"The Bird,the Bird,the Bird is the Word"

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I call the top one "Mourning Doves with cow pie." Worth a click to enlarge they look so soft. They seem to like to graze and take pleasure in the company of other birds.

The Grackles and Red-wing Blackbirds are the clowns of this show. The feeders are a little small for them but the birds are acrobatic and these two species like to grab on to the gazebo feeder, flap one wing which winds the string and then stop and have a little backward merry-go-round ride as the string unwinds. Although I have been broadcasting some birdseed on the ground for the larger birds, they exhaust the supply early. Then one gets on the feeder and scoops more seed to the ones below.

A Black-headed Grosbeak. The squirrel-proof feeder is a pretty stingy feeder. No refills yet. While I was re-stringing the weedwhacker, I scared up a female pheasant in the sideyard who, in turn, scared me up. A pretty indignant lady, she was.

After shedding about two gallons of water from my body yesterday, I felt pretty spry today. The bad weather had me too confined. I need to move to get the juices flowing. So I weedwhacked about a half an acre and groomed Honey which is more exercise than one might think. She really was very good but after awhile it always turns into playtime and a wrestling match. I also found time to read. More vintage mysteries- ca. 1910 +/-. Call it C.S.I. London. Dr Thorndyke is a "forensic medico" who espouses the gathering of facts without prejudice-no foregone conclusions, then using Inductive reasoning rather than deductive reasoning explains it all. The mysteries are "fair"-the clues are all out there for the most part. His tools are rudimentary- cameras, chemistry, a portable microscope, all of which were fascinating to the generation. That time period is fascinating to me: attention to logic produced Wittgenstein, Einstein, Russell, George Bernard Shaw, all in a time when the rudiments of bits and bytes were telegrams sent by Morse Code, gentlemen walked most places, the trolley was pulled by horses, and messages were delivered by servants. A great belief in science pervaded. This is the era of Tom Swift on this side of the ocean. Women come off well in the Dr.Thorndyke Mysteries. Three dimensional. A bit of romance in a few stories. Very ingeniously plotted in some instances, I have enjoyed "being in" these stories. Ninety nine centers. A lot of entertainment for the money.