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Robin in the greenhouse
Yes, I do have a greenhouse and I am frequently in it* but in this case I don’t mean me, I mean a robin. I have a small feathered kind of robin sitting on a nest in my greenhouse. Or I do if she forgives me for disturbing her, which is, of course, how I found out she was there.
Two years ago I was (sh)out(ing) in the greenhouse and had been out there for a while, or in and out, losing things, tripping over things, looking for things, which is how it goes, and then I did the wrong thing and there was a sudden blast of wings and a small feathery cannonball straight past my ear. WHOOPS. So I climbed up on the little brick wall that makes the plunge bed** and peered down on the shelf above it: and saw a small pile of rubbish behind various bits of anti-slug kit that don’t work but I keep thinking I’m probably doing it wrong and I’ll try again some day, utterly in keeping with its surroundings although made up of a slightly higher percentage of leaves and moss and a lower percentage of cardboard plant labels and bits of string than usual.*** Robin’s nest. She was just outside in the apple tree†, giving me the hard eye. But she came back, and she sat.
Over the ensuing†† weeks I furtively managed to block her off a little more effectively, although I still spent all my time in the greenhouse all hunched over and of course everything I now wanted was on that shelf. Even so I managed to miss the big event: I didn’t realise anything had happened till I figured out there were two robins doing an awful lot of flying in and out of my greenhouse. I want to believe this is not utterly pathetic: That time of year you’ve always got lots of birds yelling in your ear, and when I was in or near the greenhouse I was all bent over and didn’t see anything above knee level. By the time I had slithered cautiously up on the plunge bed wall again, as far away from the nest as the greenhouse dimensions would let me, the babies already had a few feathers and were getting pretty crowded in there behind the bricks, the slug traps, and the Revolutionary New Way to Tie Up Your Plants Without String or Wire,††† which last was at least contained in a box perfectly shaped for walling off robins’ nests.
At this point I became a fixture at the pet shop, buying mealworms. I’d never been godparent to robins before, it was Penelope who told me what to do. Mealworms are creepy, but I still felt a little like the villagers staking out the princess for the dragon: they haven’t got a chance. You put them in anything with a bit of a lip on it, a plant saucer, a jar lid, so they can’t wiggle off in their vague way, and then you step back and the robin barrels in like a heat-seeking missile and . . . you put out more mealworms. By this time mum had moved on and dad was left holding down the nest on his own and looking a little frantic. I bet robins really like winter, when they have time to hang around doing cute-overload things like perching on people’s spade handles.
I think it’s a terrible system that as soon as the babies are more or less fledged the first thing they do is hop to the edge of the nest, plane down to ground level . . . and stay there, because they can’t fly yet. Yo, all you neighbourhood predators! Dinner! Again I missed the show‡ and didn’t realise they were gone till I found just the legs of one of them on the greenhouse floor. Trauma.‡‡ I looked in the nest and they were all gone and I immediately assumed the worst . . . till I found one hiding among the plastic pots. I actually caught him (wearing my garden gloves) and put him back in the nest, but he promptly jumped off the edge again, so I gave up.‡‡‡
I don’t know how many of this brood made it, or if any of them did. But I’m pretty sure at least three survived a while after they divebombed out of the nest, by dad’s antics and the rustling in the shrubbery with attendant small round bouncing shadows on long skinny legs. Most things that hop like birds emerge and fly away, and these didn’t.
Last year I was stupid. I put in a pretty, ornamental wrought iron pole to hang a hanging basket from–that’s what it’s for, okay? I bought it at the garden centre and it says Hanging Basket Pole. And I got it home and hung a basket from it and it promptly bowed low down to the ground, like the cherry tree in the carol. Arrrrrgh. I need a pole there because I have a little climbing rose that wants something to climb, and the hanging basket was going to provide a focal point in a garden that’s too small to have focal points so you have to get creative, and with the rose and everything it was all going to look really cute. Feh. So I bought one of those spinning wind-dancer things with a crystal in its middle to hang from my pretty, useless pole, and in the first place it looked sort of doolally and in the second place it served as a bird scarer, although it took me a while to figure this out. Duh. I thought everyone was avoiding me because of the hellhounds. So I took the bird scarer, I mean the wind dancer, down, and suddenly I had birds in my garden again. But it was too late for robins’ nests.
This year I angled a small cardboard box half-out on the greenhouse shelf and put a half brick in the open end to hold it steady and waited hopefully. Nothing happened. Robins start nesting in March. I’ve seen mine around–I can only tell male from female when I see them together, and when they’re not raising babies they’re solitarily territorial, so I don’t know who I’m seeing–but no nest. So that greenhouse shelf started silting up again around the box because there’s no reason not to let it and besides I need the space and furthermore why do I want robins nesting in my greenhouse? It’s a nuisance having to do everything all bent over–and if you go to the other side of the garden to give yourself a break, in the first place everything you want is still back in or around the greenhouse and in the second place mum or dad will promptly be screaming at you that you’re occupying the space they were about to investigate and what about some more mealworms then? And it’s not only in the greenhouse you have to duck, it’s that whole side of the garden because, as I keep saying, it’s a very small garden, and the flight path for incoming deliveries takes all of it. It eases off a little when it’s just dad–also dad gets very used to you: I was tempted to hold out a plate of mealworms and see if he’d come and take them still attached to me, the way you can hold out a jar of peanut butter in the winter in Maine and be covered in chickadees in a minute or two–but you’re still in a modest state of permanent alert for a couple of months or so. Including not wanting to tread on any of the small bouncy shadows who also get rather too used to you.
So I don’t want robins in my greenhouse! Forget it! No! –And about a week ago, idly looking in the empty box I noticed it contained A PILE OF RUBBISH! You do get some very odd little wind spouts in a small walled garden at the top of a hill, but I kind of doubted this was wind-spout work. I did worry it might be a mouse nest–I have mice, gods know, which is the other reason I didn’t have enough tulips this year–but mice aren’t known for nesting in open-ended boxes on high shelves although I’m sure they could.
But I haven’t seen anyone in the box. Till today. When I’d been going in and out of the greenhouse as normal, giving only the most cursory glance at the box and its contents, till I did the wrong thing again–in this case reaching for the canister of slug pellets§ that had crept back up on that shelf–and I had the feathered cannonball past my ear again. I should have cleared the damn shelf off the minute I saw the nest: I’m now denied my last seed trays, my spare hand tools and several other crucial items for the next couple of months. Or anyway I hope I am.
Pleeeeeeease come back and sit on your nest.
Lighting candle. . . .
* * *
* Shouting is probably philosophically optional, but practically speaking it’s required.^ It’s a very small greenhouse with a lot of stuff in it. The stuff is not necessarily very deftly piled.
^Furthermore it keeps the neighbours amused.
** And which may, I hope, some day even be a plunge bed again.^
^Plunge bed: a small walled area full of sand, and you plunge plants in pots into the sand. This keeps them cooler in summer, including that they don’t need watering as often, and helps protect them from frost in the winter. If, of course, your plunge bed is not already full of terra cotta pots (the plastic ones are on the other side), the Styrofoam six- and eight-packs that plug plants are sold in, which I break up and use for pot drainage, bags of various kinds of compost and fertilizer, etc.
*** I do feel there’s a certain cross-species similarity of approach to housekeeping going on here.
† Sic. It’s a small tree, and semi-espaliered.
†† I-forget-how-many-although-I-looked-it-up-at-the-time-and-the-everything-about-British-birds-site-isn’t-responding-and-my-bird-book-doesn’t-say-and-it’s-amazing-how-dependent-you-get-on-the-internet-I’m-not-sure-I-approve
††† Yes, I’m a sucker. The problem is that every third or tenth or forty-seventh revolution in living/gardening is one, and if you didn’t hopefully try all the duds you’d've missed it.
‡ Okay, I take it back. I am pathetic.
‡‡ I know, I know. But I can do without nature red in tooth and claw.
‡‡‡ Some wildlife rehabilitator is going to tell me you mustn’t handle baby things because then their parents abandon them. I was freaked out by the legs, and I was wearing my gloves, which would have smelt of me but also of the garden. And I know it didn’t happen in this case because I saw him kamikaze off the edge again, and saw dad fly down after him and poke a mealworm down his throat. Dad was probably saying to himself, why didn’t she do something useful while she had hold of him, like feed him? Silly woman. Never mind. She’s good about mealworms, and nobody’s perfect.
§ Organic. Although I do kind of wonder how organic they really are, and while they’re Safe for Children and Pets I don’t want the hellhounds eating them.
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Yay birds! We had a cardinals nesting in the rose trellis on our front porch one year (sadly the squirrels got the eggs).
The hellhounds are very lovely, thank you for the pictures!
-Nema
I understand your annoyed delight. For four years our next door neighbours had a swallows nest on a pipe over their back balcony. It was hugely entertaining and truly aerobatic at times. Zooming parents, then squeaky voices, then loud squeaky voices, the VERY LOUD CHIRRUPING etc. Then they stop coming. Now they wouldn’t come because we are plagued by pigeons. The front balcony has a set of ringed doves who are extremely territorial crap all over the fencing completely eating through the paint. (the crap not the doves themselves). The back balcony (off the kitchen with the bath and loo having windows on it) is a permanent fighting ground between us and the pigeons. At least a dozen pigeons live in this space between the various blocks which is an open U and they want our balcony in particular, because we have a ficus tree that thrives there (it used to get all the leftover coffee, now it gets all the leftover tea and various bits of vegetable washing water etc.); it is generally happy there although it suffered from the snow. The pot, large and well shaded with lovely leaves is a battle ground of pigeons wishing to nest. On two occasions our best efforts to stop them (they shit on everything and are horrible carriers of disease) eggs have been found – and promptly removed. We made it into a war zone by studding the earth with used bamboo kebab stakes. This made life slightly better from the nesters but there are still the regular loo visits & concommitant smells. Then they managed – I know not how – to brush aside the sticks in order to NEST AGAIN!. This too was firmly discouraged. I want a raptor, a kite, or a hawk or some nice, blood thirsty bird that will do these pigeons in. I usually only feel this bloodthirsty when chasing cockroaches or mosquitoes that are buzzing me and drinking my blood. I don’t want to be the slayer of pigeon eggs. Or the shover off of pigeons, but neither can I come up with any good solution. Help!
Oh, I HATE pigeons–they’re feathered rats!! Do you have those factory-made pigeon-discouragers in Greece? They’re strips of plastic with spikes on, and UN-brush-asidable–glue them on windowsills and any other popular resting spot. We saw off our foul stinky toxic pigeon infestation in London with liberal application of these. I’d be out there with attack gear if I had PIGEONS nesting. Robins are NICE birds!!!
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Athens pigeons are tougher than than. I have seen them land BETWEEN THE SPIKES. But we actually go out on the balcony and would rather not be clawed by the spikes. I want to put some on the overhead pipes, but the application process is a bit hazardous. On the back balcony it is a straight drop seven stories and the pipes need a ladder that would barely fit on the not-quite metre-wide balcony. Acrophobia doesn’t hit me on balcony level (there is a neck-height railing plus I grew up in this flat and familiarity breeds contempt – if I came across the drop anywhere else I would die), but climbing a ladder? I think not. I also don’t want to ruin my very nice marble window sills. Vain – I know. So the battle wages. I agree about the rats with feathers, that’s exactly what I call them ;-)
Depends on your spikes–our builder found us the Ultimate Spikes. But if they’re a problem for you that IS a problem.
When I was about nine we had quail nesting* in my bedroom window well (I lived in the basement). Quail chicks are adorable. We left birdseed out on the back porch and let the quail eat our entire (meager) home-grown strawberry supply.
And then a cat came and ate most of them and killed the rest. Only one survived, and when I saw the little thing breathing outside my window I demanded that we try to save it, not knowing, of course,** that humans can’t really save birds. We brought the little chick inside, warmed him/her up, tried to get him/her to eat, and tried to get the chick’s father to take his chick back (he wouldn’t). The chick died.
I’m still not fond of cats.
*A modified sort of nesting–I think one chick fell in, the others followed it, and the mother couldn’t fly them out, so she just kept them there.
**I was only nine, after all.
Nature red in tooth and claw. Yes. I think a BETTER system could have been invented.
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Well, I guess everyone has to eat. Still, the cat didn’t have to leave little chick bodies in my window well. I might have thought they grew up and moved away if there were none left. I can only be glad the cat didn’t leave just a pair of legs. That would have been even more traumatizing.
************* tripping over things
This just reminds me how well observed your writing is – I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve tripped over things which I should have tidied up, and thought of Aerin experimenting in her shed and tripping over things she should have tidied up :)
********** I have a small feathered kind of robin sitting on a nest
– this made me think of other versions of robins which are obviously native to Hampshire as well – the extremely large (possible great dane sized) robin, the evil (NOT kind) robin, the nekked robin (brrrr!)…
I’m still tired after 3 long days and a trip to brighton and back on monday, via a major traffic jam on the M25. (I did wave at the M3, sending you good wishes as we tottered past:))
What’s in Brighton?
. . . I have never denied the fact that I *borrow heavily from lived reality* for my accident prone heroines . . .
And when are you going to STOP MESSING AROUND and post some more dog pics? You must have some victory ones of you and a grinning bullie at Crufts?
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Ageing parents in Brighton (Hove actually). Have to sprint down, visit, sprint back. Will be doing this for the next few sundays so expect virtual waves sent down the M3 :)
Tonight a friend & I drove to Oxford to see French & Saunders; lovely evening out, enjoyment increased by her (involuntary) squeaks of delight at the countryside on the way down. We went via Vale of Evesham, Broadway, Bourton on the Hill, Chipping Norton, Blenheim Palace…
She is Ukrainian, so not inured to village-prettiness. Apparently the Carpathian mountains are beautiful, but not pretty :)
************ And when are you going to STOP MESSING AROUND and post some more dog pics? You must have some victory ones of you and a grinning bullie at Crufts?
TOMORROW!! I will negotiate Flickr, having greatly enjoyed Danceswithpahis and Blackbear’s pictures – thanks both of you, I really enjoyed looking at them all.
It IS tomorrow–so WHERE ARE THE DOG PICS????
And you’re welcome! Flickr is awesome, easy to use and just a cool little web app. Will look forward to seeing some southdowner dogs eventually.
Nature red in tooth and claw…
Tennyson, yes? In Memoriam, I believe?
See, I AM studying for my literature final!
:)
–Julia
Well yes . . . but that’s what books of quotations are for! Put other stuff in your obviously excellent memory! :)
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I can’t help picturing the north american type robin… Good luck to you and them. They’re probably safer in the greenhouse, though, and momma robin likely knows that. Lucky birds to have someone so accomodating as to bring them roomservice(:
Fond as I am of American robins in cuteness factor the European/British has it all over.
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It’s so cute when they nest “next to us”. :)
For years we have had some Striated Pardalotes nesting in the walls of the old farm house. LOL You would walk out the door and “whoosh” one would fly out (one nest was beside the door!). Or I would lie in bed and hear them all chirping and cheeping in the lintel of my external door!
Here are some pics of them in action:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21742944@N05/2472543114/
Oh, cutie! :) –And I love it when they’re so close you can hear them like they’re living with you. :)
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*** I do feel there’s a certain cross-species similarity of approach to housekeeping going on here.***
All R(r)obins obviously have better things to do.
I came across a lovely quote the other day: “My idea of housecleaning is to sweep the room with a glance.”
I do that – I look around, think, “Nah,” and pick up a book to read…..
Susan in Melbourne
LOL! I have that on my favourite sofa pillow! I’ll post the pic of my book-lined sitting room some day!
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I got my Mother a fridge-magnet: “You can look at the dust, but please don’t write in it”
Yes! I have this one too!!!!! :)
Also,
“Dust doesn’t spoil”
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LOL!!!!!!!
These guys were in a tree right next to the steps in my apt complex this year. They’re blue jays, if you can’t tell. They left around April 25 (and I know they could fly because I saw one of them sitting with a parent in a nearby tree just after they must have vacated) and I don’t think I’ve seen them since. The first picture is from when they were quite new, and the last one is the day before they flew off, I think.
(Crossing my fingers that the pictures work here…)
No pics? No link? Nothing here where I am.
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AAGH! Well, now we know embedded pictures don’t work in the comments.
Here are the very new bluejays, and here they are looking at me solemnly shortly before they left.
Um . . . there are still no pics showing, for me anyway . . . :(
I linked to them in my second comment instead of trying to embed them again. Click on “here” and “here.” :)
This keeps running through my head: “Feeed the biiirds, tuppence a bag, tuppence a bag, feeed the biiirds….”
PS~I went bell ringing today for the first time ever! I sent you a squeeing email about it. :-)
AAAAH! LOVE MARY POPPINS!
That made me happy after a ridiculously stressful insane day.
Thanks.
–Julia
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Okay, you’ve been pushing us to post pictures, and today’s blog entry related to animals, so I decided that was enough motivation to push myself into posting my zoo pics here. These are all from last year (hence the tan and shorts, at least in most of them). http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackaroo/2472348241/
If I haven’t mentioned it already, I worked in Romanian orphanages for four and a half years. Naturally my kids were fascinated by someone that they knew working at the zoo, and kept asking my Romanian housemate about me. One in particular loves elephants, and asked several times for a picture of me with the elephants. So one day my American housemate came to the zoo with her two boys (a.k.a. my nephews, although we’re not technically related) and dropped me off early at work. We got the desired elephant pictures and then she took several others, including a couple of me looking like I’m interpreting. A little while later I was doing costumes in the Aquarium, so she got pictures then too. The last picture (of me in warmer clothing) is from a different friend who came to the zoo and caught me doing crowd control by our seahorse exhibit (the least popular job most days; it gets crazy in that exhibit and people somehow lose their common sense in a way they don’t in other parts of the zoo).
Okay, so I can’t do short comments either.
I like the sea star!!! :) –It may only be me, but there’s something a bit sticky about getting the photos to move and to click on full size.
Okay, so I can’t do short comments either.
******** I wouldn’t want to be all alone out here.
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We have had phoebes nesting for several years in what seems to be a very desirable piece of real estate– under the steps that go from the sunroom down one story to the patio. They wedge the nest into a corner, resting it on top of the two-by-four that supports the landing. My three-legged Dane couldn’t use wooden steps (too slick) so I just blocked them off with a baby gate, and of course that kept it nice and quiet for the birds. Last year, for some reason, the nest fell off the two-by-four, with babies in it. I couldn’t stick the nest back up under the landing but found a place against the house wall, put a fence around it to keep the dogs out, and hoped for the best. Mom and Dad found the babies and were feeding them, and things looked promising for a few days, but the nest got cleaned out one night without even a toenail left. Too depressing. There is now another phoebe nest in the same spot, and I hope they’ve used better glue this year. I thought I might have a chance to put some sort of nesting platform under there, but they were too fast for me.
Aaarrgh, PIGEONS. Poison corn is probably not an option (think “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”) but maybe a nice friendly snake to live on the balcony?
Yes, I *hate* nature red in tooth and claw. But I’m not a vegetarian, so I better shut up.
Speaking of snakes on the balcony, I keep wanting a hedgehog for my small walled garden to eat SLUGS.
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Have you tried the old style slug trap of beer in a dish? They climb in, get drunk, and can’t get out. Not the worst way to go, I suppose.
Sure. And it’s a disgusting mess. I’d rather not. The revolutionary one was supposed to make it easier to deal with somehow and all it was was more stuff you had to CLEAN.
As an ex-wildlife rehabilatator and Zoo education worker, I can tell you that you have nothing to worry about when it comes to handling baby birds and the fear that the parents will then abandon the nest because they can smell you on their young. Birds really don’t have that great a sense of smell, its not how the find their food. Touching the chicks or the nest won’t cause parental abandonment. I’ve always thought that was a wonderful lie told by someone’s mother to keep their over-active children from playing with the baby chicks when they just needed to be left alone. Then like all good lies, it got out of hand.
Or possibly over-enthusiastic gardeners. I’ll restrain myself. :)
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That myth about birds smelling you on their babies and abandoning them is just that: a myth. Birds are made in bright colors because their dominant sense is sight; smell is way down the list. It’s OK to put the nestlings back in the nest. The parents will probably appreciate it.
We “raised” a house finch that was almost fledged. He survived and would come and perch on my daughter’s hand and eat from it for the next couple of years. Then we moved so I don’t know the end of the story.
That myth about birds smelling you on their babies and abandoning them is just that: a myth
********* Interesting. Okay. I know you can sometimes succeed in ADOPTING one.
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Male Robin, if he is used to you, will almost certainly come to you if you hold out a saucer of mealworms. Eventually, he will come and take them off your hand – they do grow very tame.
Don’t feel badly about the babies – it would seem that the normal lifespan of birds is from hatching to fledging – the rare few who make it through to give birth to the next generation are the exceptions, rather than the rule.
Pigeons are foul in London, I do so agree with you. They’re relatively okay in the country, though. Woodpigeons are nice – that nice noise they make…..
They’re relatively okay in the country, though. Woodpigeons are nice – that nice noise they make…..
********** NO THEY’RE NOT. THEY EAT THE BUDS OFF MY MAGNOLIA, AND SNAP OFF THE FLOWERING HEADS OF MY PETUNIAS. Etc. They’re just a different KIND of plague. Well, they are around here. (Oh, and I got SEVEN flowers off my magnolia this year . . . by NETTING it. And it may never manage to grow UP because the sodding pigeons keep eating the leading shoot what-you-call-it.
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Inflorescence? (I did plant developmental genetics at one time-true nerd through and through)
It’s OK to handle baby animals sometimes–I think the scent issue is more a problem with mammals than birds, and if it’s a choice between life or death, well… seriously, come on. I’d have done it.
And forgive me for cross-pollinating the comment threads, but the post on which the following comments occurred is now closed and I can’t reply there.
Oh dear, I’m sorry. Maybe work on the mind powers?!?
Oh, believe me… If I believed in hell, I’d sure be going there for the thoughts I’ve had about the man in the past week. It just doesn’t stop–he has been an utter beast since he got back from a conference last Wednesday (the night he came to the museum at 9 pm to scream at people.)
Broaden your literary horizons. Figure out how to tell t he tortoise story WITHOUT gestures. :)
It’s really the sound effects issue. I can’t begin to conceive how to spell the noise they make when they’re….er… engaged.
Wow, it looks AMAZING! (I want a Superman logo wall light!!!!) Well done you!
Thanks so much! That’s great to hear. :) Neon Superman could be yours for only about $250 plus some horrendous shipping; we borrowed those from the comic shop where I’ve been shopping since I was 15.
Oh dear, I’m sorry. Maybe work on the mind powers?!?
Oh, believe me… If I believed in hell, I’d sure be going there for the thoughts I’ve had about the man in the past week.
********* Yes, and tell me it wouldn’t be WORTH it if they worked. :(
It just doesn’t stop–he has been an utter beast since he got back from a conference last Wednesday (the night he came to the museum at 9 pm to scream at people.)
********* the helplessness has to be part of the worst of it.
Broaden your literary horizons. Figure out how to tell t he tortoise story WITHOUT gestures. :)
It’s really the sound effects issue. I can’t begin to conceive how to spell the noise they make when they’re….er… engaged.
******* SNORK. I hadn’t realised. :) Maybe I’ll have to figure Skype (?) out after all.
Wow, it looks AMAZING! (I want a Superman logo wall light!!!!) Well done you!
Thanks so much! That’s great to hear. :)
*********** I even LIKE museums, and I still have this sense of . . . gee, I didn’t realise museums could be so much *fun.* :)
Neon Superman could be yours for only about $250 plus some horrendous shipping; we borrowed those from the comic shop where I’ve been shopping since I was 15.
********* oh, feh. I’d rather it were $25,000 so I could definitively stop thinking about it.
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Yes, and tell me it wouldn’t be WORTH it if they worked. :(
Yes, I tend to think that it all weighs out; the relief his death would bring to so many people really outweighs the bad karma of wishing him ill, in my mind.
the helplessness has to be part of the worst of it.
It’ a painful sense of futility–the knowledge that the only thing I would gain for any of us by standing up to him is my own pink slip.
Last Friday we had a meltdown over the donor sign. We have a huge sign thanking our donor and contributors. He demanded that it be put in a particular place; then realized it wasn’t quite prominant enough there so demanded another one be made and placed 3′ to the left of the first one, with a spotlight on it. Yes, you read that right–not that the first sign should be moved, but that a second identical one should be added 3′ away and a new light installed. Apparently this request was delivered with enough force to reduce two people, including a vice president, to abject tears.
SNORK. I hadn’t realised. :) Maybe I’ll have to figure Skype (?) out after all.
LOL! That might count as the Best Use of Skype Ever. :) Of course, I’d have to figure it out too, I’ve not actually used it on my own computer…
I even LIKE museums, and I still have this sense of . . . gee, I didn’t realise museums could be so much *fun.* :)
Now, see, you’re totally cheering me up when you say something like that. :) If you can tell it’s fun just from a series of photos…. well, we must be doing something right! Our project manager posted pics too, btw–if you’re in the mood for seeing more little kids having a blast. She’s also got some cool process pictures of the making of the Batcave and laying out artifact cases, in case you’re curious how these things happen.
I wish I had something useful to say about your awful boss. I don’t understand how someone who seems to be *such* a loose cannon doesn’t . . . roll off the deck, making a little hole in the railing that you can patch up after he’s sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Our project manager posted pics too,
********** Ooooh! Can I have MY photo taken with that Spiderman! Look at them THIGHS! :) . . . I still haven’t seen a really good photo of the Batmobile, you know.
Ohhhh yes. Apparently that Spiderman (a rental from Chicago) is Mr. Hottie, he was all my coworkers were talking about on Wednesday when we all got back from mental health day off. I missed him, he was in after I left Saturday, but I gather his abs were fairly amazing as well. And he was great with kids, I hear–I’m begging them to get him back so I can enjoy him too!
There is an excellente photo of it in the official tour on the website, as of today. Go to childrensmuseumorg/special_exhibits/comics/index-entry.html and then click the doors of the comic shop to enter the gallery after our cute little intro film. (Sorry to not hotlink it, but I’d rather you cut and pasted it into your browser and replaced that dot with a . Never know when someone in IT is tracking back links to see where people are coming from. If your blog automatically turns that into a link, would you please hop in and delete it? God, what a culture of fear we have.)
Golly. Gruesome. Okay.
Do those big plastic owls work against pigeons? I’ve seen them used against gulls.
Folks with lots of glass put up black cutouts of raptors on the glass to keep away birds which might fly into the glass.
One of my gardening catalogs features fake snakes to keep birds out of strawberry patches, mylar cut outs of cat faces, balloon like things to blow up and dangle from tree branches.
I do feel guilty about netting my berry crops (currants, straw-, blue-, rasp-berries) because I kill about one bird a year. I long for a bird and rodent free fruit cage … but cash and time … one of my cats ( a pair of “used kitties”) is a carrier for feline AIDS so they are on permanent indoor quarantine. I used to have a cat who considered the food garden her home. Maybe I should create a scarecrow and an accompanying herd of cats, fake snakes, and owls … but the birds do eat the bugs … argh the joys of small scale berry growing and trying to be as green and non-lethal as possible.
I bet robins really like winter, when they have time to hang around doing cute-overload things like perching on people’s spade handles.
Is this my ridiculous book-brain, or was that a Secret Garden reference? It looks like one, but I’ve been known to make mistakes before.
No–it’s just something they do. :) Half the people in the UK have photos of their garden robin perched on their spade handle in winter. Burnett was just following the tradition, if she did (if you follow me . . . :)).
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Aha. Well that makes sense as well and makes me feel a bit better. (I wonder about my brain sometimes.)
It’s interesting to read a blog by a writer whose books one knows. . . .
Robin knocking things over in greenhouse sounds like character knocking over axe handles in Hero and the Crown. Robin dealing with smaller robin sounds like character dealing with small dragon.
When I was a kid we had a screened porch, and a bird built a nest in a nice fat bush RIGHT up against the screen, having never turned around, I guess. So I looked at bird in nest and bird in nest looked at me and did bird version of AAARGGHH! and went and built nest elsewhere.
I will not post a picture of myself on this-here blog, even if I could figure out how to do it, which I can’t. In the interests of fairness (or something) I will probably e-mail you a picture of me looking terrible at some family event or another, because that’s all I’ve got access to (i.e., pix someone in family has e-mailed me). I’ll be the one chewing.
Chewing is GOOD! :)
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At least the predators who got your robins don’t live in your /house/ – I came back this afternoon to find a very smug looking Small Dog sitting, catlike, just outside the dog flap in the garden and next to a neat row of six (count them, six…) teeny little decapitated and disemboweled baby quail.
From the looks of it, she snagged the whole blessed brood.
It’s one thing to know your pup is from genetic stock that was bred to fend efficiently for itself in the slim pickings of the Tibetan mountains, and another to watch said foraging instincts in /action/.
Oh dear! I’m so sorry! It’s sort of ridiculously awful how badly something like this screws you up–makes your heart hurt! You think about Iraq or Afghanistan and you tell yourself to get a grip, but–
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Three years ago we fostered a young, barely feathered, crow that staggered into our garden one evening about this time of year, having either fallen out of – or possibly the local sparrowhawk had snatched him from – the nearby crow family nest about 200 yards away in a big cedar. He (we think he) was lucky to have made it as far as us and we think from what the vet said when we took Hue to have his health checked the next morning that he’d been wandering for several hours because he was dehydrated and very weak. Anyway, I won’t go into all the ins and outs but I will say that my hands didn’t stop smelling of cat food for the first five days when we had to hand feed him every couple of hours or so. Easier after that when he was willing to attack teaspoons full of food! Ray rapidly built and equally rapidly extended as needed a makeshift aviary (over one of MY raised vegetable beds!!) and after three weeks Hue was fully fledged, exercised and strong, and we let him out to rejoin his family – who’d been coming down to the ‘aviary’ to chat and keep in touch. All is well and we kid ourselves we can still tell him from the other family members by the shape of his head. :)
Very intelligent and long-lived birds, crows. I really like them now I’ve got to know more about how they operate. Two (rather fuzzy) pictures from that time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/55324816@N00/sets/72157604945139844/
Oh, how *deeply* cool and enviable! :) I particularly like it that his family stayed in touch! I know they’re bright–this seems to me a good practical example of it.
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