It’s a rainy day here in Florida, which is a good excuse to stay home (as if any additional reasons were needed, with pestilence sweeping the land). Hummingbirds don’t have to worry about that. Here’s one taking a break from nectar-sipping activities and giving the paparazzi the side-eye:
Another hummingbird hard at work:
And here’s one resting for a few beats during a drizzle:
It’s a bit damp from the rain drops it couldn’t fly between.
That’s all I’ve got! Open thread.
raven
My mom gave me this butterfly hanging years ago and we just realized the big blank wall on the stairway to the basement was perfect!
donnah
Yay for hummingbirds! Nice close-ups, btw. Rain or not, they’re lovely.
I have been seeing hummingbirds at my feeder regularly now. I have been keeping an eye on traffic, and while we haven’t had a lot of them the feeder is being emptied regularly. They’re so cute!
raven
The little giant ladder was perfect for the job. Sucker is heavy but it was very secure.
mad citizen
Happy Sunday everyone. Just realized July 5 1776 was the day the founders had to get together to create a bunch of committees to make the Declaration happen.
RandomMonster
I celebrated July 5 by doing my taxes.
Lapassionara
@raven: That looks great!
germy
Yutsano
It’s been in the upper 80s since I got out of the hospital. I actually voyaged outside yesterday to get some sun and pester the chickens. The garden here is looking good although I don’t know if Dad touched it since Mom is out of town. We’ll see. I did have to throw some peas away that went to starch on the counter. If Mom had told me I could have blanched them and got them ready for freezing. Such is life.
cmorenc
Much better to be watching nearby wildlife in the form of a hummingbird hovering in your backyard than in the form of a jellyfish hovering in the ocean you’re swimming in. At least today it was a garden variety jellyfish of the sort contact with is a temporary mild irritant rather than a couple of weeks ago, when Portuguese man O’ War were washing up on the beach here in SE North Carolina. They sting like Hell if you step / bump into one, even a dead one.
TaMara (HFG)
Lovely photos.
germy
Immanentize
@raven: That is really beautiful. Peaceful.
Villago Delenda Est
Nice birbs.
In the not so nice column, the draft dodging sack of shit says that journalists who have called him on his racism in his Friday and Saturday remarks are “slandering all veterans” by doing so.
Look, Cadet Bone-spurs, you have no standing to invoke veterans to defend the indefensible.
Mike in NC
Washington Post has an article up about how some Facebook prankster claimed to be organizing a flag burning party at the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4th. To nobody’s surprise, scores of gun-toting morons showed up to do battle with the invisible enemy, many wearing MAGA gear and Confederate flag t-shirts. Hopefully they’ll retreat to some biker bar to get wasted and infect one another with the virus.
MattF
@RandomMonster: In the midst of doing mine. Most of it Is done, actually, and I’m still somewhat above zero, in contrast to last year.
debbie
@germy:
I wonder what that bird thinks it has? At one point, it looks like it’s trying to peck the ball open.
Sister Golden Bear
Laughing so that I don’t cry…. Although seriously, this is the sort of messaging from pop culture figures that we need.
Outkast Parody: Hey-Ya “Ro-Na”
debbie
@Mike in NC:
Now, that’s where the NFAC should have shown up. //
germy
@debbie: Maybe trying to dribble with its beak.
MattF
@Mike in NC: There’s a fair amount of that going around. Heavily armed local militia platoons scouring the local shrubbery in search of antifa flag-burners.
Major Major Major Major
Saw this little guy in Central Park yesterday, though it wasn’t raining. Probably something common and boring, but it was sooo small I had to get a picture. https://imgur.com/a/HnWTohW
Nora
@Major Major Major Major: I think it’s a male house sparrow. We have lots of them around here. Great picture, though.
Major Major Major Major
@Nora: Thanks! I’ve noticed over the years that I have a soft spot for sparrows and finches.
WaterGirl
@raven: that is the perfect spot. and it’s stunning!
Kropacetic
Man, one misses the subtlety of the Bush era Republicans’ claims that criticizing them was akin to criticizing the troops. President Clownshoes needs to try harder.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: Nice! Is that a batik? I love batiks.
Alison Rose
YAY BIRBS!
Hungry Joe
Going to be close to 90 degrees in San Diego. On Friday and Saturday the freeways were packed with people heading in for a weekend at the beach. It would have been nice to take a semi-solitary walk next to the cool Pacific, but we‘ll remain hunkered until the vectorites take their viruses and head home.
In backyard news, about 20 minutes ago I rescued a bluebelly lizard from the clutches of Phoebe the Cat. As a huntress she’s incompetent — two confirmed bird kills in seven years — but she occasionally corners a lizard. When I pick it up I pretend to examine it while actually, with the other hand, tossing it over the fence to safety. Then, somehow, to her it’s just — gone! We look for it together, comrades on the hunt, but always come up empty. She’s beautiful, but not the smartest cat in the world. County. Neighborhood.
Alice the Dog just watches, not particularly interested. She’s 13 and has seen the show before.
Ohio Mom
Nora, yup, a house sparrow. Growing up in New York City, the birds of my childhood were sparrows, pigeons, and on jaunts to the beach, sea gulls.
On another note, we left our neighborhood to go to a farmer’s market in the city proper this morning. It was a stripped down version of previous years’ markets, and there wasn’t much there we couldn’t get elsewhere, but what a relief to be OUT.
This sheltering in place is wearing on me. And I am increasingly angry that my sacrifices have amounted to very little since well, Republicans. For starters, looking at you, Governor DeWine.
There’s an argument that we probably shouldn’t have gone — Ohio Dad has only been back from his business trip to Las Vegas for just four days, and his internist said to quaratine for ten days.
Ohio Dad dons a mask as soon as he leaves his room, and eats his meals in there. Which makes me feel safe enough. He didn’t get near anyone else at the market, I don’t think he is much of a vector. When it’s been ten days, he’ll go off to a pop-up testing site for confirmation.
Aleta
An ashram for the hummingbird’: the Trindad haven for world’s tiniest bird
Theo and Gloria Ferguson have created a garden specially designed to attract hummingbirds – and hundreds visit daily
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/04/an-ashram-for-the-hummingbird-the-trindad-haven-for-worlds-tiniest-bird-aoe
RandomMonster
@MattF: Thumbs up!
I used to go to HR Block, before they screwed me over one year. This year I went with Turbo Tax, which I found surprisingly easy and friendly to use.
JMG
In the birb watching category, while my son and I were at the golf course yesterday morning, my wife Alice saw a passel of crows driving a hawk away from what was obviously considered crow territory, the big dead tree at the far end of our back yard.
S. Cerevisiae
Birds are amazing, particularly hummingbirds. I saw over 20 species in Costa Rica, like little flying jewels. I only need 11 more species to hit 600 on my life list.
Yutsano
@Major Major Major Major: That looks like a finch beak. I could be wrong however!
MattF
@RandomMonster: I’ve been using Turbo Tax with e-filing for many years now. My basic strategy is to make sure the income numbers in my return match the numbers supplied to the IRS. And the IRS has not bothered with me.
Aleta
@Hungry Joe: One spring night gentle Charlie “The Softest Cat in the World” (who had a mother cat side to him) came through the cat door, carefully placed a a frog on the floor, and sat alongside it as a pair looking at us. We took the frog back out to the neighbor’s spring flood hollow where ducks would land. We kept checking on it; it seemed to be doing fine.
randy
“…with pestilence sweeping the land).”
And I will lift my weary eyes.
I’ll lift them up unto the hills;
And the help that I have needed will surely tumble down;
I will lift mine eyes unto the hills.
Yutsano
@JMG: I guess I have never said this here. But I’m gonna get all preachifying now.
NEVER PAY FOR SOMEONE TO DO YOUR TAXES!!!
The only exceptions are if you’re self-employed and have a complex business structure, you’re a business owner, or you have multiple retirement streams that are too complicated for you to handle. If you just get a W-2 and/or unemployment, have no other complications to your income, and only need to claim your mortgage interest and charitable contributions, then you can use a program. All those tax filing outfits are rip off artists. You shouldn’t have to pay up to $300 just to get your taxes done.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Beautiful photo of a very pretty birb, dressed out in their Sunday Finest~!~ Good work. Take care, stay safe !!!
Calouste
@RandomMonster: I’ve used Turbo Tax for years, but went to HR Block the year we bought a house. That year we got a letter from the IRS because HR Block forgot to properly list $x00,000 for the cost of the old house somewhere, and the IRS wanted to charge income tax over that. So, not doing that again.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major:
@Nora:
Yep, that would be a house sparrow, all right!
MattF
@Yutsano: I’m actually in the ‘multiple retirement streams’ category but it’s still easy, given that the accounts I’m getting required distributions from all do auto-distribute into my checking account. And are managed by the likes of Vanguard and TIAA– who do this sort of thing all the time. There’s really nothing for me to do besides report the results of their annual calculations.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: YES! I forgot!
Sab
@Yutsano: You say this every year.
Patricia Kayden
catclub
@Yutsano:
1. I am pretty sure that you were linked to the IRS in my mind.
I do my taxes (on paper) all the time, but I take reading the rules as a challenge.
So if you hate math and don’t want to think about taxes go ahead and pay someone else – not for the ability but for the lower stress.
Doing the taxes on paper bit me this year because I had never given the IRS any bank info. I also failed multiple times to GIVE the IRS my bank info. I think they have our different last Names jumbled, so my ssn and my birthdate and my name just fails(silently – or useless error message), even though that is what should work.
My taxes are sufficiently complicated that there are no free electronic filing apps for me. But gosh that should be simple.
All the forms converted to pdf just want a blank number and a value.
opiejeanne
@Yutsano: I think, not sure though, that what we call sparrows in the US are finches.
RandomMonster
@Calouste: Wow! That’s a horrible story of incompetence.
In my case, I had this unusual situation in which we moved and my employer had withheld taxes in two states. HR Block couldn’t resolve the problem, which was fair enough because it really did require a full CPA — however, they didn’t tell me they couldn’t resolve it until the day the taxes were due! And then they charged me $100 just for filing the extension.
prostratedragon
@Sister Golden Bear:
And they’re a very good band.
C Stars
@Aleta: What a wonderful article. Thank you!
And what lovely photos. I didn’t realize how much I needed some BIRB respite right now.
A couple of days ago I noticed a pair of soft little caramel colored doves looking for a spot to nest in on our neighbors eaves. I wanted to tell them to turn around, as those eaves are frequented by a rowdy family of crows (whom I may or may not be feeding bits of sardine to, because the scruffy teenager crows are so funny to watch…)
Wapiti
Regarding taxes, I get irritated every year that many states (California. Missouri! Kansas!!) have free online tax preparation sites, but the US does not. I jump between the main software products depending on what is cheapest for my needs, but I use the state products for the state taxes.