Mom and dad are very protective and I am not even allowed to sit on my front porch, but that is ok, I have a back porch.
It’s funny, I remember when I was a kid my dad and all the adults would put up tinfoil and other stuff on the columns to make sure birds would not nest there. I’m all for it. There’s plenty of room and it makes me happy. I have three birdfeeders, four birdhouses, two bird baths, and even a bat house in the backyard. I like hearing all the birds in the morning and watch them raising a fuss.
schrodingers_cat
Robin eggs?
ETA: How was the lamb curry?
Baud
They have your eyes.
John Cole
@schrodingers_cat: Mom and dad are too small and not robins. I dunno what they are. I’m shit at identifying non-obvious birds- robins, blue jays, woodpeckers, cardinals, etc. Fuckers just move too fast and my vision and photography suck.
NotMax
Time to make the
doughnutscrepes.;)
Harbison
We were very exited to have 3 hummingbird nests under construction a few weeks ago, but work on one of them stopped about 1/2 way through last week and it looks like it was abandoned. I hope the parent(s) just decided to make one somewhere else …
Other two nest both have fledglings now.
Gelfling 545
I need to purchase a bird house suitable for robins. I’m covering up their access to a nesting place in the eaves of my house & feel I should provide alternate accommodation.
Geoduck
Just be sure they aren’t setting up housekeeping in places you don’t want them to, like vent-holes under the eaves that have lost their shielding.
schrodingers_cat
What brings you joy? . I blogged after months today, yes there are kittehs!
mrmoshpotato
The front porch is too close to the willow tree, and the birds know it.
ArchTeryx
This one’s actually pretty easy. You have a house finch nest. House finches can be hard to I.D. around the nest; they’re very secretive and the females are classic Little Brown Jobs. But the light blue egg with black spots is classic House Finch. Contrast with Robin eggs, which have no spots, and bluebird eggs, which are a brilliant cerulean blue and also have no spots.
Encourage the hell out of them. House finches are normally seed-eaters, but they become mosquito-harvesting monsters when the babies hatch.
schrodingers_cat
@John Cole: You are not the only one, birds are difficult to photograph.There is a huge owl that pays us a visit. It was a baby, now it is all growed up. I can never get a good picture.
bt
Bat house!
Now that’s something I’d like to see.
Mart
@bt: Where do you park the Batmobile?
TenguPhule
You say that now. Let’s see if that still holds after three months of bird shit on your porch. //
TenguPhule
@Mart:
In the garage.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
They should take advantage of the generous return policy.
zhena gogolia
@John Cole:
We watched a robin build a beautiful nest all day Saturday right outside our living room window. She’d come flying with a blade of grass or some other thing in her beak, put it inside, and then wiggle around in it to smooth it down — it was so cool. But we haven’t seen her lately. I hope she hasn’t abandoned it. It’s at an angle where I can’t really see in to see if there are eggs.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s some good news
Ohio Mom
@ArchTeryx: Do I remember correctly that last year’s bird family were also some type of finch?
@TenguPhule: I don’t remember bird poop being an issue last year. Now the rescue tarp, that I remember.
schrodingers_cat
I am in love with Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy music. The movie is available on Amazon Prime now. Such inspired music, great lyrics, great new voices. Go Zoya! Good to see audiences reward a movie dealing with issues of the day, giving a wider audience to many of the underground rappers, taking on dirty politics, economic differences, and other topical issues including the hot potato of religion.
TaMara (HFG)
I was riding this morning, down by the river, and a hawk came up from from the brush, trying to get loft and about flew into me…with a small snake dangling from his talons. I was a little horrified thinking I might get slapped in the face by snake/talons/wing, but at the last moment, he gained enough lift to fly over me.
Can’t wait for the baby pictures with their mouths agape, Cole.
jl
If Cole is not allowed to even be on the front porch, who took the pic? The birds did?
the posts on an almost top 10,000 full service blog need to make more sense, IMHO.
But, thanks for the eggpic.
FlyingToaster
@jl: Selfie stick, I imagine.
NotMax
FYI.
For those in the future wanting to arrange B-J meet-ups someplace where it’s possible to carry on a conversation, there’s an app for that.
;)
ArchTeryx
@TenguPhule: Nothing that a good hosing down won’t fix. Birds are messy neighbors when nesting, but they’re also taking out a huge chunk of very nasty insects in the process. Just think of the bird shit on your porch as recycled mosquitoes.
CaseyL
Congrats, John! Five eggs – I am impressed!
(Poor mum with her sore bum.)
@jl: IIRC (because he described the process some months back) Cole waits until the parents are away at their day jobs, then sneaks a peek at the nest with a long selfie stick-cum-periscope thingy.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: Birds are very hard to photograph, they move. When I’ve been up in the canyon taking pics of the eagles, there’s always someone there that’s been there for hours with a huge ass lens(that’s a photography technical term) taking pics.
Duane
@ArchTeryx: We used to have a Martin house, like an apartment for birds. Watching them fly around at night catching insects is entertaining. Cole should get one.
NotMax
“Hello, 911? There’s dinosaurs on my porch!”
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: “And a TRex in Chicago says hot dogs are sandwiches, and they’re right.”
Duane
@John Cole: Can we have a bird-cam? This is a full service blog after all. Please don’t dissapoint us.
Mary G
We used to have millions of the swallows that allegedly come back to Capistrano from Argentina on St. Joseph’s day. My dad was very proud that they came to his Episcopal Church earlier than that, but they are gone now. They make huge structures out of mud under the eaves of taller buildings, and the massive quantities of mud and poop that rain down means most buildings put up the bird equivalent of Twitler’s wall, including barbed wire, to keep them out. Plus the droughts of recent years meant a severe mud shortage.
Mission San Juan put up fake nests for them to return to after their big remodel in the 1990s, and tried using recordings of their mating calls to get them to come back in 2012, but as far as I know they never came back. There was a giant colony in the eaves of a Macy’s store in Mission Viejo, but Real Housewives-type people made a fuss, so the blockades went up. Dad’s church tried removing only the nests over the doors, with the long side walls untouched, but they abandoned the whole nest.
CarolPW
A couple of years ago I had a wreath on my front door, and I pretty much only go out that door when I get the mail. One afternoon I went out to get the mail, heard some noise, and realized I had a nest in the wreath with several hungry baby birds (house finches) looking for lunch. Since I had been getting my mail throughout the period of nest building, egg laying, and hatching, I continued to get my mail out that door and no one seemed to mind if the babies had a brief daily excursion on into my living room while riding on the wreath when I opened the door. When they fledged, fortunately none of the babies decamped from the nest into the house.
khead
Your Twitter feed has been smokin’ Mr. Cole.
ArchTeryx
@Ohio Mom: I have no idea! It wouldn’t surprise me, though, House Finches are one of the most common backyard birds and they really like the nooks and crannies around a house to nest in.
Steeplejack
@TenguPhule:
Batgarage, please.
jl
@Steeplejack: Let’s not mention anything with ‘bat’ in it, on a thread about small animals that pester Cole. We don’t want to tempt fate.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@khead: I think that’s illegal in West(By God) Virginia.
Mnemosyne
I totally forgot it was genocide week in Glendale. Sheesh.
That would be the Armenian genocide, BTW. Adam Schiff has gotten himself in hot water with the Turkish government several times because he supports his Armenian American constituents who want Turkey to admit that what they did in Armenia was genocide.
khead
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
“Your Twitter feed has been dipping Copenhagen” just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Just because you have bats in your belfry…
mawado
My grandfather was a bit of a fanatic about enjoying bird song. He liked it so much that, when I was a boy, we built a cage with a roof about a yard on a side and bought three canaries.
Little known fact, only female canaries sing. So, he bought three females. They adapted well and learned who fed them and sang when he came near.
Turns out, it’s difficult to determine the sex of a canary and one of his purchases was male. The next spring, we had ten. We built a bigger cage. Then there were twenty. We expanded the cage and started a garden to grow seeds and greens. Then there were forty. He decided we would build the canary cage to end all canary habitat.
We built it around a big fir tree. Twelve feet high, fifteen feet wide, and twenty foot long, we built a shingle roof and eaves so the birds would stay warm in the winter. There was a set of concrete bowls feed by a spigot that ran down to the goldfish pond. We had to beg the neighbors for their tuna fish cans because we needed them for nests. It had a full size screen door so we could do maintenance inside. We started a meal worm colony to feed the birds. Summer afternoons were filled with canary song.
The birds recognized him and when he came near they would gather on the wire-mesh sides of the cage and sing. We salvaged an intercom and rigged it so one side always broadcast from the cage and he could turn the other end on in his living room. It was common to come home and find a school class on a field trip in the back alley. He liked to invite them into the yard and serve iced tea. People assumed he liked all birds. Someone in the neighborhood gave him a half-dozen button quail. Button quail don’t sing, but they live on the floor, so no big deal. We added a miniature barn with a lightbulb inside where the quail could stay warm.
His good fiend gifted him a set of cardinals (pretty, but no singing). We had to build another cage to keep the Cardinals apart. A kid no one had ever seen before showed up with a rabbit he said had been hit by a car. We told him we’d care for it. No four year old deserves a blow like that. Turns out the rabbit was only stunned. We added another garden and a little blond visitor who liked to check on ‘his’ rabbit.
As the old man got old, he didn’t get around as well. He took to sitting in the front room with the window open. He had an LP of the Disneyland Tiki Room show. He’d play one side on the phonograph out the window then sit there and listen to the birds sing in reply.
His big mistake was suggesting, when largest cage filled up, that we should build a tube of wire mesh so the birds could fly up to the spare bedroom and sing. Grandma put her foot down and we started selling the surplus to a bird dealer in California. Timing was good as they’d had a disease kill off a great deal of their breeding stock. The money helped pay for bird food.
When he passed, I didn’t really get a chance to mourn. Mom took his death real hard and my cousin had to be cared for. Hundreds of people showed up for his service. Most of them knew him from visiting the birds.
Half-a-year swings by and I take my paramour and her niece to Disneyland. Wasn’t even thinking and took the ladies to the Tiki Room. The parrots come down from the ceiling and I know I’ve made a mistake. The Irish one, Michael, calls the other birds out and they all start to sing. I burst into tears.
So, if you ever need to clear the Tiki Room real quick, just have a grown man in the back row sob inconsolably.
I hope you enjoy your birds without limit.
dmsilev
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve gotten good hummingbird photos, but only by cheating: I put up a feeder, and wait for them to hover near it. My telephoto only goes to 300 mm, but that’s enough if the birds let you get to within ten or fifteen feet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: It’s been more subdued this year, not sure why. I’ve only seen one car with more than one Armenian flag on it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: I’ve done the same at Kenneth Hahn Park, they have an area with humming bird feeders.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I put out some California Poppy seeds last year in hopes of replacing the ones my now former asshole landlord cleared from my garden, one came up but never bloomed. A few days ago I noticed a green bud on the plant, earlier today it was closed and golden. When I came back from walking the girls, it’s started to unfurl.
joel hanes
@mawado:
Thank you for that story.
Here’s a poem for you : “Letters From A Father” by Mona Van Duyn
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/letters-father
Cheryl Rofer
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Oooh, you reminded me that a Twitter conversation with Cole encouraged me to spread wildflower seeds in my yard yesterday, including California poppies, and today it is raining!
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Strictly for grins, the first movie Batmobiles: #1 – #2
Marvelously goofy scene the first in one chapter of the serials occurs when the police stop the ‘the top is up, so it’s the Batmobile,’ walk over and and ask Batman, “Does Bruce Wayne know you’re using his car?”
Marvelously goofy scene the second was every time the ‘Batmobile’ returned to the Wayne house, it would pull into the fully out in the open driveway (no garage), then Batman and Robin would get out and dash across the lawn to the front door.
joel hanes
@Gelfling 545:
Robins will like a simple shelf stuck to an outside wall, no bigger than 9 inches square, and about ten inches below an overhang so they stay dry. You might get a barn swallow instead, but they’re beautiful, so it’s all good.
Robins are not very good users of enclosed birdhouses — they’re not cavity-nesters, and so don’t like or want the enclosing walls.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: This is seriously good, Biden BFD news.
Duane
@mawado: What a great memory for you and so many others. Thanks for sharing that.
eclare
@mawado: Your grandfather sounds like a wonderful man. What great memories, for hundreds of people.
raven
@Mary G: Me and my sis at Capistrano, probably 1959/
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: How ya doin?
ArchTeryx
@joel hanes: Getting a barn swallow isn’t just a booby prize (rimshot) I’d say that’s awesome. Barn swallows are among the most voracious consumers of small insects of any bird out there, the nestlings consume 10x as much, their nests are made of mud and spit (really!) and they’re just awesome to watch in flight.
CaseyL
@mawado: Oh, how I wish you had photos of that! And recordings. How glorious the place must have sounded when everyone was singing. Your grandfather was something special.
I don’t blame you for bursting into tears. Those are lovely memories, worth crying over.
Steeplejack
I had a bit of a senior interlude today. Drove a friend to her first physical-therapy session after a knee rebuild a couple of weeks ago. Had an hour to kill, so I went to the nearby “boutique” Target (limited inventory, embedded in a block of apartments and shops) to pass the time. I needed to get a few things, what the hell. Crikey, I ended up spending $90 on notions and sundries at Target!
Don’t even know exactly how it happened. I got razor blades—okay, “shaving cartridges”—(expensive), some protein drinks (expensive), some Refresh eye drops (inordinately expensive), some Gerber baby food for the housecat (existentially inexpensive but cat-food expensive) and some other odds and ends, including a coffee mug for my teacher brother-in-law with “I teach—what’s your superpower?” on it (inexpensive but possibly stupid). I think I just got caught up in the leisurely inspection of every single SKU in the store. Usually I go to Target with a short hit list and get in and out in 15 minutes.
Well, live and learn. I think next time I’ll be better off going to Starbucks, getting on the wi-fi and letting all the cybercriminals hack my phone.
Sandia Blanca
@mawado: What a lovely story, mawado! It sounds like a magical yard. I’m a longtime fan of the Tiki Room–last time I was at Disneyland, my brother and I (both in our 50s at the time) insisted on dragging the teenagers in to watch it. We cleared the room not by sobbing, but by singing along loudly.
Mary G
@mawado: That made me want to cry, too. My grandmother from Texas was my only blood relative that acknowledged my existence, and she would come visit us in Orange County in the summer to get away from the heat. She loved Disneyland, for people watching and the Tiki Room. We’d sit through that as many times as we could take it. Then we’d go do other things and she would spend a couple more hours with the birds. Your grandfather sounds wonderful.
eemom
@TaMara (HFG):
You mean the alien pen*ses?
mkd
@mawado: a wonderful story, what happened to his menagerie?
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Lurve the still considered new Target here. So large it should have two ZIP codes, super clean, extra extra wide aisles, grocery/household staples for significantly less than the supermarket, always sufficient cashiers on hand (also self checkout).
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@mawado: Thanks for telling us that wonderful story of your grandfather and his birds (and rabbit). What joy he brought to so many.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cheryl Rofer: Ah, you’ll get a Super Bloom in New Mexico.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I like Target when I need to go there. I have a “big” one very close to me. The boutique ones are new around here, usually linked to areas where high-density housing has gone up to accommodate young people who work downtown in D.C. and commute by Metro (bus and rail). Very small clothing section, no hardware, no garden stuff. Mostly stuff for apartment dwellers.
ETA: Silver lining to today’s outing is that I won’t need to go back to Target for about a year and a half.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mawado: Reading about the birds breeding reminded me of this commercial.
rikyrah
Awe Cole???
You are good people ??
?BillinGlendaleCA
I know Balloon Juice’s policy is pics or it didn’t happen…here’s the poppy blooming.
tobie
@mawado: What am amazing story. You grew up with birds and they still sing for you. May there be comfort in that.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack: Oh “shaving cartridges”. Are they up to 10 progressively closer blades per cartridge yet?
donnah
We love Target and have a standing joke that we can go in to buy cat litter and bread and end up spending $100. Every. Damned. Time.
I always find stuff I didn’t know I needed!
NotMax
@Steeplejack
It’s become my go-to on the monthly shopping sojourn for items I don’t or can’t get at Costco. One example, a bag of Major Dickason’s Blend coffee is $4 less at Target than at the regular supermarket.
eclare
@donnah: I was like that with Costco, but then changed jobs to where it would be a 40 minute drive to get to one. But that was the only thing that stopped my habit. Yeah, I’ll just pop in and get some strawberries…..
ETA> Costco was across the street from my old job.
West of the Rockies
@Harbison:
I imagine hummingbird eggs have to be tiiiiiny!
Leto
@mrmoshpotato: wet shaving, aka single blade double edge, is still where it’s at. I spent about $40 on blades about 4 years ago. I still have blades for at least 8 months (1 blade a week, 5 days of shaving). Of course I haven’t shaved in six months but if I ever do again, I still have blades at the ready.
mrmoshpotato
@Leto: Same here. Even American-made double-edged safety razor blades are ridiculously inexpensive.
West of the Rockies
@TaMara (HFG):
Your phrasing reminds me of the old Far Side comic: two birds sitting on the edge of a baby carriage gazing tiredly at the grinning human baby within. Says one, “Man, I’ve been stuffing worms into this thing all day and it’s still hungry!”
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies: Wouldn’t it be something if hummingbirds hatched from ostrich-sized eggs, but no one knew how that was possible?
Weird thought that just entered my mind.
Harbison
@West of the Rockies:
They are – I have to take a headlamp with me when I climb the ladder to check on whether there are eggs or not.
And google baby hummingbirds. They are the ugliest things on earth that grow into the most beautiful.
eemom
@Leto: @mrmoshpotato: @Steeplejack:
This is so funny, cuz eedad and I were having a discussion about Man Shaving just a few days ago….or more precisely, he was trying to explain to me how it works. There’s a store called Art of Shaving here at Tysons Mall, and I gave him a gift certificate for Christmas a few years back.
This — or what I think you mean — featured prominently in the discussion, in the context of all those old movies where men get shaved by barbers who they trust not to slit their throats.
Anyway, glad I’m a girl, and gave up shaving many years ago in favor of waxing.
NotMax
@eemom
The scenes you mention in the movies are straight edge blade shaves. The kind of implement the barber is seen honing on a leather strop.
Whole different school of shaving than single blade, double edge disposable blades.
Zelma
There are birds and then there are seagulls. The “laughing gulls” have returned to my town and there went peace and quiet. Also my ability to feed my feral cats except at night. (I have four regulars and a couple of occasional guests.) It is pretty funny to see the puzzled looks on the cats’ faces when the gulls swoop down and help themselves to the food. I don’t know where the gulls go for the winter, but I wish they’d stay there.
eemom
@NotMax:
Oh.
satby
@mawado: that was a beautiful tribute / remembrance of your dad! Thanks for telling us his story.
dww44
I’ve been a committed bird feeder on our wooded one acre lot for a decade and a half. Right now, we’ve got bluebirds nesting in the bluebird house that they’d avoided for the last several years. Like John, we also have bird baths, 3 to be exact and one of which is attached to the rail on the back deck for easy observation from the kitchen window. We’ve noticed that the chickadees absolutely love that one.
Our newest experience this year is that our resident towhees have obviously made a nest in an azalea bush somewhere near our carport and the male is protecting his turf by attacking both our cars when seeing himself in the sideview mirror causes him to do a funky chicken dance on top and to poop all over the sides of both our relatively new cars. Along the lines of “we’ve met the enemy and he is us.” It’s so bad that we went to Walmart and bought a mirror and stuck it into the ground so as to distract him from the cars. He did discover that mirror but today has returned to pooping on one of our cars. Thankfully he’s left mine alone for a day. Until now the towhee has been my absolutely favorite bird, resident year round. Husband actually “talks” to them by mimicking the “towhee” sound. They respond in kind.
However, this year we are just thrilled to actually have a gorgeous red headed woodpecker frequent our feeders and hope that he’s taken up residence in the woods behind our house. IMO, that woodpecker is the most beautiful of them all in these parts and seems to be driven away by the far more aggressive red-bellied woodpecker, who’s quite common here.
Steeplejack (phone)
@eemom:
Here’s what they were talking about.
leeleeFL
@joel hanes: Lovely poem…..funny the way Nature can keep you from wanting to leave. Reminds me of O. Henry’s “The Last Leaf”
leeleeFL
@mawado: Wonderful story. Thank you, even for tears first thing in the Morning.
leeleeFL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: First laugh of the day! I had forgotten this one!
stardus614
I don’t know the gestation for robins’ eggs, of when these were laid. Is Cole going to have grandbirdies by Father’s Day?
karen marie
@dmsilev: Hummingbirds are like badgers – they just don’t care. Damn things fly around my patio collecting spider web, pausing 18 inches from my face with a look like they’re evaluating the quality of my hair as nest material. I had a feeder briefly, then got rid of it. They’re territorial, and there’s not enough room in my walled patio for me and two battling hummingbirds. It’s hard to relax with all that buzzing and violence so close to my head.
Made a fantastic burrito for brekkies. Beat an egg with a bit of salt (rumored to help the white break down to incorporate with the yolks more easily), a few shakes of red pepper flakes, a few finely sliced basil leaves, and a half shot of water. Sauteed a finely chopped clove of garlic in olive oil, then threw the egg mixture into the not too hot pan. Shake shake shake that pan so the egg cooks evenly. When egg close to cooked, I tossed on some shredded mozzarella, shook the pan for a couple seconds, till the cheese melted, then folded into the beautiful tortilla I had warmed and wrapped in a paper towel prior to cooking the eggs. I must say, it is incredible. I am a breakfast genius!
mawado
@joel hanes: Thank you@mkd: After he passed, Grandma didn’t want to keep up the houses on her lot. She gave as many of the birds away as she could find takers for and the rest were sold to pet stops/breeders. She sold the house. We thought it would be a terrible mistake, but she loved the senior condos she moved into. New friends > old memories.
karen marie
@Steeplejack: In other words, a Woolworths. I am still pissed about the one closing in downtown Boston in the early ’90s (is that right? Seems like it had to be earlier than that but I bought a green parakeet there who lived in my bay window, and that apartment wasn’t until ’93, unless I am confusing my parakeets). Glad to know retailers are recognizing that apartment dwellers without cars need household supplies as well.
Radiumgirl
@mawado: What a wonderful story about a wonderful man. Thanks for sharing it.