That only a mother robin
[May 12, 2008 - Blogmom makes it all better. Better baby bird photo.]
. . . could love.
Sigh. Trying one more time. No, I still have no idea. I’ve scanned in photos before and they’ve still been photos when I’ve put them in the blog, they have not bafflingly morphed into the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner as inscribed on the head of a pin. This one’s even cuter too, if you could see it. It’s the antennae that make it. The antennae that no doubt you can’t see. Oh, and the cardboard box on the left is the Revolutionary System for Sticking Your Climbing Plants to the Wall Without Using Nails, and the box on the right contains the Revolutionary Slug Beer Bath (Not Like Any Old Ordinary Slug Beer Bath). But they make a nice nest for robins.
And Chaos, having done his miserable anguished humpy-backed tragic-faced thing for a while over his food bowl, has now gone and stretched out comfortably in the dog bed and I want to kill myself. I know, I know, but in the first place Chaos doesn’t just miss a meal occasionally, there is usually some utterly unfathomable issue involved, and in the second place this is the first time he’s done this, and meant it, since the pancreatic-insufficiency diagnosis, and the digestive enzyme regime began.
It had actually been a pretty good day till an hour ago . . .
Critter news flash: this also from the Guardian: the duckbilled platypus has ten sex chromosomes. You know, like we have two? X and Y? –Peter read this to me and I was saying, ten? What are we talking about here? You don’t mean all that X and Y stuff? Ten? One of the scientist blokes who wrote the paper says: “In theory it means there are 25 possible sexes, though in practise that doesn’t happen.” I dunno . . . Australia is a big place . . . are we sure?
. . . Domestic critter news flash: Chaos is eating. It’s ten o’clock at night. Well, after bell ringing if I go to the pub too, I’ve been known to eat dinner at ten o’clock. The thing is, the hellhounds, especially Chaos, if he stops eating, he is prone to declining to start again. I’d rather he had dinner at ten o’clock, so I left the bowl down. I may sleep tonight after all. I think the basic problem is that my hellhounds aren’t dogs. They’re some furry alien life form with either too many or too few food chromosomes.
Sorry . . . I’ll try to be coherent tomorrow. I can tell you about the baby owl, and the first cuckoo, and stereophonic skylarks . . . and slamming on the brakes, going back to the cottage one night recently at one a.m. or so, seeing a badger darting around the gate to the old estate that the mews is part of, and disappearing through a hole in the fence and into the sheep field . . . and I don’t think it was the same night but it might have been, as I was gliding downhill to the crossroads I saw a remarkably large furry-tailed pointy-nosed prick-eared cat trotting across the junction and continuing down the middle of the opposite road: fox. I know urban foxes are a commonplace–Peter’s eldest daughter, who lives in London, had a vixen and kits in her garden one year: her ex garden, I should say, although it was rehabilitated later–but I haven’t seen one behaving like an oversized lorry before.
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Just did the same thing with this picture.
Sent in another email.
Let me know if it comes through!
:)
–Julia
I’m still answering comments! (I have to stop this!!!!!) I haven’t looked yet! Thank you! Now go read some literature or something! :)
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For some reason–PROBABLY to do with (*&^%$£”!!!!! AOL, both photos come through rather blurry. I’ll rescan tomorrow and try to load straight from the desktop at the cottage rather than all this prancing around with memory sticks and laptops, and see if that helps.
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Oooh, yay Chaos! Eat, dude, eat! That is what we like to hear!
The robin-bird-robins are adorable.
I dunno . . . Australia is a big place . . . are we sure?
Heh, yeah, that’s kind of the same thought I had. Mine was “Australia has all kinds of weird animals. Are we sure?” :P From what I understand, the platypus is a pretty strange creature to begin with; more chromosomes doesn’t really surprise me. It’s *really* interesting, and I hope there’s more about it.
I’ll try to remember to post the link to the article tomorrow–or you could look it up yourself. The short form is that yes, platypuses are EVEN MORE weird than we think they are!
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What a wondrous collection of wildlife you have to observe and marvel at! I hope Chaos continues to eat (his food, not the wild life).
>Australia is a big place . . . are we sure?
LOL Yes. ;) There aren’t a huge number of platypus around any more (maybe it is the result of not enough sexes?? hehe) So they keep pretty good tabs on the ones that are there. *g*
We don’t get playpus on our farm but we do get echidnas, wombats, wallabys, kangaroos, koalas and lots of birds. ;)
Here’s a baby wombat that I found beside its’ dead mother. It went to a wildlife shelter.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21742944@N05/2476334903/
Nah, nah, nah, stop being such a SPOILSPORT. There are Secret Hidden Havens of Platypusery that science wot not of!!!!
I PETTED a wombat once, at a wildlife sanctuary near Melbourne. :)
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We know she’s hiding a platypus of a third sex in her back yard. She just doesn’t want to tell us! *sniff*
Anything is possible. After all, apparently we have dragons in the Grampians…….
Susan in Melbourne
I saw the antennae! At least, I think I do. They are the little grayish smudges above the head, right?
Yes, that’s right! You have VERY GOOD EYES! (But I am going to try to rescan and reload.)
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I think I can see it by the virtue of the picture, not by my own eyes. Though I’ve never been farsighted (I’m nearsighted).
Yaay for Chaos eating, and Yaay for Darkness who presumably ate in the first place, and who is my hero of the day next time you have one:) So glad you will be able to relax now and sleep – maybe dreaming of those 25 sexes… Hmmm!
All this talk of platypus and badgers reminds me of Tamora Pierce’s The Realms of the Gods, with the Duckmole God and the Badger God. Memorable characters.
Robins with antenna, 25 sexes of platypus, and links in the comments which lead one down strange and wonderful paths. Life would be so ordinary without this blog to inform, puzzle, and amuse one daily.
I’m glad to hear that Chaos decided to eat … I have a cat who will only eat things which come in a box or can with the word “cat” on it. Turns up her nose at chicken breast, roast beef, tuna, lobster … some day when I run out of cat food I swear I’ll try “cat”sup on her.
Her sister loves almost anything which her person eats … I often come back to a mug of hot chocolate to find her head stuck as far down into it as possible with her little tongue going lap lap lap as fast as it can. She’s finishing my salad as I type this …
Yikes … I forgot that I have dough for cranberry sticky buns rising! If they turn out as well as I hope, I’ll share the recipe. Ta!
Thank you! :)
A cat that eats SALAD?!?
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omg omg please tell me you haven’t seen this so i can take credit for introducing you to the joys of winston (the blue point persian/blogosphere celeb): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPaK_W3ACLk also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goA5V7lq0Mw
Oh gods, these are HYSTERICAL! Thank you! Post in an entry coming!!! :)
I can just about make out the antennae…so adorable! I have a robin that visits the flower boxes on my deck each morning and sigs me a song. Sadly he doesn’t live with me but I do appreciate the visits.
I’m glad chaos finally ate, despite humpy-backed terror of before. I hope it was just a glitch in his regularly scheduled programming…
Why does there need to be a revolutionary slug beer bath? Pie plate and beer seem like the only really necessary elements.
The antennae are visible, barely, on the baby robin. He/she is very cute. I am now seeing phoebes hanging out in the nest-watching spots on my fence. There was a report that a lot of songbirds are in trouble here this spring, because the bugs are late coming out, but the phoebes (flycatchers) look just fine so they must be getting them from somewhere. It’s too bad they aren’t antcatchers, because the ants are STILL getting in and I want my kitchen back! If it would dry up they would probably stay outside but more rain is expected. *vivid bad language*
On the plus side, I bought plants today–double impatiens for the planter pots–and if it stays above 40 F at night I can actually PLANT them. Dodging raindrops, probably.
Thank you for the platypus story. The mind boggles at what things would be like if mammals had stayed on that evolutionary pathway.
vivid bad language
********** LOL! Yes, the RANT I sent Blogmum was the UNexpurgated version!!!!!
On the plus side, I bought plants today–double impatiens for the planter pots
*********** I *love* double impatiens. But are yours rotten with vine weevil? Do you have vine weevil? It’s got so bad here that I plant ALL of them in individual pots and dot them around–pots on pots sometimes. It actually looks fine–eccentric maybe, but fine–but the WATERING . . .
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I don’t think we have vine weevil. My double impatiens only go in the pot planters because I don’t mess with annuals anywhere else–too busy WEEDING–and they don’t seem to get infested by anything. I’m sure being in pots set on steps helps with that.
we have a nest of baby blackbirds in our rosemary tree….(it really is larger than a bush). This, along with the hellhound, is making gardening a little fraught…..since each time one or other of us goes out there we get yelled at by furious parent blackbirds. At least they’ve not dive-bombed us yet though.
it’s exciting that they’ve chose our garden – which is about 8 foot square and the babies sound very cute – we can’t see them yet…..
Yaay for baby birds in the garden! :)
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Here is the recipe for the vinegar/orange oil weed killer:
2 quarts white vinegar
1/2 cup orange oil
1 teaspoon liquid soap
Food-use orange oil, which by the way is a great non-toxic adhesive remover, is not concentrated enough for this. It’s also too expensive. The people who printed the recipe think that orange oil is available in garden centers, but I couldn’t find any locally. I googled “orange oil” and found a company in Florida called Citrus King that sells the stuff by the gallon (and at a reasonable price), but I was ready to use undiluted Citra-Solv if nothing else turned up.
I tried this at the end of the season last year and lazily omitted the soap, which would help the solution stick on the leaves. This year I will use soap and hope for a more long-term effect. It did kill weeds, but I don’t think it has a systemic effect.
Even with the concentrated orange oil, this would probably be non-toxic to critters, but I think the strong vinegar smell would keep them away.
Thank you. Now for the orange oil hunt. I do *not* want to ship from Florida.
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