For the birds

Yesterday when I went to get Tess from the pasture I noticed several birds making a sound I've been wondering about lately. Vaguely woodpeckerish, but a long sequence of repeated chirps or squawks that was almost machinegunlike in its regularity. I froze and started looking for the source.

Sure enough, they were woodpecker kin. Yellow-shafted flickers, to be precise. These are large birds (~10 in. long) that nest in cavities and eat a variety of foods including both insects and fruits. We've seen one at the feeders occasionally, and I've seen mated pairs nesting a few times in my life. Yesterday there were no less than five of them in the top of a black walnut tree, apparently squabbling over access to something on the trunk. Too high for a nest hole, because the branch they were on was only a couple of inches thick, so I assume it was something edible. They were quite noisy and pushy about it. While this fuss was going on, a red-headed woodpecker flew past, within a yard or so of the spot, completely oblivious to the argument.

We don't see either species too often here. Three other woodpeckers are common: the downy, the hairy, and the red-bellied. Two more are possible, though I've not seen them here: the yellow-bellied sapsucker and the pileated woodpecker.

Audubon spring bird census coming up May 9 I think.

OMG, what have I done?

Just mailed off $67 for postage in order to acquire 165 pounds of computer manuals. This is a complete set of 1990-era manuals for the VMS operating system. The books were free if I paid postage. Four boxes. About twelve feet of shelving required.

HP << Compaq << DEC no longer offers printed manuals at all. Today the documentation is free but comes as PDF files, PostScript files, and/or HTML. That's fine for quick reference but not any good for in depth study in my opinion. I'm taking VMS seriously. It would cost me a lot more than $67 just for the paper and toner cartridges to print off what I want to read. These are perfect bound and the page size is better suited to reading than your standard letter-size paper in a three ring binder.

I think this should rejustify my retrogeek membership, no? Or I'm just plain crazy. Well, we know that.