Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Please don’t feed the bears.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

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

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

“But what about the lurkers?”

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

T R E 4 5 O N

No one could have predicted…

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Birdwatching / White Birds, Dark Swamp (Open Thread)

White Birds, Dark Swamp (Open Thread)

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In a “cheers” open thread I posted yesterday with my phone from the comfort of our veranda, a line of white birds who were browsing from a floating mat of vegetation was visible in the background. Today I got off my butt and schlepped downstairs with the Nikon to get a closer look:

The crew today is a squabbling bunch of Snowy Egrets (identifiable due to their black bills and legs with bright yellow feet). They get in each other’s way and react angrily a lot, jabbing at each other with their sharp bills, raising the crest on their heads and sometimes flying straight up three or four feet breast-to-breast. (These displays kinda remind me of you people sometimes! ;-)

Sometimes they’re joined by Great Egrets, Common Gallinules (called “swamp chickens” or “moorhens” by the locals), Little Blue Herons, White Ibises and/or a beautiful Reddish Egret who keeps eluding my attempts to photograph it. I’ll keep trying to capture an image of that bird, plus a better vid of the egrets when they are squabbling aggressively.

The water in the lagoon looks dark due to the tannins and weeds below the surface. But if you see it over a shallow spot, it’s pretty clear, like the contents of a cup of weak tea in a white mug. I guess that basic cleanliness is how all these birds stay so pristine — that and their constant preening. If I wade in the swamp for even 10 seconds, I come out filthy.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  2. 2.

    Torrey

    Are you saying you need to preen more?

    Thank you for this closeup video. I have never, to my knowledge, seen anything like these floating mats with seabirds on them before–or if I did, I failed to pay attention to it. The one on the right looks like it’s standing in the water rather than on the mat, but it appears that the water is flowing past them towards the left (or the mat is floating towards the right), so I assume that the mat has some depth, and the one on the right has footing on something that isn’t the actual bottom of the stream .

  3. 3.

    HumboldtBlue

    More excellent analysis from Brian Beutler.

    This stands in untenable contrast to the way these same outlets responded to the hacking-and-leaking of Democratic emails in 2016. A hallmark of Trump-era journalism has been the media’s institutional defensiveness of its conduct in the run up to Trump’s first election. Precious few reporters have retrospectively acknowledged that their 2016 fixation on emails (both the ones on Hillary Clinton’s personal server, and the ones that were stolen from her colleagues) fell beneath professional standards. Most reporters, and nearly all decision makers, insist they did nothing wrong—at most they’ll allow that their failures that cycle were garden variety.

    “When we learn important things, to not publish is a political act,” the Times’s then-executive editor Dean Baquet insisted in retrospect. “The calculation cannot be, we’re just not going to publish because that would screw up American politics. You know, at that point, I will go into business as like a campaign adviser to people and not as a journalist.”

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @HumboldtBlue:

    When we learn important things, to not publish is a political act

     

    Didn’t they not publish information about Bush to avoid affecting the election?

  6. 6.

    lowtechcyclist

    Apparently what I witnessed yesterday here, just off Anna Maria Island, was a manatee “mating herd” where several (in this case, three) prospective mates follow a female manatee to her preferred location, and then she and the lucky guy mate while the others just kinda hang around.

  7. 7.

    Ken

     If I wade in the swamp for even 10 seconds, I come out filthy.

    Nice of you to end with a perfect segue to political topics.

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    BIRBS!!!

    You did a one up on Albatrossity. You shot video!

    I don’t have a lot. I have a convention involving candy coloured equines next weekend that I’m excited for. Oh and I love my job, and since I’m about eight months in it’s not just the honeymoon period.

  9. 9.

    Hungry Joe

    POSTCARD UPDATE

    Yesterday — 0, because we were OUT OF CARDS: Completed 5O for Jon Tester, 50 for Sherrod Brown (Ms. Joe did those), and 200 to Postcards to Swing States.

    Today we picked up another  50 for Tester and another 50 for Sherrod Brown.* So … right back at it.

    * For some reason I can’t think of him as “Brown” — it has to be “Sherrod Brown.”

  10. 10.

    jonas

    @HumboldtBlue: And speaking of emails and memory holes, where is the incessant coverage of the (momentarily-dismissed) classified documents case? Hillary had some emails that mentioned classified things on her home server and it was front-page news for two years. Trump had *actual highly classified documents* in his bathroom.  But that got boring after a while, I guess, so we’re on to something else shiny. As long as that shiny thing can generate clickbaity headlines critical of Democrats.

  12. 12.

    CaseyL

    Watching wild birds just do their thing is fascinating and restful at the same time.  Thank you for sharing your backyard wildlife experiences with us :)

    BTW, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Little Blue Heron, though the existence of the Great Blue Herons sort of implies a smaller (sub?)species, otherwise the latter would just be a plain old “Blue Heron”!

    [Pause while Casey does some quick online research)

    Aha!  The Littles seem to only be in the SE, so we don’t get them out here in the PNW. And while they can come in more shades of blue than the Big Guys, they do have that same hunched-up-slouch posture that always makes me think they look like disgruntled elderly men.

  14. 14.

    sdhays

    @Ken: My reaction to that sentence was, “WTF?! Betty, don’t you know there are GATORS in those waters??!”

    But then I thought, “Eh, Betty probably knows what she’s doing. I’m not going to wade into a Florida swamp, though, even if I don’t care about getting dirty.”

  15. 15.

    Mousebumples

    @Hungry Joe: brown is a color. SHERROD Brown is a Senator.

    I got an email asking me to do more postcards for my local WisDems office over the next few weeks. I said yes – just waiting on more info, now.

  17. 17.

    sdhays

    @jonas: WHY WON’T KAMALA RELEASE A 900 PAGE BINDER OF POLICY WE CAN THEN MOSTLY IGNORE, EXCEPT FOR WHATEVER FOX LIES ABOUT?

  18. 18.

    rikyrah

    because the Orange Menace is broke. He can’t buy ads.

     

    Renee 

    @PettyLupone

    The Harris team is so damn smart. Bio ads in 7 battleground states *this month* means that trump has lost his chance to define her first. The more people learn about her, the more they’ll want to vote for her to put an end to this disgraceful chapter in politics.
    https://x.com/PettyLupone/status/1823718319645688072

  20. 20.

    BR

    @rikyrah:

    What happened to the billion dollars from oil lobbyists? I thought the Trump PACs would be flush with cash, and even they can’t pocket that much money that fast (or maybe they can?).

  22. 22.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    When I first went on an Audubon bird walk I learned that Snowy Egrets had “golden slippers” on their feet. First way I could tell them from Great Egrets (aside from size, of course).

  25. 25.

    KrackenJack

    @Mousebumples:

    @Hungry Joe:

    KrackenJill asked me over the weekend if there was anything we could do for the campaign. I was surprised since she’s never expressed any interest in that. We’re getting an ambitious number of postcards from Swing State Voters (turnoutpac). Gotta practice my hand stretches.

  26. 26.

    Doc Sardonic

    @tam1MI: Not Betty C but yes. In Florida where 2 or more tablespoons of water are gathered together there is potential for a gator.

  32. 32.

    cain

    So peaceful. :)

    I work for Intel, we’re going through some things. I can use all the calm I can get!

  33. 33.

    Betty Cracker

    @tam1MI: There’s more than a tablespoon of water and it’s Florida, so yes, there are gators. 🐊  We keep the dogs behind a stout fence and always assume an 11-foot monster is lurking just below the surface of the water unless we can SEE otherwise.

  35. 35.

    Winter Wren

    Cool video of the floating egrets! The only time I saw something similar was near Monterey Bay, where some great blues would stand on the top of the kelp forest while fishing in the ocean. I saw my first Reddish Egret down in the keys last year and then another again this past spring at Merritt Island. The one at Merritt Island was super-manic as it hunted for fish – I love how the different species so often have their unique hunting/fishing styles.

  38. 38.

    Leto

    @rikyrah: I saw some of those today! Along with an anti-Project 2025 ad! On the shitbird side, it’s the same “Kamala open border!” Dumbass cowboy hat ad, as well as “Inflation!” Bullshit ad I’ve seen for the past few weeks. She’s just gearing up while he’s already blown his load.

  39. 39.

    Subsole

    @jonas:

    Nope.

    It’s not even about ratings and clickbait.

    A presidential candidate being accused of raping 12 and 13 year olds would generate a lot more attention than “Biden old”. Guess which topic we got three frigging weeks of coverage on.

    They only hyperfixate on bad things for dems, and often on stuff that is positively mundane compared to the hair-raising shit the GOP is getting up to.

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) posted at 7:13 PM on Tue, Aug 13, 2024:
    Minyon Moore was part of a group that advised Joe Biden on selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate and on nominating Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Now she’s the chair of the Democratic National Convention. https://t.co/tsyd0SIO1n

    Marvin Sapp InTheSkreets/Marvin Gaye InTheSheets (@groove_sdc) posted at 4:28 AM on Wed, Aug 14, 2024:
    This is part of the “system” and the “establishment” folks want to overthrow.

    The part that empowers Black women.
    (https://x.com/groove_sdc/status/1823652861911187949?t=qrSAnqp5VQD3bZ8kEQMLQA&s=03)

  41. 41.

    Betty Cracker

    Here’s one of the local gators — took this shot from our side porch.

    White Birds, Dark Swamp (Open Thread)

    It looks scary because there’s no scale to gauge the size, but it’s just a little ‘un. I could wade out, grab it by the tail and skin it to make a pair of elegant shoes.

    But it’s got a mama somewhere, and her I am ever vigilant to avoid. It’s second nature if you grow up here. Our Eternal Student lives in Oregon now and (subconsciously) still looks out for gators in every body of water, as do I when visiting up there.

  47. 47.

    JWR

    The water in the lagoon looks dark due to the tannins and weeds below the surface. But if you see it over a shallow spot, it’s pretty clear

    Last night I turned on a PBS nature program, and they were showing the underwater view of the difference between surface and underwater visibility conditions, mostly to show how certain fish, (these were South American Cichlids), use the surface clouds, which look and behave just like cumulus clouds, for safety. But most of the underwater area was crystal clear, and the surface clouds extended from a few inches to several feet in depth. It was pretty cool!

  48. 48.

    HumboldtBlue

    JD Vance is the worst candidate on a national stage I have ever seen. He’s an angry asshole, who exudes the charm of a date-rapist and all the joy of throat cancer.

    Q: “Some who want Trump to win in November are urging the former president to do less personal attacks on Harris.”

    Vance: “I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to run the campaign that he wants to run.”

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

    @p.a.:

    it’s all about the grift with these people.

    Pulling up and getting as much public funds as they can for themselves and their grifting friends.

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    because Harris and Walz are doing what Democrats rarely do: hit back

     
    Glad Harris is good coverage but don’t like that the media will do it only at the expense of mischaracterizing other strong Dems.

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    @p.a.: I did — a fellow Floridian here flagged it the other day. Would love to see in-state dailies like the Miami Herald, Sun/Orlando Sentinel, TB Times, etc., run with it because the GOP grifters in this state are completely out of control in every agency and institution. It’s so pervasive thanks to one-party rule for a generation. If enough people were aware, maybe they’d get fed up enough to clean house (she said hopefully).

  56. 56.

    KrackenJack

    @Hungry Joe: Thanks! Now I have to go back over some of the threads with postcarding hints.

    BTW, What if you’re a Giant? jk.

    From here on in, everythin’s gonna be all right! I got a feelin’!

  59. 59.

    sdhays

    @Subsole: Yeah, it sure is interesting that they don’t want to touch THAT with a 100-foot poll.

    They’ll cover random-ass, easily disproven trash talk about Walz’s military service, but credible allegations of Trump raping young girls…nope, nope, nope! Might influence the election!

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @HumboldtBlue: Music to my ears, man — the media is harping on Trump for a change, and the minion is doubling down on the failed strategy. Please proceed, clown-ass motherfuckers!

  62. 62.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: That gator was maybe 2-1/2 feet long. I took the shot because I thought it was so pretty the way the sunlight illuminated its jaws. They really are beautiful creatures in their way.

  64. 64.

    KrackenJack

    @Betty Cracker: I have a refrigerator magnet from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “Great Lakes: Unsalted and shark free”

    I’ll admit that it brings me joy.

  65. 65.

    HinTN

    @p.a.: I almost linked to that story on GOS in yesterday’s BC thread. What a disaster these R despots are creating.

  68. 68.

    JaySinWA

    @Betty Cracker:

    Best to keep your eyes peeled in Oregon:

    Oregon State Police say it seized a family’s pet alligator after the homeowner learned it’s illegal to own one.
    OSP said the alligator had been with the Springfield family for about 13 years.
    Police say possessing an alligator — or any member of the crocodilian family — is prohibited in Oregon except for particular circumstances such as a wildlife rehabilitation center or educational and research facilities.
    The seized alligator was taken to an Oregon Department of Agriculture veterinarian where it will live out its remaining years.
    OSP said this was only the fourth alligator its troopers have come across in the last six years.
    https://www.centraloregondaily.com/news/regional/familys-pet-alligator-seized-by-oregon-state-police/article_7dffaf3b-dc81-5799-ac32-6724665c27bb.html

    Four gaters in six years? That is a surprise.

    I could have sworn I saw an article about a WA “pet” alligator that was dumped into one of our lakes a while back. All I could find is this false alarm:

    https://people.com/roaming-alligator-turns-out-to-be-large-pet-lizard-8681836

    On Friday, July 19, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office sent out an alert via X (formerly known as Twitter) informing residents that deputies were “investigating the sighting of a 10’ alligator near the 9400 block of Ray Grade Rd.”

    The tweet included a photo taken by a property owner in the area, showing a rather large reptile basking in the sunlight in a marshy area.

    …

    A woman in the private Granite Falls Community Connection Facebook group later cleared the misunderstanding up, Fox 13 Seattle reported on Saturday, July 20.

    Shanna Duncan said she is the owner of the “alligator,” which turned out to be her pet white Argentine tegu named Tazz, per the outlet.

  69. 69.

    pluky

    @CaseyL: I’ve seen Little Blues in Naragansett and Buzzard’s Bay, but so far none North of Cape Cod. Plenty of Great Blues though, even inland.

  73. 73.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog

    @Baud:

    Didn’t they not publish information about Bush to avoid affecting the election?

    Yep. Warrantless wiretapping.

    They sat on it for over a year. IIRC‚ they finally ran it (after the election) when the primary reporter said it could run first in the NYT or it could run first in his book, which was then in galleys. “These are your two choices,” as they say in pre-schools …

  76. 76.

    banditqueen

    FL is such a naturally beautiful state–likely too hot (and alligatory/buggy) for me, but I would love to visit and see even a bit of what you’ve shown us over the years. I really hope that some day the Desantis element can be cast off into the dust bin of bad history so that vitally important climate change initiatives can finally be undertaken/implemented. The plants, coral reefs, manatees, birds, and even the alligators deserve protection against the mad land grabbers/habitat destroyers.

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