Northern Mockingbird
Category: Humor
At least I thought it was funny.
Curve-billed Thrasher
Tachinid Fly
I’m Thankful For This…
Happy Thanksgiving! I’m sure you’re busy today, so today’s post will be short.
In honor of all the turkeys that will give their lives so we can celebrate God’s generosity, I’d like to share a cartoon I recently discovered. Not that it’s new. This website has been around a while now. But I didn’t know about it, and if it’s new to me, then it might also be new to you.
Please click on over to Bird and Moon and prepare to be delighted. I’m linking you to one of my favorite cartoons, but be sure to check out the rest of them, plus the store and everything else. Just don’t let dinner burn while you’re distracted!
Bird and Moon: Science and Nature Cartoons
(No, I wasn’t paid to promote this. I just think it’s awesome!)
Save the Poinsettias!
I’ve been down with the crud that has been going around. Luckily, I don’t have to come up with an inspirational year-end post; the Utah State University Cooperative Extension has done the job for me. I urge you to watch their short video on the torture and destruction of post-Christmas poinsettias. Then take action. Please.
Happy Thanksgiving
I’m often surprised by the lessons nature has to teach us. In honor of today being Thanksgiving, I offer you a word of advice from this hungry macaque I met in Singapore:
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew!”
Save
Name that Bird!
We’ve given birds some pretty bizarre names. Does the Secretarybird (right) take notes? Who does the Wandering Tattler tattle on? Do chatterers and babblers ever shut up?
Then there are the names that must have come from examining a stuffed specimen in hand. How often do you see the orange crown of an Orange-crowned Warbler?
Auto-corrected Flowers
A (long) while back I posted Heidi’s list of auto-corrected bird names. I thought it was pretty funny, partly because most bird names are not normal words. What’s a spell-checker supposed to do when confronted with names such as Willet, Phalarope, or Gallinule?
Being both a birder and a gardener, I began to wonder how Microsoft Word would treat some of the more unusual flower names. Typing a quick list was quite revealing! Then, as I went to retype everything in WordPress, I discovered that they don’t use the same dictionary. In a few instances, it had its own list of suggestions, making things even more interesting!
Be the Bird!
With Halloween quickly approaching, the procrastinators among us are frantically searching for a brilliant, yet easy-to-execute costume idea. Since this is a birding (among other things) blog, I thought I’d offer a bit of inspiration—costume ideas I’ve collected from around the internet. I’m afraid not all of these look simple and easy to pull off at the last minute, but some were just too creative to pass up. Hopefully, these will get your creative juices flowing! (more…)
Do You Speak “Twitcher”?—The Sequel
Remember that little quiz I posted a while back? The one asking you to define a list of British birding terms? Well, I have ten more words or phrases that are equally incomprehensible to North American birders. Can you figure out what these mean? Answers will appear next week (below the bird quiz).
- Old duffer
- On the deck
- Patch
- Phase
- Plastic
- Scorch
- Stringy
- Tart
- UTV’s
- Yank
Mountain Plover 