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altivoNot that the weekend looks that much easier, but it should be lighter than the last one was.
The files are saved, the replacement drive from Dell has already arrived (and I notice that they are replacing Maxtor drives with Western Digital) and been installed, and I actually got to clear up some of my cataloging work today. Now for two days of NOT thinking about that kind of work, I hope.
We noticed that two very tall oak trees out in the woodlot appear not to have come back to life this spring. One of them overhangs the lane rather threateningly, but the cost of having them professionally removed would be prohibitive, so we will just have to wait and watch. The last time this happened, the top of the tree in question fell down in a windstorm, causing no serious problem other than a need to cut it up and get it out of the way. Hopefully the same will happen with these. I'd also prefer to leave them standing because the numerous woodpeckers and owls in our area do seem to like dead wood.
Saw (well, heard at first) a crow pestering a predator in a large maple out in the pasture so I sneaked up to have a look. It was one crow and one hawk. Either a Cooper's or a sharp-shinned, I'm sure, because the hawk was ensconced quite deep in a dense mass of branches. The crow took off when I approached, and the hawk went in the other direction a minute or two later. It was smaller than the crow, but I'm not sure by how much.
An hour later I saw a hawk, likely the same one or its mate, cruising just above the treetops and swooping down into them occasionally. Again, this might be typical of either Cooper's or sharp-shinned, as both like to take small birds rather than rodents, and they aren't afraid to pursue their prey into fairly dense foliage or branches. Even getting a close up view probably won't help, as both species are very much alike in coloration and proportion. The sharp-shinned is smaller, but that's hard to judge when you only have one bird to look at. The other difference I can find described is that Cooper's will perch on stumps, posts, and telephone poles while watching for prey, while the sharp-shinned seems to prefer trees and branches exclusively. Unfortunately, Cooper's will also use tree branches as a perch and we don't have many telephone poles or wooden fence posts around.
Saw a pair of tree swallows once again evicted from a bluebird box at the library grounds. The common sparrows are very aggressive and the swallows and bluebirds give in too easily.
Too much loose pollen. My car looks green in the morning, and my eyes are all itchy.
The files are saved, the replacement drive from Dell has already arrived (and I notice that they are replacing Maxtor drives with Western Digital) and been installed, and I actually got to clear up some of my cataloging work today. Now for two days of NOT thinking about that kind of work, I hope.
We noticed that two very tall oak trees out in the woodlot appear not to have come back to life this spring. One of them overhangs the lane rather threateningly, but the cost of having them professionally removed would be prohibitive, so we will just have to wait and watch. The last time this happened, the top of the tree in question fell down in a windstorm, causing no serious problem other than a need to cut it up and get it out of the way. Hopefully the same will happen with these. I'd also prefer to leave them standing because the numerous woodpeckers and owls in our area do seem to like dead wood.
Saw (well, heard at first) a crow pestering a predator in a large maple out in the pasture so I sneaked up to have a look. It was one crow and one hawk. Either a Cooper's or a sharp-shinned, I'm sure, because the hawk was ensconced quite deep in a dense mass of branches. The crow took off when I approached, and the hawk went in the other direction a minute or two later. It was smaller than the crow, but I'm not sure by how much.
An hour later I saw a hawk, likely the same one or its mate, cruising just above the treetops and swooping down into them occasionally. Again, this might be typical of either Cooper's or sharp-shinned, as both like to take small birds rather than rodents, and they aren't afraid to pursue their prey into fairly dense foliage or branches. Even getting a close up view probably won't help, as both species are very much alike in coloration and proportion. The sharp-shinned is smaller, but that's hard to judge when you only have one bird to look at. The other difference I can find described is that Cooper's will perch on stumps, posts, and telephone poles while watching for prey, while the sharp-shinned seems to prefer trees and branches exclusively. Unfortunately, Cooper's will also use tree branches as a perch and we don't have many telephone poles or wooden fence posts around.
Saw a pair of tree swallows once again evicted from a bluebird box at the library grounds. The common sparrows are very aggressive and the swallows and bluebirds give in too easily.
Too much loose pollen. My car looks green in the morning, and my eyes are all itchy.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-12 02:39 am (UTC)Hawk = Goodly too.
My son and I climbed this soft low mountain once, only 1300
feet. *pants and gets their*
We had about forty hawks take off and swoop and look at us,
their huge wings making wooshing noises as if to say;
"You don't belong up here!"
no subject
Date: 2007-05-12 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-13 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 11:35 pm (UTC)The agressive little birds around here are Noisey Minors. They go after the fig birds, and yet the other agressive bunch Rainbow Lorikeets seem to come at a different time of year.
We have a famous family of falcons nesting on a city highrise.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/extras/frodocam/default.htm
no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 02:27 am (UTC)As I understand it, it sort of worked. They are still there, though they haven't increased in number as fast as was originally hoped. They do eat some of the pigeons, but not nearly enough, and the tradeoff is people complaining about having a falcon land on their office windowsill and proceed to disembowel a pigeon before their eyes. When I was still working in downtown Chicago, there were times when migrations of songbirds passed up the lakeshore. It was obvious that the falcons thought songbirds were tastier than pigeon, because you'd find all these bird heads lying on the sidewalks each morning. Quite a disturbing prospect, actually.