Thursday Evening

[nightdog_barks]

The sun never came out today. :-(

But! I got out and went to the store for a few things, including a couple more suet blocks for the birds. The blocks look like this, although the brand my grocery store carries is different and they sure don't cost $2.95 -- the ones I get are 99 cents. You take the suet block out of the plastic tub (easier if you've put it in the freezer overnight), stick it in the wire cage-thing and hang the cage-thing from a branch. I put an old one out yesterday and it attracted a woodpecker (a small one -- a downy or hairy) and a chickadee.

Also saw more white-winged doves today, a House Finch, some little guys that are probably American Goldfinches (they don't turn golden until summer), and some tiny little finch that was sort of a nondescript olive-greenish color. I have no idea what it was.

So, anyway. Hoping to write a little tonight. In the meantime, here's a lovely article from the NY Times on Christmas crèches.

Comments

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen or thought of suet blocks in about twenty-five years. <3 We used to have them and a standalone feeder, and we'd get chickadees and bluejays and some kind of woodpecker (I think the one with the red head which i want to say has an absurdly sensible name like 'redheaded woodpecker) and red-winged blackbirds.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Hee -- I think suet blocks became commercially popular when the whole "birding" thing took off (no pun intended) as Something To Do (with all its specialized equipment -- bird books, super-zoom lenses, $2,000 binoculars). It was probably about the same time that Wild Bird Unlimited stores started going up everywhere.

We get lots of woodpeckers -- downies, hairies, red-bellies (whose most distinguishing feature is their red head), ladder-backs, flickers ... here's (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/birding/woodpeckers_pineywoods/) a nice site, although we don't have all of these birds in our area.

[blackmare-9.livejournal.com]

This discussion, and your icon, reminded me to go find out whether the thing I saw a couple weeks ago could really have been a pileated woodpecker, as I suspected it was. There aren't many things that size that fly in that haphazard, off-rhythm fashion.

Sure enough, we have 'em here in MN, year-round. That fact makes me ridiculously happy.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

... fly in that haphazard, off-rhythm fashion.

Hee. Perfect description of how woodpeckers fly.

This icon is from an old story in the NY Times about the ivory-billed woodpecker. I loved it that it's called the grail bird, so that's what I named the icon.

[k-haldane.livejournal.com]

I remember we used to have a Christmas creche that was so old and wobbly we used to call it "the crash" because the stable fell down so often.

And one of the camels had a matchstick taped to its body where a leg had come off.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

A matchstick-leg camel. Hee.

Now that is a wonderful image.

[takes-a-fairy.livejournal.com]

I don't know what's in suet, but the other ingredients sounds much like human's trail mix...just add a few chocolate chips! *g*

Thanks for posting the article. I only bothered with the "more photos" section for now...too tired to read that much at the moment.

I'll be back to say "Howdy!" tomorrow. *yawns and stretches*

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Suet is beef fat, but supposedly it's not the same kind of fat that's trimmed off of steaks. I've read about folks making their own suet blocks and using lard. Ewww on all counts. And yeah, it's something like high-energy trail mix for birds! *g*

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I used to make a homemade version by melting peanut butter and some vegetable shortening together, and then mixing in plain cornmeal and birdseed until it made a kind of stiff dough. We'd shape it into balls and hang them up in the trees in plastic mesh bags that oranges came in.

The squirrels quickly learned to tear open the bags and gorge on the stuff. We had the world's fattest squirrels that winter!

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Heh! So far the squirrels haven't bothered the suet block or the bird feeder. I'm just waiting, though. In the past there have been times when I'd hear a thump! and open the back door to see Mr. Squirrel sitting on top of the feeder, and I'd yell at him, and the little son of a bitch would just blink back at me.

Bastards. Hee.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

We have a tiny one-piece plastic creche from my childhood that has a couple of lambs held in place with clear nail polish, which was the forerunner of Super Glue at our house. We hang it on the Christmas tree.

The bigger one we put on the hearth came from Corgiguy's dad's estate and was made in Spain, so all the people have darker eye and skin tones except for the fair-skinned, blue-eyed baby Jesus. The cat likes to steal him out of his manger and carry him around the house. :)

Oh, delightful Christmas madness: There's a house a couple of streets over where the guy not only decorated the house and yard with a zillion lights (the word TOYS is spelled out in green lights across a bush), but he parked his shiny red truck right in the middle of the lawn and draped a string of lights around it. I've never seen anything quite like that.

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

I remember years and years ago taking a "Judaism 101" class at university (speaking like a Brit here) and the Rabbi telling us that there's a story in the Midrash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrash) about Jesus having blue eyes.

Hee -- I love it that TOYS is spelled out in green and the red truck is parked in the middle of the lawn.

The only pieces of the creche that's left from when I was a kid are Mary and an angel with golden wings. It was a super-cheap plastic Nativity set with a stable of plywood and what was probably packing straw stapled on the slanting roof. *g*