Cardinal Song

This morning I heard a cardinal sing in the spruce tree outside my bedroom window. The sound of the cardinal song was so beautiful, I stopped in my tracks.  The sound represented summer and sunshine and cut grass.  It took me only seconds to figure out it was a cardinal.  I wondered what it was about the sound of a cardinal that makes it so special?  They're here all winter.  Cardinals are common in my yard.  Later in the day I saw that two people wrote on the Minnesota Ornithological Union listserve emails appreciating the sound of a cardinal.  I wasn't the only one today who was struck by the beauty of the cardinal song.  Listen for yourself.  The cardinal sounds as pretty as it looks conspicuous.

The Last New Bird of the Year For Me-Rock Dove

Should I Spend $98 To Play In The Dirt?

Groupon (an Internet based coupon system) has a coupon for half price on a one hour construction vehicle driving adventure and obstacle course.  I have to admit, I want to do it.  My ultimate goal is to move a big hill with a bulldozer and they offer that too but for almost $900.  For only $98 I could operate a Caterpillar skid steer.  I would get 20 minutes of instruction and 40 minutes to drive an obstacle course, move dirt and shove tractor tires around with the flip of a wrist.  I have two days to decide.  The location is called Extreme Sandbox and is located in Hastings.  Should I?  Will this be my only chance to drive a construction vehicle?  Couldn't I just rent a bobcat and actually use it in my yard for about the same amount of money?  Decisions.  Decisions.

Smug But Not Over Confident

I broke my long (can it really be four years?) loosing streak in Scrabble to a certain un-named opponent. I beat her.  (sing-song) I won a game.  I won a game.  By six points.  I was lucky with the letters.  I had to be lucky with the letters in other games over the past four years and I still lost.  But not this time.  I won.  It feels good.  Please tell me why she puts "za" into every game?  As if za is really a word.  Plus it makes me hungry for pizza and I don't even like pizza all that much.

Project Feeder Watch Update

White Breasted Nuthatch (who, with the black feathers what dip down betwen the eyes have always reminded me of Eddie Munster)-2, Black Capped chickadee-5, Downy Woodpecker-2, Hairy Woodpecker-1, Junco-4, Blue Jay-1, Cardinal-2

Bootylicious

I copied and pasted this article just as I found it.  Another case where truth is stranger than fiction:

Wild & Weird: Horsefly Named After Beyoncé's Buttocks



















In an unusually bold step for invertebrate taxonomy, an Australian insect with a golden tuchus has just been officially named after pop singer Beyoncé Knowles, also widely recognized as possessing first-rate glutei maximi. The fly, of which the first specimen was apparently captured the same year Beyoncé was born (1981), was dubbed Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae by a 24-year-old male researcher from the land Down Under.










Many horseflies are bloodsuckers, but the dietary habits of Scaptia Plinthina beyonceae are not yet known. Also unknown is whether the pop star named her two-week-old offspring, Blue Ivy, as a similar homage to the interplay of the natural and celebrity worlds.










Read more and see photos of the bootylicious fly in The Washington Post.

Don't Mess With Rutabega

This past year I've been experimenting with vegetable soups.  I've tried butternut squash soup, acorn squash soup, carrot soup, and some other kind of squash soup.  All these soups are broth based, pureed, spicy, low in calorie and they taste very good.  Until this last batch of acorn squash soup.  In this trial, I added pieces of a left over rutabega that I wanted to use up.  I used only about a half a cup of rutabega but that was enough to turn the main flavor from squash to rutabega.  Yeah, not so good.  Edible but not so good.  Some people think rutabegas are underappreciated.  I don't agree.