as possible. :-)
Wish we had a few around town to liven things up. Nothing more bad-ass than an eagle.
121.
Bill Arnold
@Trollhattan:
Have seen roadrunners in both Borrego Springs and Costa Mesa (one each), and haven’t been in California that much.
122.
A Ghost To Most
@Bill Arnold:
My smart cat used to be utterly fearless,and a pain in the butt to get in at night. Then a lion chased her around the yard. She’s a breeze to get in now.
@redshirt:
A mountain lion. After chasing the cat under a low deck, it came up to our sliding glass door and stared at my son for a while. We chased it off.
It got especially weird for me because one of them disliked me and the other one was fine with me
The one that didn’t get along with you; was never completely sure what was going on there. (I miss his ferocious pedantry and precise writing, but never attracted his ire.) He was (is, I hope) well-read on corvids and bird cognition/vocalization in general. (And on a broad mix of other things.)
The other one was “blue cervantes” with a link for a name; Cervantes had no link associated with his name.
I’ve only seen them twice, but my favorite bird is the Wilson Warbler. One sat on the telephone wire just outside my window and sang and sang for almost a half hour. I could hear him all over my apartment, even down in the basement.
128.
A Ghost To Most
@redshirt:
It comes with the territory. They live on the first hills of the Rockies, a short stroll from my house. They only come out at night. I would not take a late night stroll alone.
129.
cope
What a coinkidink…not 15 minutes ago, me and mrs. cope were on the couch in the living room rotting our minds with the TV when I looked out the sliders and saw a young blue heron walking along the deck of our pool. Of course, the dogs noticed pretty quickly as well and were up and out the dog door putting the young fellow to flight. Always happens when cool birds visit our backyard (hawks like to perch on our fence)…
However, to answer the question, my bird of choice has changed over the past few years. It used to be the osprey. I love taking bird pics, especially on our annual Thanksgiving trip to Sanibel Island and over the years, I got some good ones of ospreys. I also once managed to get a sequence of shots of a bald eagle dragging a fish out of the surf and up on to a sign post on Cayo Costa when we were into the primitive cabin thing.
However, now days, it’s the roseate spoonbill that I search out, mostly in Ding Darling Reserve on Sanibel. As a science guy, I appreciate the dino-bird connection and spoonbills are especially suggestive of their toothed ancestors.
When we moved to Florida for Colorado (yes, I know, I know…) the first thing I appreciated about it was the birds. Egrets, herons, anhingas, hawks, sandhill cranes, a small burrowing owl standing fearlessly in the middle of the street one night…it was the first natural facet of the mildew state that I could appreciate. Now, 3 decades on, I appreciate more nature things down here but I still hold the birds in a place of honor as the gateway to appreciating a place that I initially thought I could only hate.
I would link to pictures if I had more time and nimbler fingers but, eh, maybe next time.
A 25-year-old man who threatened to blow up a Baltimore Fox TV station Thursday and then was shot by police did not have a bomb, but a device that was chocolate bars held together by wires, according to the Baltimore Police Department.
The suspect had refused to cooperate with officers, police spokesman T.J. Smith said. When he walked out of the building, he was wearing a white panda suit, a surgical mask and sunglasses before being shot by three officers.
A bomb robot then scanned him for nearly an hour before police removed his clothing, picked him up and carried him into an armored van. Crews transferred him to an ambulance minutes later.
Smith said he was in serious, but stable condition at a local hospital.
Smith added the suspect was not armed with a bomb, but with candy bars wrapped in plastic. He said the chocolate candy bars were wrapped together with a “motherboard,” as well as wires in the suspect’s shirt.
132.
AnotherBruce
Cedar waxwings.Sleek birds with a cool pair of sunglasses. They have almost no fear of humans.
@satby: And, first hummingbird spotted! This thread brought me luck, I love watching the little guys. To celebrate, I changed the nectar for him, it had been out for a few days already.
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The Coastal Roadrunner may be extinct, but California def. still has roadrunners. We saw them almost daily for a couple of years when we moved out near the Wild Animal Park (SD Zoo Safari Park, but old names persist) in 2009. But we also had an amazing number of rabbits around. And suddenly we had lots of coyotes, and many fewer rabbits and roadrunners. IDK what the situation is currently, but before we sold the place, we were seeing both roadrunners and rabbits again.
140.
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
Western Mockingbirds (a subspecies of the Northern Mockingbird found throughout the U.S.). Absolute favorite bird — love the things.
They’re fiercely-defensive of their nests and their mates, attacking dogs, cats, people, hawks, you name it. They’re largely monogamous, often staying with the same mate for life.
They’re quite intelligent: studies show they can recognize individual humans.
And their large repertoire of birdsong is my favorite; I’m fortunate to hear them almost every day at my home in Arizona.
They are also famously good at mimicry, from natural sounds (like other birds) to artificial sounds from our machinery. We had one near my old home in Phoenix who sounded like the neighborhood cats, and another who could make a noise that sounded very much like the neighbor’s old-fashioned squeaky baby buggy (not like the push-style Mars land rovers kids use today).
141.
Betty Cracker
@cope: I love roseate spoonbills too! And Cayo Costa!
142.
J R in WV
Favorite Bird(s)… what a great topic.
We have lots of the biggest woodpeckers left locally – Pileated Woodpeckers. They are big birds, the size of a crow, with a brilliant red topknot and black and white concentric stripes as they flay away from you. They sound like a machine pounding a tree when they harvest bugs, and scream like an ancient dinosaur when they want to.
We also have Barred Owls, they nest in the very head of the hollow, up on the high ridge. They’re not quite as big as a Great Horned Owl, which are really big, but they’re close. They make great sounds in the evenings, as they communicate with each other. I can talk with them too, they know I’m not an owl, but they’re willing to hoot with me anyway. I once saw crows attacking a Great Horned Owl, and they pestered it until it took action and killed two crows, then flew into a spruce tree, where the crows couldn’t fly. They don’t cluster like Barred Owls do.
We also have Ruby Throated Humming Birds, tiny, beautiful, fast and vicious. They attack each other around the feeders, so we have several on different sides of the house, which lets the less aggressive ones feed a little too. I was sitting on the back porch one summer reading, when two Rubys came around the corner of the house at full speed. They split, one on either side of my head, and I could feel the energy of their 60 MPH flight. If one had hit me, it would have killed him, and way hurt me.
143.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne: Mrs J was riding with a friend on US 50 in Colorado, west of Canyon city, beside the Arkansas River, and saw a Bald Eagle take a big trout right out of the river. Very wild country out there. Beautiful huge rocks, spruce trees, cougars, etc.
Cardinals see themselves in windows and mirrors, and attack that other bird, over and over. We have a ton of windows, with pretty high reflectance, and we have had male cardinals that would go from window to window attacking that bird, until they have done all of them.
Every morning.
We also had a single outside pane of the double pane windows shattered one evening, I believe it was a turkey. Huge boom and shatter noise. So I went all around the house, and looked for broken glass. Didn’t see a thing, until a couple of days later, I went out a door I don’t use often, and a downstairs window in a room we didn’t use much at the time was shattered. But not the inside. All the broken glass was outside, and there was no blood or sign of damage to the bird, which had to be huge to break that glass.
@Trollhattan: We saw one in the county area just north of Riverside in the early 80s. It raced alongside our car for a little distance.
146.
Gua
I’m a bird nut, so this could go many different ways. Favorite bird is black capped chickadee. They’re so damn cute, they have cool vocalizations, and they tough it out all through Minnesota winters.
147.
jharp
Cool post on the birds.
So many cool birds. One I didn’t see mentioned is the red headed woodpecker. Very cool.
And within a few feet of my house I have chickadees, doves, and cardinals nesting. I’m sure the robins have a nest close by too but I just haven’t yet found it.
The chickadees are about 10 feet from my desk. Perfect viewing.
Flickers love noise. When I was living in Colorado, I had one who showed up every Sunday morning at 5am (in the summer) and drum on the wall right above my bedroom window. What a racket.
Favorite bird? How could anyone have only one favorite bird.
I love swallows, falcons, hummingbirds, and sand hill cranes. Puffins are wonderful, as are rhinoceros auklets (one of the homeliest birds ever — but their fishing ability is mindboggling). And I love (and admire) any smaller bird that goes after a larger bird that is threatening its nest. Watching the little guys harass the bigger guys is always entertaining.
@debbie: We had a Wilson Warbler in our back yard in Anaheim pretty often; never spotted a mate.
150.
SectionH
Srsly, can we have this topic resurrected frequently? (^ J R in WV)? I know, I’m late as usual)
My favorite birds might have shifted as my location has. Cardinals in St. Louis but also pigeons. No, really. I was a kid then, and I spent endless hours in my grandparents’ back yard with a cardboard box propped up by a stick, with a string tied to it, and some I’m not sure now what, some bait sitting under the box.
I enticed a few friends to watch with me. I think they mostly got bored. Well, I did too, and didn’t spend all my time there, but I was persistent. I actually caught a few pigeons, only to lose them because even pigeons can escape from under cardboard boxes. Finally, I got it all together, perfectly. Trapped pigeon! My mother congratulated me, and then asked What was I going to Do with it now? I stroked its head, and let it go. Sounds sappy, but I did, and I was fine with it.
Anyway, I still kind of like pigeons. Not fond of them in yuuuuge flocks, however.
My mother loved her mockingbirds, and I agree they’re great. I adore drunk robins. We had a very big Holly tree in our front yard in Lexington, and an annual event, once or infrequently twice late winter/early spring, we’d get hundreds of robins flocking around the tree. Drunk birds, no srsly: http://www.audubon.org/news/spring-air-and-so-are-intoxicated-birds
151.
nanhaugh
The Eastern Towhee. It was the first “new to me” bird when I first started hiking with a local bird watching group. It’s a pretty little thing with a lovely call.
I have to confess that I’m inordinately fond of sparrows — the everyday European imports that are ubiquitous in Chicago (and I suspect most other cities as well). They’re sort of like the bird equivalent of squirrels — always busy and always entertaining.
I will admit to being fond of crows, as well.
And lately I’ve been keeping an eye on the black-crowned night herons at Lincoln Park Zoo, who once again are nesting in the birches in the wolf habitat in the Children’s Zoo, rather than the island in South Pond that was set aside as a nesting sanctuary for them. They’re really very odd birds.
153.
JustRuss
My runner up: Swallows. Harbingers of spring, and I love the swoopy way they fly, could watch them all day.
154.
cope
@A Ghost To Most: It took a while to be sure. Let’s just say I sweat a lot.
155.
Fred
There are a lot of favorite birds but:
Bald eagles are my favorite favorite, because a nesting pair were my neighbors during the most fun part of my life and they were good neighbors.
Their nest was in a huge oak tree in a hedge row by the big field behind the old farm house my lady and I lived in.
We first saw them in 1986 and they were still there when we move away in 2003. The experts say a pair will only stay in a nest for five years or at least that’s what some expert told me.
On two occasions one of them flew low over us and our dogs on a walk by the field. (S)he flew down slow and got our dogs to follow while the bird did a lazy flight about ten feet up and did that half way across the field. Experts say that believing an eagle will play with dogs is anthropomorphizing.
One of our horses dropped a foal and she was out for her first grass. The eagle flew over and perched in a tree to watch. Anthrpomorphizing again, oops. Next day when we let momma and foal out the eagle brought her awkward baby who was learning to fly over to visit like any proud mom would to a neighbor with new baby. Anthropomo-you know whating again.
But we all know those Eagles are just stupid birds and all that stuff they did and all the other neighborly things they did that I don’t have the energy to relate, well that’s all just, um there just must be some sensible explanation that some expert can expertsplain. Right?
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rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
found this in the POU twitter feed:
1 Shocking Statistic Exposes Chicago’s Racial Divide
By Tom McKay April 28, 2016
What do 94% of the people who donated to embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election campaign in 2015 have in common?
They’re all white.
Amid controversies over cuts to public services and education in disproportionately poor and minority neighborhoods, and months before suspicions over the mayor’s role in suppressing inquiries into the police killing of 17-year-old black teenager Laquan McDonald became a major controversy, Emanuel was financing his $24.4 million campaign almost exclusively via white people, a new study finds.
About 94% of donors to Emanuel’s campaign were white, even though white people comprise just 39% of Chicago’s total population, according to the new report, from progressive think tank Demos. Emanuel’s donors almost entirely (84%) gave large contributions of $1,000 or more. A staggering 80% of his donors had an annual income of at least $100,000 or more, despite just 15% of Chicagoans making six figures.
“What’s so extraordinary about the Chicago donor class is for such a diverse city to have such a white donor class,” study author and Demos policy analyst Sean McElwee said in an email. “Though data are still preliminary, Emanuel’s donor class does appear whiter than the other mayors of diverse cities I’ve examined.”
Additionally, just 36% of Emanuel’s donors actually lived in the city of Chicago.
redshirt
As a bird lover, Florida is incredible.
All the birds!
satby
Hummingbird. I love hummingbirds, I already have a feeder up for them this year. Haven’t seen any yet.
redshirt
@satby: I keep a bird journal and by my informal observations the hummingbirds should be back to my place next week. I’ve got the nectar in a jar in my fridge ready to go.
SoupCatcher
I giggle like a schoolboy every time I see a quail run.
Betty Cracker
@redshirt: It is a birder’s paradise for sure, so we’ve got that going for us. Just about every morning, a three-bird flock of sandhill cranes fly (noisily!) over my yard on their way somewhere to the west and then fly over again on their way back east at sunset. I don’t know for sure that it’s the same birds, but I like to imagine them clocking in at a golf course to peck through the greens for bugs all day and then clocking out again to fly home.
p.a.
Flickers. About as cool as I can get to a feeder in my urban hellhole. But had a Sharp Shinned chowing on a junco winter 2014-15. Got a couple of crappy phonecam pics of it. (Birder friend pretty sure it’s was a sharpie not a Cooper. Hard i.d.)
A Ghost To Most
Crows and ravens, because they are so smart. It’s a good thing they don’t have opposable thumbs.
JCJ
I love it when scarlet tanagers and indigo buntings show up in the back yard. I also like seeing sandhill cranes in flight.
redshirt
As to Betty’s question, my favorite bird, by far, is the black capped chickadee. It’s the only bird that hangs around my house all year long – how they survive in -20 degree temps in winter I can’t fathom – and they’re friendly as heck. I’ll often be working in the woods and they’ll gather in the trees around me, talking. Sometimes quite close. Also, they’re the forest leaders in arboreal forests, as many other species follow them around, relying on their communication network. I think even squirrels and chipmunks rely on their warning calls.
? Martin
Feel a bit more confident in a candidate Trump.
Considering that the electorate is likely to be majority female, losing the largest demographic by these numbers is completely fatal. Trump would need to win men by even larger numbers, and that’s incredibly unlikely unless only white men vote.
A Ghost To Most
@p.a.:
Flickers are a royal pain in the ass at my house. They have learned that if they drum on my metal chimney cap, they can make much more noise, both outside and in.
chopper
boobies!
wait, what’s this about birds?
Cacti
If I had a spirit animal it would be the crow. Intelligent, mischievous, resourceful, and not likely to win any beauty contests.
We have a lot in common. ;-)
redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Heh. Reminds me of an old WB cartoon where the sheepdog and the coyote clock in for a days work, all friendly.
Mary G
We almost lost all our pelicans in the 60s and 70s due to DDT, but they’ve made a major comeback since it was banned. There are now hordes of them hanging out around the harbor and beaches. I love to see them suddenly plummet into the water and come up with a fish flopping around in their pouch.
scav
Depends on the mood. Usually happy with LBBs because; like the streamline deco nuthatch look, titmice, juncos and there were some fun crows in Sweden with grey and black bits. Stellar Jays because they’re the squawk of childhood.
? Martin
My favorite bird is probably the SoCal wild parrot. They’re a bit hard to find and it’s just such a surprise to find a few dozen parrots flying around.
Wiesman
My favorite bird is the Baltimore Oriole because of Brooks Robinson.
grascarp
Bald Eagles at the dump, filthy from scavaging and you can walk right up to them…and get the full-frontal stare.
Cermet
@? Martin: As I now understand the rules, as set down by the previous inferior court (not minus scalia), only white males should be allowed to vote. There, problem solved for the Rump.
p.a.
@A Ghost To Most: the other thing about Flickers: they love carpenter ants. If the birds really like your yard, it may be a bad sign re: the ants. Beware planting peonies. Carpenter ants love the nectar, and they may decide to nest near that food source. I tore all mine out years ago.
A Ghost To Most
Also, pileated woodpeckers, cause damn, they’re big.
jeffreyw
I used to like owls.
nutella
@rikyrah:
That’s disturbing. What do they want from him? Or what are they paying him back for?
A Ghost To Most
@p.a.:
Thanks for the info. I see flickers in my yard almost daily, and we do have some peonies. I like having them around, except when they are drumming on the chimney. That can rattle your fillings.
jeffreyw
One more time. I used to like owls.
redshirt
@efgoldman: Definitely no cardinals. The bluejays come and go. I get the idea one flock flies south while a flock from further north stops by briefly, then continues on.
Unlike any previous winter I’ve been here, the finches, both gold and purple, were here since December. I assume my birdfeeders kept them here, but also obviously the incredibly mild/tame winter.
MomSense
@redshirt:
I put scraps of wool and the hair I clean out of our brushes outside for them. They scoop it up so fast to incorporate in their nests.
Sometimes when nests fall to the ground I find these little offerings.
Brachiator
Love grey owls. One of my photo avatars. And swans and hawks.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Read this and see what you think. Full disclosure! I make small donations to the journalist on her “I need to get paid for this work” page :)
MomSense
@jeffreyw:
Holy scared cat!
elmo
The Mountain Chickadee, also known as the “cheeseburger bird” because of its three-syllable call (“chee-err-err”). When I lived in the Sierra, it was the welcome harbinger of spring, and its call was nearly always accompanied by the sound of snow melting off roofs in a constant patter.
Also the African Gray parrot. I had one for years, until Mrs. Elmo’s COPD made it impossible to keep a bird in the house any longer. She would sing, “You are my sunshine,” (although it mostly took the form of “sunshine, sunshine, ha-PY SKIES!”) and she would yell at the dogs, and we started a call-and-response with her where we would call “Marco!” and she would respond “Polo!” that my wife and I continue with each other to this day. She was unusual among hookbills in that she never, ever, not once not even a little bit, offered to bite any other living creature. All parrots will bite, but not she.
raven
This dude is always on the beach at sunrise in November. We’re going down in a couple of weeks and I wonder if he’ll be there.
Elie
@Cacti:
I agree — not the most beautiful, but certainly one of the brightest and funny. Also crows are excellent parents and have clans that take care of each other when crows are sick and die or leave biddies to care for. Remarkable.
Miss Bianca
@satby: I’ve got some hummies (or maybe it’s just the same one who keeps coming back). Got one feeder out. Snowing now – somewhere in a friend’s stash of photos from a few years ago is a hummie at that same feeder, feathers all floofed out, with a little snow cap on his head, looking grumpy as all get-out. It’s hilarious.
@jeffreyw: Speaking of bird photos…That’s a “holy crap!” photo if I ever saw.
Brachiator
OT. Trump is coming to Southern California tonight.
jeffreyw
@MomSense: Mrs J found it on Facebook, I hope it’s a ‘shop but I fear it isn’t.
elmo
@jeffreyw: Holy crap! Any other info? did the cat manage to get away?
Trollhattan
@grascarp:
Do you live in Alaska? I correspond with a guy living on an island up there where they call bald eagles “dumpster chickens.” How fun is that?
A Ghost To Most
@jeffreyw:
Wow, great picture. One more reason our cats come in before dark (mountain lions).
redshirt
@MomSense: That’s cute.
What do the chickadees offer you? They’ve never given me anything, and now I think I need to leave out nest materials!
Stacy
@jeffreyw: Wow, is that your cat? We have owls that who, who well into the evening. Now I’m afraid for my cat.
jeffreyw
@elmo: You know as much as I do. Here’s the link to the FB post.
Trollhattan
@elmo:
I know that call from backpacking the Sierra. Always whistle back and can sometimes carry on a lengthy conversation. Assume the response is something like, “You are the biggest, smelliest bird ever! Over.”
currants
@scav: Oh! I’m pretty sure those are magpies–I loved them, but my family thought they were pests. At first I thought they were crows too because they occur in similar places, but in Swedish they’re called skata and that translates to magpie, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the US (not New England anyway). If memory serves, they were (long, long ago) brought by … I want to say Chinese nobility? It was 40 years ago but I still remember that much, so at least there’s that.
JustRuss
Great Blue Heron. Love those huge, slow-flapping wings. Whenever I see one fly by I expect to see a brontosaurus(that’s right, I said it!) grazing in the distance.
jeffreyw
@Stacy: No, not my cat. I have been hearing a hoot hoot close by after dark, though. We try to keep ours in after dark due to coyotes, and now another reason, alas.
Origuy
Driving to work this morning through downtown San Jose, I saw a raptor being harassed by a smaller bird. I see hawks all the time, but usually out in the rural areas closer to Palo Alto. Going at 60 mph, I couldn’t identify the type, but it might have been one of the peregrine falcons that nest on a ledge at City Hall. They’ve been there since 2007 and have fledged a lot of chicks, two this year.
Downpuppy
@redshirt: We have a pair of cardinals this spring. The male likes to perch in a still leafless tree to the east of us in the evening, then turn so he’s suddenly a huge red glare. The female showed up in the hedge just outside our living room window a couple weeks ago. I’m still getting mocked for saying Cedar Waxwing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
1) all raptors
2) cardinals
(limited to birds I actually see)
A Ghost To Most
@currants:
Magpies are as common as crows here.
CONGRATULATIONS!
The Southern California coastal roadrunner, now extinct. Used to have them run around my house when I was a teen.
Also, that bald eagle that just made the news by feeding her chicks a cat. Lotta butthurt over that one. Hey, cats are prey too.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: Wow! Hard to believe an owl could carry a cat off, even a big owl! Can’t fault the owl, though. Lord knows cats kill a lot of birds — maybe it was avenging its species! I bet that cat got away, though.
Trollhattan
@currants:
We have yellow-billed magpies near the rivers and oak groves. They were hammered when West Nile arrived (all corvids are susceptible) but seem to be rebounding. Much fun to watch scrapping with one another. Our other corvids are scrub jays, which hang around the neighborhood and battle the squirrels for food, and crows by metric zillion. Those descend on downtown and beshat the streets and sidewalks all winter long. Lovely.
Mnemosyne
Bluejays seem to follow me around. G thinks it’s just confirmation bias, but even he had to admit it was a little weird when one landed on a bench next to me at the Huntington and started trying to chat me up.
I blame Mark Twain.
Trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Had no idea California ever had roadrunners. Have seen a few in Arizona and New Mexico but would love so see them here.
MomSense
@redshirt:
I’ve kept some of the fallen nests and I think they are so beautiful. I’m in awe of how they manage such fine weaving without hands.
I’m pretty careful about the wool I give them. No chemical dyes or acrylic.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
When my mom and I were driving from Naples to Orlando, she was really fascinated by all of the bald eagle nests along the highway (at least, that’s what we were told they were). I can’t remember if she managed to spot one in flight since I was the one driving.
Trollhattan
@JustRuss:
Fantasy needs Noah riding the brontosaur, like at the Creation Museum.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: I don’t like bluejays. They’re rude, loud, and they eat the eggs of the smaller birds. Plus they scare all the other birds off the feeder.
currants
@Betty Cracker: I know they’re noisy but I love the sound of sand hill cranes. It was one of the first birds I heard and learned to ID in Florida (visiting friends). That and the Chuck-wills-widow: although I never saw it, I loved hearing it at night. Around here (New England) the turkeys crack me up in the mornings, and the sound of wood ducks means spring is here. So no favorite, but the Great Blue Herons might be close: they are so elegantly stately and incredibly narrow for their height, and glimpsing an above-pond flyby when I’m looking out the window is a moment of grace. This past winter we had one who came and preened then napped in the sun out front almost every afternoon, and I never tired of watching its turn, approach, and landing.
redshirt
@MomSense: Nice. I’m in awe of most birds. Such wonderful creatures.
Bill Arnold
Burrowing owl
(Have only seen them once, south side of the Salton Sea)
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Hummingbird duels in particular. Most of the videos on youtube are just around feeders which are boring. Duels (birdfights really) can extend over 100 feet. Here’s a duel (don’t know if it is ruby throats) that shows a little more scale.
American Kestral
In particular, the “steady-cam” head movement that allows them to hover and still see prey. (That’s really real!) gif version without annoying music
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: Could have been bald eagles and ospreys too if you were near water (which you almost always are in FL). We’ve got tons of ospreys in my neighborhood. The power company puts nest platforms up for them so they won’t fuck up the light pole doohickeys with their nests.
currants
@Trollhattan: So where are you? We have West Nile, but we don’t have scrub jays here, just blues.
Uncle Cosmo
@Wiesman: This x1000.
An ump who was watching Brooksie take ground balls in practice before an O’s game famously remarked, That guy plays like he came down from a higher league.
Bill Arnold
Burrowing owl
(Have only seen them once, south side of the Salton Sea)
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Hummingbird duels in particular. Most of the videos on youtube are just around feeders which are boring. Duels (birdfights really) can extend over 100 feet. Here’s a duel (don’t know if it is ruby throats) that shows a little more scale.
American Kestral
In particular, the “steady-cam” head movement that allows them to hover and still see prey. (That’s really real!)
(Similar comment in moderation can be deleted)
Bill Arnold
kestral steady cam gif version without annoying music
Betty Cracker
@currants: I love their racket too. People who haven’t heard them before are always impressed by just how loud they are. Ever seen sandhill chicks? So cute! A little ball of fluff on stilt-like legs!
Bill Arnold
Burrowing owl
(Have only seen them once, south side of the Salton Sea)
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Hummingbird duels in particular. Most of the videos on youtube are just around feeders which are boring. Duels (birdfights really) can extend over 100 feet. Here’s a duel (don’t know if it is ruby throats) that shows a little more scale.
American Kestral “steady-cam” head movement that allows them to hover and still see prey. (That’s really real!)
(Similar comment in moderation can be deleted)
Miss Bianca
@currants: they are a big fave out here in CO. I saw/heard my first sandhills not too long ago, flying very high above in formation.
munira
@redshirt: I’ve had chickadees land on me twice when I was sitting still outside. They are truly intrepid.
Trollhattan
@Origuy:
I’ve learned to glance skyward at my kid’s soccer matches to check for any aerial hijinks. In the last few months I’ve witnessed a couple.
–Crow v. Swainson’s hawk.
–Kites v eagle.
Crummy detail due to massive cropping. Didn’t know what either was until I uploaded them, and took a long time to figure out the combatants in the second. Had assumed it was crows after a redtail and was flabbergasted to realize the hawk was a golden eagle, something I’ve never seen outside an aviary. Kites aren’t small and were dwarfed here.
arielibra
Open thread? Please talk about Panda Man, so we can get the speculation out of our systems.
(Breaking news now in Baltimore.)
With the caveat that the perpetrator surely seems mentally ill, and that’s not funny — still. Berniebro driven over the edge by Tuesday’s results?
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
I like all corvids, including jays, but they seem to like me even more. I also saw one at Hearst Castle — that was a Steller’s Jay, not the scrub jays we get here in the foothills.
A Ghost To Most
@currants:
My wife and I drove to the SW corner of the San Luis valley in March(?), and managed to see several hundred Sandhill cranes migrating to Nebraska up close and personal (took photos,obv)
Bill Arnold
@redshirt:
Their vocal repertoire includes mimicking hawk calls, notably red-tail calls. That one clears out a feeder quickly!
redshirt
After winning The War on Squirrels my birdfeeders now have a new enemy: Deer. For about a week I’d wake up and the feeders would be empty and I though it odd because birds don’t feed at night, and then a week ago I saw the reason – 2 deer knocking the feeders with their heads and then eating the seed off the ground. Never knew deer would do that, but it makes sense I guess.
I don’t know if I can win this war. I just bought a taller poll but if they can rear up they’ll get to that too.
I felt so bad as I took my bird feeders away for 2 days and 3 nights, and that seemed to get rid of the deer, but yesterday morning I look out and there’s 5 of them that just got there. So back to the drawing board.
NotMax
Nothing attracts scads of birds of all types like running the lawnmower. Within minutes of beginning to mow they show up. Quite the sight when a half dozen of more of these swoop in simutaneously.
Trollhattan
@currants:
Sacramento Valley. West Nile arrived…five(?) or so years ago and killed a lot of birds and quite a few people. Zika should add to the fun when it inevitably shows up.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I don think we were terribly near water, but I could be wrong. It looked mostly like pasture and farmland. And I think they were on the platforms that the power company builds and in trees.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Trollhattan: Still out to the east and inland, hard to find. They used to be pretty common at the coast – but there’s really no coastal scrub habitat left between Ensanada and Ventura, save for the small stretch at Camp Pendleton.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: I love the other corvids. I respect bluejays. I can tell they’re smart. I just don’t like them around my feeders.
RandomMonster
All of the types of Corvids, because they’re clever and cocky.
Bill Arnold
@A Ghost To Most:
Second this. If you can, try observing crows up close without them knowing that you’re there. (They can count and remember and recognize faces, so this can be tough.) Then listen; you will often hear … chatter is probably the best word for it. Vocalizations that you don’t normally hear, for sure.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I used to like cardinals but the last house I moved into had a cardinal that literally followed me from room to room by hanging on the window screens and would tap on the window when he saw me . I called him Cujo. He sat on the car’s side view mirror and tapped at it too. It freaked me out. I can hear a cardinal call anywhere, and wonder if it’s Cujo even though I’ve moved.
redshirt
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: What if that cardinal was a reincarnated person trying to send you a message?
swiftfox
Dippers. Great to see them foraging in mountain rivers. Wish there was an eastern subspecies.
Mnemosyne
And everybody knows by now that birds are dinosaurs, right? As Randall Munroe put it in one of his cartoons, the T-Rex is more closely related to the sparrow than it is to the stegosaurus by just about any measure. The only other living relatives are the crocodilians.
redshirt
@Bill Arnold: I read an article about “theory of mind” recently which seemed to prove that crows have it. The specific references were crows will often hide food or pretend to hide food, knowing their being watched by other crows. This implies they can not only think their own thoughts, but extrapolate what other crows are thinking.
A Ghost To Most
@Bill Arnold:
I have the strong suspicion that corvids have language,and we haven’t figured it yet,and they know that. They seem to pass information on.
Trollhattan
Love the challenge of sneaking up on egrets. I just never want to see any near my koi pond.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Arnold:
I am still utterly convinced that some Steller’s jays that were watching me knit were talking about me and trying to figure out what I was doing. Smart little bastards.
bystander
I’m now old enough and am exposed to birds enough that I appreciate them in a way I never did in my youth. The Delaware Highlands have one of the largest concentration of bald eagles in North America. I’m sort of glad that my impression is from seeing them fish by diving into the Delaware rather than by running into them at the dump.
We also get a great number of Eastern Bluebirds starting about now. Caught what seemed like eight of them in the birdbath, all ruffling their feathers to work up a good ambient shower. Wished I could join them without tipping over the basin.
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
Mention of hummingbirds always reminds me of General Stuck, who used to take and post wonderful photos of the little hummies — as did/does jeffreyw.
Trollhattan
@swiftfox:
Seconded! Love watching them and last summer in the Mt Lassen backcountry we saw a mom with two chicks that would bring them out and train them to go into the water. In truth they’re the most fascinating bird I’ve ever watched (and John Muir’s favorite).
Tom Levenson
Betty Cracker, at top: “What is your favorite bird, and why?”
The Snark of course. Except when it turns out to be a Boojum.
No explanation needed, of course.
ETA: not sure if I’d call them favorites, but I can watch hummingbirds for hours.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@redshirt:
Being watched by a bird when you’re in the bathroom made me wonder about that. Creepy!
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
In your neighborhood, maybe. They’re all over the place in the San Gabriel Valley. They seem to be going after all the loquat trees right now. I was able to photograph this one while standing on the front steps of my old place.
where's my hammer
Big bird with 10 foot wingspan: American White Pelican
When a flock of those monsters fly low overhead, wow.
A Ghost To Most
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Was it the male or the female?
Stacy
@jeffreyw: Good to know owls can try to carry a cat away. No coyotes here. Just a fox that regularly comes in our yard to taunt our dog.
Bill Arnold
Wild Turkey mother with poults
This video is a bit tame. When they are in a wary mood, the family (sometimes multiple mom-led families) will move through an area in rapid cautious movements, from cover to cover, to minimize exposure.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
Holy fucketty shit. Was that one of your kittehs? Did it survive?
(ETA: Never mind, you’ve answered.)
I really love birds, especially the brightly-colored ones. Puffins are a favorite.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@A Ghost To Most:
Male.
Bill Arnold
@redshirt:
Oh yeah; bunches of papers on corvid … minds is a fair word for them.
Cervantes (is he OK?) pointed me at a few and I started poking at the references.
A Ghost To Most
@SiubhanDuinne:
RIP Stuck.
My favorite place to watch hummingbirds is to eat lunch at the Echo Lake Lodge at the entrance to Mt Evans. Table at a big window, with dozens of several types of hummingbirds 3 feet away, fighting over multiple feeders.
scav
@currants: Those skata were great too (I had no idea what their name was having never seen any – thanks. I think I called them waggle-tails and they may actually be tied with the crows) but I was thinking of the hooded crows and their ilk (I think there are a few types). Some on Götland basically shared our picnic table and tried to share our lunch with us.
Trollhattan
A Kiwi with a real knack for bird photos has a love of kingfishers. I’d watch these little guys all day, too.
RandomMonster
Of course, is there anything more delightful than watching penguins?
A Ghost To Most
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Figures.
redshirt
@Bill Arnold: I’ve always read that crows and ravens don’t like each other, and yet I suspect I have colonies of each just on the other side of my mountain. I see both groups regularly but they give me a wide berth, and I never see them interacting despite my theory they live close to each other.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Arnold:
Which Cervantes? We had two for a while.
It got especially weird for me because one of them disliked me and the other one was fine with me, so I never knew if I was going to get into a weird argument when I replied to a comment
arielibra
My skills are too poor to include a link, but: a guy in a panda onesie and what appeared to be a suicide vest (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) tried to force the Fox TV station in Baltimore to accept his flash drive of !mind-blowing political info!
redshirt
@Trollhattan: New Zealand birds are the best birds in the world.
Speaking of, I got to watch a purple finch mating display two days ago. The male was by himself in a tree, tweeting irregularly. Then a female showed up and he went into a non-stop trilling song accompanied by vigorous flapping of his wings while shuffling along the branch. Twice he lept off the branch and hovered in front of the female then came back.
I was waiting for them to get it on but then some other dude showed up and broke it all up and everyone flew away. Literally cock blocked.
Bill Arnold
@jeffreyw:
I had a cat once that probably survived a Great Horned Owl strike – They were nesting about 100 feet away, two adults and two young, and he had big gashes on the top of his head, that developed into an abscess that needed to be drained. Successfully, but he had a bald spot after that.
grascarp
@Trollhattan: Sarasota County Dump
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@A Ghost To Most:
LOL. Mr. Conster got a huge kick out of it, because it didn’t stalk him at all.
Trollhattan
@grascarp:
Well that’s about as far away as possible. :-)
Wish we had a few around town to liven things up. Nothing more bad-ass than an eagle.
Bill Arnold
@Trollhattan:
Have seen roadrunners in both Borrego Springs and Costa Mesa (one each), and haven’t been in California that much.
A Ghost To Most
@Bill Arnold:
My smart cat used to be utterly fearless,and a pain in the butt to get in at night. Then a lion chased her around the yard. She’s a breeze to get in now.
redshirt
@A Ghost To Most: An actual lion?
A Ghost To Most
@redshirt:
A mountain lion. After chasing the cat under a low deck, it came up to our sliding glass door and stared at my son for a while. We chased it off.
Bill Arnold
@Mnemosyne:
The one that didn’t get along with you; was never completely sure what was going on there. (I miss his ferocious pedantry and precise writing, but never attracted his ire.) He was (is, I hope) well-read on corvids and bird cognition/vocalization in general. (And on a broad mix of other things.)
The other one was “blue cervantes” with a link for a name; Cervantes had no link associated with his name.
redshirt
@A Ghost To Most: That’s terrifying.
debbie
I’ve only seen them twice, but my favorite bird is the Wilson Warbler. One sat on the telephone wire just outside my window and sang and sang for almost a half hour. I could hear him all over my apartment, even down in the basement.
A Ghost To Most
@redshirt:
It comes with the territory. They live on the first hills of the Rockies, a short stroll from my house. They only come out at night. I would not take a late night stroll alone.
cope
What a coinkidink…not 15 minutes ago, me and mrs. cope were on the couch in the living room rotting our minds with the TV when I looked out the sliders and saw a young blue heron walking along the deck of our pool. Of course, the dogs noticed pretty quickly as well and were up and out the dog door putting the young fellow to flight. Always happens when cool birds visit our backyard (hawks like to perch on our fence)…
However, to answer the question, my bird of choice has changed over the past few years. It used to be the osprey. I love taking bird pics, especially on our annual Thanksgiving trip to Sanibel Island and over the years, I got some good ones of ospreys. I also once managed to get a sequence of shots of a bald eagle dragging a fish out of the surf and up on to a sign post on Cayo Costa when we were into the primitive cabin thing.
However, now days, it’s the roseate spoonbill that I search out, mostly in Ding Darling Reserve on Sanibel. As a science guy, I appreciate the dino-bird connection and spoonbills are especially suggestive of their toothed ancestors.
When we moved to Florida for Colorado (yes, I know, I know…) the first thing I appreciated about it was the birds. Egrets, herons, anhingas, hawks, sandhill cranes, a small burrowing owl standing fearlessly in the middle of the street one night…it was the first natural facet of the mildew state that I could appreciate. Now, 3 decades on, I appreciate more nature things down here but I still hold the birds in a place of honor as the gateway to appreciating a place that I initially thought I could only hate.
I would link to pictures if I had more time and nimbler fingers but, eh, maybe next time.
A Ghost To Most
@cope:
How are you adjusting to the climate?
A Ghost To Most
WTF?
AnotherBruce
Cedar waxwings.Sleek birds with a cool pair of sunglasses. They have almost no fear of humans.
satby
@satby: And, first hummingbird spotted! This thread brought me luck, I love watching the little guys. To celebrate, I changed the nectar for him, it had been out for a few days already.
satby
@jeffreyw: oh, man! Did the cat get away?
Mnemosyne
@A Ghost To Most:
I think that’s known as (attempted) suicide by cop.
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: yeah, you reminded me. And then I remember all his pictures of Charlie, and how much he loved that little dog.
redshirt
@satby: Awesome! I can’t wait to see my first. Last year I got buzzed by the first, as if he/she was saying, “hey, where’s the nectar feeders?”.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: Via panda suit.
Furries are weird.
SectionH
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The Coastal Roadrunner may be extinct, but California def. still has roadrunners. We saw them almost daily for a couple of years when we moved out near the Wild Animal Park (SD Zoo Safari Park, but old names persist) in 2009. But we also had an amazing number of rabbits around. And suddenly we had lots of coyotes, and many fewer rabbits and roadrunners. IDK what the situation is currently, but before we sold the place, we were seeing both roadrunners and rabbits again.
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
Western Mockingbirds (a subspecies of the Northern Mockingbird found throughout the U.S.). Absolute favorite bird — love the things.
They’re fiercely-defensive of their nests and their mates, attacking dogs, cats, people, hawks, you name it. They’re largely monogamous, often staying with the same mate for life.
They’re quite intelligent: studies show they can recognize individual humans.
And their large repertoire of birdsong is my favorite; I’m fortunate to hear them almost every day at my home in Arizona.
They are also famously good at mimicry, from natural sounds (like other birds) to artificial sounds from our machinery. We had one near my old home in Phoenix who sounded like the neighborhood cats, and another who could make a noise that sounded very much like the neighbor’s old-fashioned squeaky baby buggy (not like the push-style Mars land rovers kids use today).
Betty Cracker
@cope: I love roseate spoonbills too! And Cayo Costa!
J R in WV
Favorite Bird(s)… what a great topic.
We have lots of the biggest woodpeckers left locally – Pileated Woodpeckers. They are big birds, the size of a crow, with a brilliant red topknot and black and white concentric stripes as they flay away from you. They sound like a machine pounding a tree when they harvest bugs, and scream like an ancient dinosaur when they want to.
We also have Barred Owls, they nest in the very head of the hollow, up on the high ridge. They’re not quite as big as a Great Horned Owl, which are really big, but they’re close. They make great sounds in the evenings, as they communicate with each other. I can talk with them too, they know I’m not an owl, but they’re willing to hoot with me anyway. I once saw crows attacking a Great Horned Owl, and they pestered it until it took action and killed two crows, then flew into a spruce tree, where the crows couldn’t fly. They don’t cluster like Barred Owls do.
We also have Ruby Throated Humming Birds, tiny, beautiful, fast and vicious. They attack each other around the feeders, so we have several on different sides of the house, which lets the less aggressive ones feed a little too. I was sitting on the back porch one summer reading, when two Rubys came around the corner of the house at full speed. They split, one on either side of my head, and I could feel the energy of their 60 MPH flight. If one had hit me, it would have killed him, and way hurt me.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne: Mrs J was riding with a friend on US 50 in Colorado, west of Canyon city, beside the Arkansas River, and saw a Bald Eagle take a big trout right out of the river. Very wild country out there. Beautiful huge rocks, spruce trees, cougars, etc.
J R in WV
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Cardinals see themselves in windows and mirrors, and attack that other bird, over and over. We have a ton of windows, with pretty high reflectance, and we have had male cardinals that would go from window to window attacking that bird, until they have done all of them.
Every morning.
We also had a single outside pane of the double pane windows shattered one evening, I believe it was a turkey. Huge boom and shatter noise. So I went all around the house, and looked for broken glass. Didn’t see a thing, until a couple of days later, I went out a door I don’t use often, and a downstairs window in a room we didn’t use much at the time was shattered. But not the inside. All the broken glass was outside, and there was no blood or sign of damage to the bird, which had to be huge to break that glass.
opiejeanne
@Trollhattan: We saw one in the county area just north of Riverside in the early 80s. It raced alongside our car for a little distance.
Gua
I’m a bird nut, so this could go many different ways. Favorite bird is black capped chickadee. They’re so damn cute, they have cool vocalizations, and they tough it out all through Minnesota winters.
jharp
Cool post on the birds.
So many cool birds. One I didn’t see mentioned is the red headed woodpecker. Very cool.
And within a few feet of my house I have chickadees, doves, and cardinals nesting. I’m sure the robins have a nest close by too but I just haven’t yet found it.
The chickadees are about 10 feet from my desk. Perfect viewing.
TriassicSands
@A Ghost To Most:
Flickers love noise. When I was living in Colorado, I had one who showed up every Sunday morning at 5am (in the summer) and drum on the wall right above my bedroom window. What a racket.
Favorite bird? How could anyone have only one favorite bird.
I love swallows, falcons, hummingbirds, and sand hill cranes. Puffins are wonderful, as are rhinoceros auklets (one of the homeliest birds ever — but their fishing ability is mindboggling). And I love (and admire) any smaller bird that goes after a larger bird that is threatening its nest. Watching the little guys harass the bigger guys is always entertaining.
opiejeanne
@debbie: We had a Wilson Warbler in our back yard in Anaheim pretty often; never spotted a mate.
SectionH
Srsly, can we have this topic resurrected frequently? (^ J R in WV)? I know, I’m late as usual)
My favorite birds might have shifted as my location has. Cardinals in St. Louis but also pigeons. No, really. I was a kid then, and I spent endless hours in my grandparents’ back yard with a cardboard box propped up by a stick, with a string tied to it, and some I’m not sure now what, some bait sitting under the box.
I enticed a few friends to watch with me. I think they mostly got bored. Well, I did too, and didn’t spend all my time there, but I was persistent. I actually caught a few pigeons, only to lose them because even pigeons can escape from under cardboard boxes. Finally, I got it all together, perfectly. Trapped pigeon! My mother congratulated me, and then asked What was I going to Do with it now? I stroked its head, and let it go. Sounds sappy, but I did, and I was fine with it.
Anyway, I still kind of like pigeons. Not fond of them in yuuuuge flocks, however.
My mother loved her mockingbirds, and I agree they’re great. I adore drunk robins. We had a very big Holly tree in our front yard in Lexington, and an annual event, once or infrequently twice late winter/early spring, we’d get hundreds of robins flocking around the tree. Drunk birds, no srsly: http://www.audubon.org/news/spring-air-and-so-are-intoxicated-birds
nanhaugh
The Eastern Towhee. It was the first “new to me” bird when I first started hiking with a local bird watching group. It’s a pretty little thing with a lovely call.
Hunter
I have to confess that I’m inordinately fond of sparrows — the everyday European imports that are ubiquitous in Chicago (and I suspect most other cities as well). They’re sort of like the bird equivalent of squirrels — always busy and always entertaining.
I will admit to being fond of crows, as well.
And lately I’ve been keeping an eye on the black-crowned night herons at Lincoln Park Zoo, who once again are nesting in the birches in the wolf habitat in the Children’s Zoo, rather than the island in South Pond that was set aside as a nesting sanctuary for them. They’re really very odd birds.
JustRuss
My runner up: Swallows. Harbingers of spring, and I love the swoopy way they fly, could watch them all day.
cope
@A Ghost To Most: It took a while to be sure. Let’s just say I sweat a lot.
Fred
There are a lot of favorite birds but:
Bald eagles are my favorite favorite, because a nesting pair were my neighbors during the most fun part of my life and they were good neighbors.
Their nest was in a huge oak tree in a hedge row by the big field behind the old farm house my lady and I lived in.
We first saw them in 1986 and they were still there when we move away in 2003. The experts say a pair will only stay in a nest for five years or at least that’s what some expert told me.
On two occasions one of them flew low over us and our dogs on a walk by the field. (S)he flew down slow and got our dogs to follow while the bird did a lazy flight about ten feet up and did that half way across the field. Experts say that believing an eagle will play with dogs is anthropomorphizing.
One of our horses dropped a foal and she was out for her first grass. The eagle flew over and perched in a tree to watch. Anthrpomorphizing again, oops. Next day when we let momma and foal out the eagle brought her awkward baby who was learning to fly over to visit like any proud mom would to a neighbor with new baby. Anthropomo-you know whating again.
But we all know those Eagles are just stupid birds and all that stuff they did and all the other neighborly things they did that I don’t have the energy to relate, well that’s all just, um there just must be some sensible explanation that some expert can expertsplain. Right?