Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The revolution will be supervised.

This blog will pay for itself.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

This really is a full service blog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Infrastructure week. at last.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Birdwatching / Feathered Visitor (Open Thread)

Feathered Visitor (Open Thread)

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I think this is a racing pigeon:

img_0850

It was walking around in my front yard, causing the dogs to bark uproariously at it through the window. When I came out to inspect it, it seemed very tame — walked right up to me.

It’s got a band on each leg, but I have no idea what that means. It’s been hanging around for a couple of hours. I gave it some birdseed and water, and it tucked right in.

I don’t think it’s injured, but it does seem odd that it’s just walking around. I haven’t seen it fly once. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

150Comments

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    Florida Bird!

    Is there some kind of Racing Pigeon organization in your general area that you could contact? The leg bands make me think that somebody is missing either a pet bird or a competitor.

  5. 5.

    maeve

    Could have been blown off course by recent weather and is recovering (and used to people so not feeling urgent need to fly away).

    Once I found a really fancy pigeon huddled up next to the entrance of my work place after a storm (this was near Chicago) – left him alone and he was gone later in the day.

  10. 10.

    jg

    an apparently grounded Racing Pigeon. somewhere in there is a Nascar joke…Im just not redneck enough to find it.

    He/she seems docile and clean. (another Nascar joke?)

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @sigaba:

    No thanks to Governor Batboy Skeletor. Could this pigeon be trained to go shit on his scary bald head?

  12. 12.

    Greenergood

    Had this before in sunny (!) Scotland. If bird is compliant, then snatch it up by its legs, turn upside down and read off the number on its leg cuffs – put number online and presto – pigeon lover will find their lost love! Hope so!

  18. 18.

    raven

    Understanding how to read a pigeon band

    The American Racing Pigeon Union registered bands have a specific format. Once you understand how to read the band number, you will find it easy to locate the club that issued the band on our Band List page. Make sure to visit our page on How to Care for a Lost Pigeon.

    Band numbers are in a series of letters & numbers as shown below.

    EXAMPLE= the band may read–>AU 99 ABC 1234

    (1) – AU – is the national organization that has registered the bird, in this case the American Racing Pigeon Union, Inc. The band can also have IF, CU, ATB, NBRC, or IPB in this position.

    (2) – 99 – is the year the bird was hatched and banded/registered.

    (3) – ABC – is a letters representing the pigeon club the band is registered to (no two clubs have the same registration letters – and they have one, two or three letters).

    (4) – 1234 – A one-up number unique to each pigeon based on the club letters. Now that you understand how to read the band, you can go back to our band list to find the club that the bird you found belongs to.

    NOTE: (PERSONALIZED BANDS) Sometimes the band may just have the owners name, phone and/or address on it that you may call or write them.

  19. 19.

    different-church-lady

    Well, this should make some heads explode:

    Colin Kaepernick to start at quarterback for 49ers

  20. 20.

    Schlemazel

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
    In the early days of WWII B.F. Skinner was training pigeons to peck buttons until the crosshairs were on the super structure of pictures of Japanese ships. These would have been the very first ‘smart bombs’ had he finished his work. Now if I just had some pigeons & pictures of Gov. Batboy . . .

  21. 21.

    kindness

    It was dove hunting season around here a couple weeks ago. It’s over now.

    Talk about snow birds…

  25. 25.

    Bess

    @Schlemazel:

    Pigeons in a Pelican

    Three birds per bomb. The bomb was to be steered to where two pigeons agreed. Never put into use.

    The Russians trained dogs to run under German tanks. Then attached bombs to the dogs.

    Out of the first group of 30 dogs, only four managed to detonate their bombs near the German tanks, inflicting an unknown amount of damage. Six exploded upon returning to the Soviet trenches, killing and injuring soldiers.[3] Three dogs were shot by German troops and taken away

    Another serious training mistake was revealed later; the Soviets used their own diesel-engine tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks which had gasoline engines.[5] As the dogs relied on their acute sense of smell, the dogs sought out familiar Soviet tanks instead of strange-smelling German tanks.[7]

    Wiki –

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @Mnemosyne:

    Have you ever seen that wonderful documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill? (Yes, I know that was SF and you’re in LA.)

    (Edited to correct film title.)

  27. 27.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    Pigeon racing? That’s a thing? That sounds like it might be as exciting as cricket.

  28. 28.

    hellslittlestangel

    @Bess: Curzio Malaparte, a journalist who was embedded with the German army, saw those dogs in action and thought they were very effective. I think he wrote about this in Kaputt.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @Schlemazel:

    I vaguely knew that Skinner had worked with pigeons, but didn’t know it was part of the war effort. Interesting.

  32. 32.

    trollhattan

    @Bess:
    Sadly, we trained dogs to carry bombs into Japanese cave systems during out Pacific island-hopping campaign.

  34. 34.

    Major Major Major Major

    I am trying to add a feature to absolutely the worst code I’ve seen since I started working here in June. It is seriously terrible. Just awful. I am faced with the decision of whether to work within the existing system, accepting the slapdash architecture, and write something that might be potentially extensible; or to just hack around it and write something that will only ever work for this one thing. Ugh.

  35. 35.

    hovercraft

    @trollhattan:
    Republicans are great fans of people who receive tax payer money and or benefits being drug tested, so can we get all four candidates to take a drug test? Just saying since they would all be on the government payroll if they won. See I’m not even singling anyone out, not even Donny Blow.

  40. 40.

    Greenergood

    @raven: Thanks Raven – that’s what I was trying to say, but don’t know if UK bird bands are as accurate! The last pigeon we ‘re-homed’ was 20 years ago, so I’m sure everything’s been updated, Internet-ed, etc,but I know that
    pigeon breeders still love their birds and will look out fof them – the birds’ capability for travelling is quite amazing!!

  41. 41.

    Doc H

    I’m guessing it;s a wedding bird, not a racer. Regardless – the band is the key. A big landing net comes in handy at times like this.

  48. 48.

    JR in WV

    Some people rent white “doves” for weddings and such like events, to release them when vows are made, or Dad is laid to rest. So maybe this is a professional entertainment pidgeon?

    Anyway, Raven has the scoop on the bands. I would keep the bird up until I read the bands and know who to call. I bet there’s a phone number down there.

  49. 49.

    bystander

    @trollhattan: Another example of our inquiring journamalists. Imagine if Clinton had been snuffling her sinuses repeatedly the way Trump did at both debates.

  53. 53.

    laura

    Careful, that pigeon may have been sent behind enemy lines on behalf of the Trump Campaign by supporter and pigeon enthusiast Mike Tyson.

    On a sad note, California’s First Dog Sutter Brown is gravely I’ll and little sister Colusa “Lucy” Brown is bereft -as am I.

    Many Ballon Juicers have had positive comments of our editorial cartoonist Jack Oman -and rightly so. Jack has ably captured Sutter Brown political operator part excellance. I expect that he, too, is taking this hard.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    @JR in WV:

    There are apparently some jerkoids who release birds that haven’t been trained, so they end up having to try to fend for themselves after being released. I’m assuming that someone who bothered to band their birds isn’t like that and would like birdie to come home.

  58. 58.

    Hal

    Holy fuck, if I see one more Facebook post about how shitty both candidates are, I’m going to scream. You’re not voting and think all of the choices in this election suck, why post 3 or 4 status updates on facebook everyday about how you’re not voting and all the candidatestates suck? The first dozen posts made your position abundantly clear.

    Just talking out loud.

  60. 60.

    burnspbesq

    There surely is some wierd shit going on in this election.

    Meg Whitman has endorsed Josh Gottheimer, the Dem who is trying to unseat The Odious Scott Garrett in NJ-05.

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sm*t Cl*de:

    That I’m not too jealous of, because the last time something in the parrot family sat on me, the little bastard bit me. Really hard. So I’m content to admire them and their sharp beaks from afar, thank you.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    @scav:

    You know who killed the shark? The transplanted urban elitist, Chief Brody. The guy who just wants everyone to get along. He’s the one who saved everyone.

  69. 69.

    ? Martin

    @lamh36: The lead-in for her is voter fraud. They’ve convinced themselves – not just a minority of Republicans, but most of them, that the election will be stolen. There’s nobody to blame for that other than Republicans trying to whip up support for voter suppression. If Trump goes all-in on claiming the election was stolen, then lord help us. And I don’t know how you stuff that genie back in the box other than to get Republicans on board with proper electoral reform, and not the suppressive bullshit they’ve been pushing.

    The media don’t understand how dangerous that is either. They need to a much better job of pushing back against it.

  70. 70.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne:

    I still aspire to see our local wild parrots. Knowing me, it’s entirely possible that they’ve flown overhead multiple times and I just didn’t realize it was them.

    They’re really loud (very vocal), so you can tell even if you’re not looking in the right direction.

    When I lived in Chicago, there was a flock of them in the neighborhood, which was pretty amazing considering the winters. Turned out that that particular variety originated from the foothills of the Andes and built large enclosed communal nests as a way of coping with the cold.

  72. 72.

    different-church-lady

    @scav: OMG, I forgot how fake that shark looked. Speilberg got very very lucky the thing malfunctioned as often as it did, because if he had put more of it in the film like he planned, he’d be a footnote of Hollywood today.

  73. 73.

    dmsilev

    Also, too, when I walk to work most days I see a woman who is out walking her two pet parrots. One perched on her wrist wearing a harness and a leash and the other in a carrying cage (I’ve never asked, but I guess the second one isn’t harness-trained or something).

  74. 74.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @Mnemosyne:

    It’s worth tracking down and watching sometime. I haven’t seen it in years, although I own it on DVD. Just a really interesting slice of urban human life on the edge interacting with some extremely cool birds.

  75. 75.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    I still aspire to see our local wild parrots.

    They’re quite common here in Pasadena, so I’m very familiar with them; I even contributed a picture of them to Wikipedia. You’re most likely to hear them first, so you should see if you can get a recording of their calls to learn to recognize them that way. Even though you’d think they’d be easy to spot because of their bright colors, they are surprisingly well camouflaged. In my experience, they are easiest to spot when they are either flying well overhead or going from tree to tree in the morning.

    When they’re overhead, they’re easy to spot because they have a distinctive flight pattern. They usually fly in pairs, with the pairs still being obvious even in larger groups. They flap their wings very rapidly for a short distance for a bird their size; there’s no other common bird around here that flies that way. I usually see them overhead in the afternoon and evening when they are flying back to their roosts. When they’re moving from tree to tree in the morning, they call out to each other raucously, which draws your attention to them.

  77. 77.

    Willard

    My Dad is getting very cynical in his old age. He was seriously considering voting from Trump; complaining about how both candidate are equally bad. After the VP debate he complained that neither candidate wanted to talk about policy, so I mentioned that Hillary has a ton of detailed policy papers on her campaign website. This morning he announced that he is not only enthusiastically voting for Hillary, but that he is voting a straight Democratic ticket; for the first time ever.

  80. 80.

    ? Martin

    In TheAtlantic/PRRI survey, Clinton is leading Trump by 11. She’s ahead 61/28 among women. And the poll ran Wed-Sun, so it only has half respondents having seen the tape, and none of debate #2. A few weeks ago Trumps strongest base of support was white women with no degree. Now Trump and Clinton are tied with that group.

  82. 82.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Hal:

    Holy fuck, if I see one more Facebook post about how shitty both candidates are, I’m going to scream.

    It’s not like it was in the glory days of the modern era, when the process yielded two candidates who were both super awesome, like Ford-Carter and Bush-Dukakis.

  83. 83.

    lamh36

    @different-church-lady: I saw that this morning. I don’t watch football. But I might just turn on my tv in the other room so it gets ratings?

    Having said that, do we think they had a convo with him saying if you want to start then…

  85. 85.

    lamh36

    Is Trump Trying To Kiss Arianne Zucker In This New Footage From 2005?

    On Tuesday, Extra released its own footage showing what happened when the Access Hollywood cameras stopped rolling and Trump continued his work on the set.
    The footage shows him meeting other cast members, posing for a photo with Zucker and her then-husband, and doing an interview with the actress.
    “You have to hit those lines properly, otherwise you’re out of business, right?” he says of his cameo on the show.
    “That’s right. You’re fired!” Zucker responds. “Am I allowed to say that?”
    As the interview ends, Zucker says she is going to “sneak out” and then tries to shake Trump’s hand.
    “Bye, baby,” Trump says, before grabbing her arm, gesturing towards himself, and pursing his lips together.
    The clip released by Extra on its website then cuts out, not showing if Trump indeed does kiss the actor goodbye.

    Zucker is the soap actress that Billy Bush and Trump were in the video with from AH

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @scav:

    Let’s just say that I’m not surprised that Huckleberry conveniently forgets that the day was actually saved by the guy from New York City and not the asshole sea captain.

  87. 87.

    lamh36

    I guess 4 years ago today, the TIME photos of Paul Ryan lifting weights was published…lol.

    Someone on twitter has updated it to fit what’s going on today…enjoy

    @darth
    *iconic*

    (notice the small hands…lol)

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    @dmsilev:

    They hang out here by my office in the early morning, but I’m rarely here early enough to spot (or hear) them, apparently. One of my coworkers has gotten several photos of them.

  90. 90.

    Miss Bianca

    @different-church-lady: I remember reading a book on the making of “Jaws” when I was a kid, and one thing that always stuck out to me was how the crew referred to the mechanical shark as “that son-of-a bitchin’ bastard rig” which to my 13-year-old self was hilarious. Come to think of it, my 53-year-old self still finds it pretty damned funny.

  92. 92.

    ? Martin

    Looks like the RNC is dumping a lot of their oppo on Trump trying to protect Ryan and the party. I wonder if Ryan is actually in trouble.

  100. 100.

    lamh36

    I saw alot written about the twitter rant from the Conservative Woman denouncing Trump and the party.

    Maybe I’ve been a minority for too long (been Black all my life), or maybe I’m just cynical, but I’m not all up in there applauding her for it.

    I mean a broke clock is correct twice a day right?

    But what if the recording of him saying the N-word is real and had come out first…

    Would she still be outraged?

    Naw…I’d bet she’d be blaming rap music and Beyonce… (like this fool…@mic
    Beyoncé fans came for Betsy McCaughey after she used Beyoncé lyrics to defend Trump    . They STILL draggin her BTW)

    So nope…nothing from me.

  101. 101.

    Miss Bianca

    @lamh36: and according to another poster here – if it’s the same “Conservative Woman” tweeter we’re talking about – apparently she can’t apply her newly-found female solidarity to actually voting for HRC.

    Self-awareness…white people seem to be singularly lacking in it these days. Or am I just noticing it more these days?

    Sigh…need more Zoe pictures…

  104. 104.

    Betty Cracker

    Pigeon update: we caught it and made note of the code on the leg band. Unfortunately, it doesn’t correspond to any organization I can find online, so I’ve contacted local pigeon clubs to see if anyone can advise me.

    It isn’t obviously hurt, but I don’t think it can fly. I’m worried about it hanging out on my carport because a fool down the road feeds feral cats, so we have a ton around here.

  106. 106.

    Schlemazel

    @Bess:
    I had not heard about the dogs, thanks I love trivial like that.

    I always wondered what the pigeons thought.
    “OH BOY, I am going to get some grain!!
    “OH BO . . . BOOM!!
    Kind of rotten thing to do.

    The US did drop “Bat Bombs” on Tokyo. Canisters of bats with small incendiary devices were released over the city. The canisters opened & the bats flew out to seek a hiding place until nightfall. The went under eves to roost. Because of the bamboo construction they caught fire. It was not as successful as the US hoped but they did work.

  108. 108.

    Kyle

    @Mnemosyne: I live is San Francisco, and we have lots of wild parrots. You will know them when you hear them– they are very vocal when flying.

  109. 109.

    ? Martin

    @lamh36: I’m with you on that. She’s all pissed off not because the GOP is constantly shitting on women, but because she was the stupid rube that defended them for it. Does she apologize to anyone for giving them cover? No, it’s all about her hurt feelings, about how they made her look stupid. Sorry, but she did that by herself. They didn’t force her to defend them, she volunteered to drink that kool-aid.

  110. 110.

    Schlemazel

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
    Interestingly enough he did the work while employed by Washburn-Crosby. They became more well known as “Pillsbury”. In the 40s and 50s 70-some percent of all the flour in the US came out of their mills in Minneapolis. I have no idea what Skinner was doing there or why they had a defense contract for Kamikaze birds.

  115. 115.

    raven

    The Bat Bomb

    We also glued a transistor and phonograph needle mexican bedbugs and dropped them on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The idea was that the bedbugs got agitated when Charlie went by in one of their supply columns and we could call arc lights in on them. Unfortunately the bedbugs also got agitated by monkey’s, waiter buffalo and elephants so we bombed the shit out anything that moved!

  117. 117.

    Cacti

    No link because I can’t stand the MFer, but Cole’s BFF Greenwald has published a jeremiad against Kurt Eichenwald for pointing out correctly that Russia appears to be stove piping doctored hacked info to the Trump campaign.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @Schlemazel: Wait till tomorrow, my pups made the front page of the Flagpole and the electronic version will be out in the morning! It’s from the same photoshoot as the other two I’ve posted but this one is really good!

  121. 121.

    japa21

    @Cacti: Let me guess, because even if you had a link I wouldn’t click. He is calling Eichenwald a sensationalist who is publishing innuendo without sufficient proof for what he says.

    He also wrote that while looking in a mirror.

  123. 123.

    Cacti

    @japa21:

    Let me guess, because even if you had a link I wouldn’t click. He is calling Eichenwald a sensationalist who is publishing innuendo without sufficient proof for what he says.

    He also wrote that while looking in a mirror.

    Pretty much.

    Also too, when in doubt, the benefit of the doubt should go to the Kremlin’s good intentions via Sputnik News.

  124. 124.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    I thought bomb the shit out of anything that moved was one of the two strategies Westmoreland had. TRhe other being sending kids out in smaller and smaller numbers until they were attacked & then institute plan 1 again

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Maybe if she had been able to see her way clear to voting for Hillary, us white women could have applauded her and you could stay out of it. But if she can’t even bring herself to do that, then who gives a shit about her and her special snowflakeness?

  128. 128.

    japa21

    My son teaches history at a Catholic college prep HS in Chicago. Our DIL just texted us with a picture of a white board display he did referencing “locker room” talk and a letter a student sent him in regard to it. I would love to share it but don’t know how.

  131. 131.

    Schlemazel

    @japa21:
    you could contact Ann using the contact page (ask if you need help locating that)
    But if you have a flicker or imgur account you could upload it there and copy the link they provide then post the link here.

  134. 134.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:

    Looks like the RNC is dumping a lot of their oppo on Trump trying to protect Ryan and the party.

    They’re dumping oppo on their own candidate to try to save their own sorry skins? Let the GOP civil war begin.

  137. 137.

    Roger Moore

    @raven:

    Are they escapees?

    They’re feral. They are apparently the descendants of escapees, but they now have a well established breeding population. I’ve read that they can only establish themselves that way if they’re released as a decent sized flock. Individuals will join existing flocks- even flocks of other parrot species- but they need to start as a flock to have much of a chance to survive in a new environment.

  138. 138.

    Elizabelle

    Snack bird six.

    I love this photo. Would be interesting if birdie decided to stick around Chez Cracker for a while.

  139. 139.

    Origuy

    @burnspbesq: Gottheimer is a former Microsoft executive. They might have met as part of business or socially. Meg Whitman really doesn’t like Trump.

  141. 141.

    redshirt

    When I was in Alice Springs Australian, the airport had beautiful white cockatoos in such numbers they were a nuisance, like pigeons. And then my plane sucked in a half dozen into the engine and crash! Pretty cool actually.

  143. 143.

    marv

    coming out of a well-deserved lurker-dumb to say that “locker room banter” thing is really bothering me. I was a professional baseball player for 8 seasons, just a couple months in the big leagues, but believe me, I know locker rooms from start to finish, and this is not what it was like (not saying guys never said gross or disgusting things in the name of humor, or whatever, lord knows I probably did – but not like that)

  144. 144.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Roger Moore: Firing on Fort Trumpter, how a propos. As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Well, kindasorta almost.

  146. 146.

    Calming Influence

    [email protected]marv: Yeah, there’s something fundamentally different about the way Trump talked. You’re listening to crude guy banter, hardly paying attention, and then it’s “I’m sorry, what? You do what? Say that again, asshole?”

  147. 147.

    marv

    @Mnemosyne:

    yeah, my daughter (she’s 30) read that to me y-day. She posted it on her facebook page, I think. I still remember the open letter that guy wrote on some kind of gay issue (the details are gone, but it was a great letter). I think it’s a measure of how far we’ve come on that one issue that I was pretty amazed at the time a football player was expressing that point of view.

  148. 148.

    marv

    @Calming Influence:

    One little thing about that I haven’t seen discussed – he said at one point “I was on her like a bitch”. I’m pretty much out of the loop on modern sexual “banter”, I suppose, but who ever says that, and what does it even mean?

  149. 149.

    D58826

    Saw on Twitter a highway in Del. was shutdown after a truck load of crated live chickens turned over. Chickens were crossing the road in large numbers.

  150. 150.

    Theodore Wirth

    Right on Betty C. What a beautiful being.

    You are my kin, I give the animals, fish, insects and plants the benefit of the doubt but suspect motives in the behavior of fellow humans. This makes me miserable.

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