We’re getting a lot of rain here today, which is good. The river is so low it’s a pain in the ass to get the boat out of the lagoon. But the exposed banks seem to bring more feathered visitors, like this Roseate Spoonbill I saw just now:
Over the weekend, we also had a couple of Black-Bellied Whistling Duck visitors:
We generally call them BBWDs for short.
Open thread!
Old School
Awesome. Congrats on the rain. As long as you didn’t have any plans to be outside.
japa21
Damn, Betty. I remember when you used to say you couldn’t take good photos. These are beautiful.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Every time you post a pic of spoonbills, I realize all over again how gorgeous they are.
Yutsano
QUACKERS!!!
JML
A/C hasn’t been working right today during contract negotiations. You can’t make this up. If this were a Hollywood script, it’d get tossed for hackery.
NotMax
If that’s not a euphemism it sure as shootin’ deserves to be.
:)
frosty
According to eBird a Roseate Spoonbill is hanging out in Baltimore Harbor. I’ve got to get down there soon, if it hasn’t left already.
S Cerevisiae
Beautiful shots, particularly of the spoonbill! Whenever I see one Cream starts playing in my head; that spoon, that spoon, that spoonbill…🎵
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I can’t NOT stop and look whenever one drops by. It isn’t great for my productivity, but this is why I live here.
This fall I’m going to a family reunion thing up in the Panhandle, and I’m planning to go hunt for an American Flamingo that has been spotted frequently in a marshy wildlife preserve ever since it got caught in the eye of a hurricane down south and deposited on that shore (allegedly).
I saw a flamingo in the wild once while camping on an island in Tampa Bay, of all places. It left a feather on the beach that I sported in a hatband for ages until the kids got ahold of it.
rikyrah
BWA H HA HA HA AH AHA HA HA HA HA
Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCNN) tweeted at 1:30 PM on Mon, Jul 24, 2023:
JUST IN: Special Counsel Jack Smith has obtained thousands of documents produced by Giuliani legal team in their efforts to find fraud in 2020 election. Bernie Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, handed over docs to prosecutors over the weekend.
(https://twitter.com/PaulaReidCNN/status/1683545134099562496?t=GHm7PhWSopUEM3ig4B4mpg&s=03)
Doc Sardonic
This is the Florida that most people don’t see, and that brings back memories from my younger days. Unfortunately, it’s time for this native to pack up his carpetbag, before I can’t get rid of my house.
Gin & Tonic
What tune do the ducks whistle?
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: It’s a seven note tune that’s hard to imitate! I’m a pretty good whistler, and I can’t duplicate it. ;-)
JoyceH
I’m back from my California trip. Everything went well and I had a great time. I’d like to be fitter, and those incredible hikes through airports are a bit much, but I’m pleased to know that I’m at least fit enough to go places and have fun.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Isn’t that a fabulous picture? It’s a Barbie spoonbill!!!
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Just read your link and it’s no longer twitter, it’s now X. Of course the link is twitter.whatever but the title in the upper left corner of the site is X. I believe that I may be done with it. I used to be on it for hours a week, now I maybe am on for less than 5 minutes a week. I may close my account just for the hell of it.
AM in NC
Wow Betty, your bird photography is really getting good! Not that it was crap before, but you know what I mean.
Salty Sam .
NO! WHISTLERS!!!
They really do whistle as they fly overhead- a really high pitched warbling whistle. Not duck-like at all…
ETA- MOAR SPOONBILLS!
Gravenstone
@Ruckus: Apparently they couldn’t be bothered to ensure the availability of @X, so someone else holds that user name.
Mike in NC
I guess it was several years ago, but the phone rang one day and a neighbor asked, “Mike, what are those things by your bird feeder?” I had never seen ‘black-bellied whistling ducks’ before and they haven’t returned since. They seem to be common in Florida and Georgia.
sab
@Doc Sardonic: I moved from north central Florida at age twelve in 1966. I still miss sunrises and sunsets, the amazing birds, and the inland waterways. Nothing I have seen since, all over the country, matches.
But I expect the star-studded night sky is long gone as development increased.
Ruckus
@Gravenstone:
I’m putting it down to not actually thinking the whole thing through. You know, when you change the name of a business you have to change everything. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Not in elon world.
Steeplejack
I think I’ve finally found the alternative to Twitter! This new X app looks pretty good. Check it out, guys!
Ken
@Ruckus: I have a suspicion that this will work about as the many renaming attempts by cities. You can change the signs to “Alderman Dan Smith Boulevard”, but everyone in town is still going to call it Water Street.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Maybe people will start calling it “the website formerly known as Twitter” the way they did when Prince changed his name.
NotMax
An assemblage of duck terms.
@Gin & Tonic
Brooding. ;)
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Wait, whut?
Old Dan and Little Ann
We have next door neighbors who are fairly private but always friendly. They never attend any neighborhood functions. We had about a dozen other neighbors over Friday night to break in our new fire pit. The neighbor whose house backs up to the private neighbor was complaining to me about some tree branches over the power lines that are near her border. She called the power company but she was told it was not her property so the private neighbors would have to call. This conversation was less than 2 minutes. When I woke up Saturday and walked the dog all the branches over the private neighbor powerlines had been cut and were curbside in front of private neighbors house. I found this to be rather……unsettling.
I always feel like, somebody’s watching me.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Is that serious question because of my typo or a snarky question?
Doc Sardonic
@sab: The stars are still here in my little(but rapidly growing) area. But if I really want to get a good view of the stars, I just jump in my my Jeep and take a 30 minute jaunt up to the forest and park by Little Blue, stretch out on the hood and watch the night sky for a while.
cope
Thanks for the spoonbill shot, our favorite bird. When we moved to FL (very much against my will) from CO in 1989, the birds were the first thing that I allowed myself to like about the place. Having moved back now, they are among the few things we miss.
We moved back to western CO largely because all my family is here. As such, I can see why your family connections to FL will keep you there for the duration. Me, I’m looking forward to voting against Lauren Boebert this fall and being able to come home after that and knosh on some dummies.
Ken
@Betty Cracker:
@Gin & Tonic: The first time I heard them, I thought the dogs had a squeaky toy that I didn’t know about. They truly can sound like a dog toy! A treat to hear and see.
NotMax
Is the spoonbill the official bird of the Cardassian empire?
//
Steeplejack
@Baud:
What typo?! I thought we had a bit going here.
Doc Sardonic
@Old Dan and Little Ann: There’s an ear worm in that…….And by chance is your private neighbor’s Wi-Fi SSID NSAPSYOP, or FBI and a series of numbers?
zhena gogolia
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Sound carries very well at night (ask me how I know). If you have a party outside, your neighbors are going to hear the conversations.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
If you really want to piss Musk off, you’ll stop talking about it by any name.
mrmoshpotato
Oh, you whistling beasts.
Doc Sardonic
Sound does carry well at night. My little neighborhood is like an amphitheater, you can hear everything.
mrmoshpotato
@japa21: Yes. Excellently framed. Good lighting.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Sorry. My bad. I dropped the ball.
Betty Cracker
@cope: Dummies? Anyhoo, I’m glad you’re back where you belong, even if that means two fewer sane voters in FL. The short stints where I lived out of state, I missed Cuban food (bread especially) the most. I could replicate the dishes but not the bread.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: Audubon Society
JCJ
Albatrossity in the morning, BC in the afternoon for all your ornithology needs!
Doc Sardonic
Without the Palmetto frond you just can’t do it, also requires lard. Cuban bread ain’t vegan.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: How do you know? 😁
sab
@mrmoshpotato: We had a pileated woodpecker which I usually see once a year and assumed migrated. They don’t. One was issuing raucus territorial calls in my backyard yesterday. So they have always been near me but I just didn’t notice. Cool birds.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato: Talking doesn’t bother me, as long as there’s no music with pounding bass.
delphinium
Gorgeous picture of the spoonbill-looks like a pink angel descending to earth!
Also, am thinking of maybe doing my own double feature with Oppenheimer, ‘Across the Oppen-Verse’ if there is a theater nearby playing both the Spider Man and Oppenheimer movies. I really enjoyed the first Into the Spider Verse movie and have been meaning to see the sequel.
ETA: fixed typo
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: What about loud party blasting Beethoven’s 5th?
sab
@Betty Cracker: Back in 1960s north central Florida we got no benefit from Cuban culture. They were all in Miami and we were closer to Jacksonville and Georgia.
But we did get excellent Spanish classes with a Cuban accent every day on TV from first or second grade on through.
When we moved to Ohio nobody got any language until middle school, which is a bit late. I took my first year of French from Madame Garcia, who understood the Spanish I came into class with. It made her laugh. Her French was good, but my next teacher’s was awful. She wanted to be teaching us her ancestral Czech.
cope
@Betty Cracker: I am going to have to fire my editor who is…me. Gummies are much more fun to gnosh than dummies (spellcheck even has problems with gnosh).
I spent my teen years in the Chicago area before moving out west in 1970. Italian beef is a concrete connection to my youth. I can make the meat and the gravy/juice but the bread…it’s just damned near impossible to replicate elsewhere in my experience. In other words, I understand your yearning for a regional baked delicacy.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato: That never happens.
Betty Cracker
@sab: Tampa is home to a large population of Cuban Americans and has been for ages — that’s who made all the cigars and invented Cuban sandwiches, though Miami erroneously claims that distinction. ;-) It is the closest city to my home town, so we always knew about Cuban food and had access to Cuban bread. I do load up on Tampa-style Cuban bread when I visit. Publix sells Cuban bread, but it isn’t as good (but better than no Cuban bread).
sab
Current issue in our marriage: he thinks I mumble ( I do.) I think he is deaf and needs a hearing aid (he is and he does.)
Standoff here, but the deaf guy usually wins because he cannot hear WHAT I AM SAYING BECAUSE HE CANNOT HEAR!!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
So do it.
sab
@Betty Cracker: We were east coast. Daytona and Ormond.
ETA Our only Hispanic family in my school were from Chile. I think their dad was a doctor in the hospital where my dad worked,
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I’m not technologically adept enough.
NotMax
@cope
Gonna go out on a limb and surmise that’s because it is spelled nosh.
;)
cope
@Betty Cracker: I had the distinct pleasure of eating at Columbia in Ybor City once. Fabulous.
Alison Rose
Here’s a bit of nice news out of my nice state:
trollhattan
When the girl was younger she did zoo camps in summer and when old enough to help with the critters, swooned over the baby whistling ducks to such an extent it felt like I had to check her pockets for “stray” ducklings when picking her up.
They are cute as a cute thing to be sure.
Brachiator
@sab:
Of course a hearing test could be the tie breaker.
My mother has been reasonable about most things as she gets older, but for some reason she refused for the longest time to get a hearing aid, and sometimes will not use it. And yet when she does, she is happy to be able to hear everyone.
cope
@NotMax: Thank you, I wondered why I had so much trouble confirming the spelling.
I will now leave the computer and take the dog out in the 100 degree heat to have her daily play date with my sister’s dog at her place while I sit in the shade with my ice tea.
rikyrah
@Alison Rose:
THIS is excellent news.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia:
@Baud: LOL! I didn’t suggest it as a challenge. Though, now that you’ve opened the possibility…
sab
@Betty Cracker: I love Cuban food, but we don’t have it in Ohio. Oddly, western Michigan does because of Mariel boat people. They were new there when I lived there in the eighties. They bonded with the Mexican migrants at least culturally (food.) Different but on the same page. Dutch and Scottish food just wasn’t their thing.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: My mom’s mother was deaf as a post and often refused to wear her hearing aids. She had the sometimes hilarious habit of repeating back what she THOUGHT you had said, no matter how preposterous, instead of just asking you to repeat it. So, we’d have conversations like, “My friend Cathy is a nurse,” to which Gran would reply, “SHE STOLE YOUR PURSE?!?”
The Lodger
@NotMax: It’s the singular form of gnocchi.
“Did somebody drop a gnosh on the floor?”
mrmoshpotato
@The Lodger: “We made a single gnosh for dinner but it’s really, REALLY BIG! Grab a fork and knife and a gallon of Alfredo sauce!”
sab
@Brachiator: Some of my sister’s nephews-in-law work with hearing aides professionally. As your hearing goes your brain shuts down on processing it. Classic don’t use it you lose it. That is my fear with husband. That is where my dad has been for twenty years. He lost it. Hearing aides don’t work for him. If I have to screech at my husband for the next few decades I would rather just move on.
Anyway
@Alison Rose:
Thanks for sharing this. Helping young people esp those starting out without advantages is good.
Doc Sardonic
Well, I know what my weekend menu is now. Pernil, Moros y Christianos, Yucca con Mojo, a big loaf of Pan de Cubano and Flan. Maybe a lavender flan if I’m feeling my inner foodie, but most likely the classic, sometimes my inner foodie needs to stay in the pantry and not make work for me.
tom
Meanwhile,over at
twitterX, the clown show continues as San Francisco cops shut down the sign change at thetwitterX building today.Sister Golden Bear
@Ruckus: Though it may not be X for long. Meta owns a trademark for X as it relates to “online social networking services… social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development…” although Meta’s version looks different, so there may be wiggle room there.
OTOH, Twitter new mark appears to be a generic Unicode character known as “mathematical double-struck capital X.” Unicode characters cannot be copyrighted or trademarked. It was added to Unicode in March 2001, and has “been used in mathematical text books since the 70s.”
The new logo is also appears identical to the “x” in the Monotype font “Special Alphabet 4” — which I’m sure Monotype has copyrighted.
Any patent attorney jackals in the house?
Ken
@Ruckus: @Gravenstone: The new eX-twitter may have a few other issues, depending on how service mark 2693757 is interpreted by the USPTO or by its holder, Microsoft Corporation.
Maybe Musk can get around it by forbidding any potentially-infringing uses on eX-twitter. Those would include “providing information on computer games, video games, video game consoles and accessories therefor via the Internet”, which I’m sure wouldn’t be hard to eliminate from the platform.
sab
OT My husband stopped drinking 45 years ago. In hot weather he loves non-alcohol sangria. Grape juice not over sweetened, with sliced oranges and sliced apples and any other sliced fruit in season. Put it in a pitcher, refrigerate, and serve it late in the day when everyone is tired and cranky from heat. It is so refreshing.
mrmoshpotato
@sab: That sounds really good.
mrmoshpotato
@tom:
You mean the ASSclown show continues. :)
Betty Cracker
@Doc Sardonic: Perfect menu.
mrmoshpotato
Dammit! I want a runza now!
Has Assclown Mush built a hyperloop across Illinois and Iowa?
Scout211
@tom: update on that:
Link
twbrandt
@Scout211: thanks for that. 2 possibilities:
Anyway
@Doc Sardonic:
Start off with mojitos, no doubt.
lowtechcyclist
@Doc Sardonic:
My next-door neighbor named his modem FBI Surveillance Van.
Jay
Still not a Drag Queen, a book or Trans,……
https://news.yahoo.com/alabama-anti-abortion-leader-indicted-144500449.html
frosty
@Betty Cracker: Same as real cheesesteaks from Philly. Lots of people make and sell them but you can’t get the right bread anywhere else. And they don’t taste right without it.
currants
@Doc Sardonic:
What a FANTASTIC way of putting it. This is a problem I regularly encounter, and now I know who to scold when I talk to myself! :-)
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
They probably all quit after the first day, the way he acts. ;-)
Doc Sardonic
@Anyway: Oh Yes……fresh mint added to shopping list
Doc Sardonic
@sab: That sounds excellent….added to my list of things to serve people that don’t drink.
Kayla Rudbek
@Sister Golden Bear: Trademark attorney jackal is who you’re looking for, and in my IP-trained opinion I agree that Musk did absolutely no due diligence or clearance searches to check and see if he could use this. I’m not sure if he checked with an attorney or not, and he probably completely ignored their advice if he did check. I’m going to stock up on popcorn and keep checking IPLaw 360 and the TTAB blog (although it’s going to take a while for results to shake out, as the trademark side of USPTO is also backlogged)
ETA; see Ken at #76 above for an exact cite to a competing registered trademark.