Rain Gryphon

Life here is rather like some boring holiday, with most places closed. Gasoline was $1.62 a gallon yesterday. I didn't check today.

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India's poor are basically left in the lurch. That seems kind of standard for India.

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Bolivian whores are being asked to take one for the team. They're not happy about it.

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Katanga, the southwestern province of the Congo, are shutting down their mines for TWO ENTIRE DAYS!! Wow. Best use that time to write their wills, I suspect.

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Birds are going along just like always. Cardinals are building a nest in the front-yard shrubbery. Sparrows have (I think) settled who gets which box. There's a chipmunk investigating a hole about ten feet up the large maple tree. I think she's probably going to move there from the back steps. She's been in and out for the last two days.

A cool, drizzly day today. Everyone hit the feeders pretty heavily, as that was their best chance of getting a meal on a day like this, especially if they didn't want to be out for hours in the rain.


The tube feeder is encrusted with Sparrows! There's one on every perch, and about another ten or so out of sight on the ground, snapping up what's dropped. I love how they cooperate on stuff like that.


A Red-Bellied Woodpecker cock eating from the seed tube. I think he's after the sunflower seeds, which the Sparrows don't seem to care for anyway. He has to be uncomfortable like that, but it's evidently worth it for the reward.


Baby Downy Woodpecker, just out of the nest for a day or two, explores the back yard with his dad. The juvenile is a male - you can tell by the red crest growing in. Interestingly, while you see the red flash on the back of the adult's head, the red feathers actually grow on top, as you see here. As he grows and his display feathers get longer, they sweep back, and black feathers sweep backward to cover them.


Dad demonstrates how to eat cake from the feeder, as junior watches.


The baby doesn't quite make the connection yet. Dad patiently feeds him bird cake. This is the same male, I'm just about certain, who back in April chased away the hen that was interested in him when she got too close to his food. https://rain-gryphon.dreamwidth.org/79252.html A few months made quite a difference.


A Chipmunk raids the cake feeder, when none of the birds are using it. I'm kind of surprised. That's a dried mealworm cake. I'd not have thought that to a Chipmunk's taste.


Chipmunk cheeks! On her way back home, to get out of the rain and enjoy her dinner.

Dusk now, and the tube feeder is empty, and the bird cake gone. I filled both feeders last night, and will do so again tonight, it seems.