YouTube Doubler - Fish & Bird

http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCGyjXRQRZR4&start1=00%3A01&video2=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dt-o4jWvMtcU&start2=00%3A01&authorName=JBanholzer

Crows recognize friends and foes

Seeing that the State College Public Works Dept. is on a mission to scare crows away with effective noisemakers, makes me wonder if the labor force knows that our crow cousins have a special gift for remembering faces and even masks.

Not only are crows gifted with facial recognition talents for identifying unique humans, avian researchers in Seattle have discovered that Crows communicate to their friends and even their descendants about human characteristics, effectively marking social points against their nemesis’s. (and up-votes for friends)

With this remarkable skill in mind, workers may want to consider wearing their hardhats when they’re out this season on the hiking trails or hunting woodlands where the crows they’ve encountered have re-roosted, to prevent return harassment from the recalling crows. And perhaps donning a hat of a different color would confuse the crows with worker identity and be the safest hat for all.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/uw-professor-learns-crows-dont-forget-a-face/

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Seashore soaring

You were drifting on the Kingston ferryboat, while I was stranded on Orcas Island.

You fashioned a hot air balloon, embroidered with a giraffe.

My craft had a monkey on its back.

The winds shifted and we were destined to meet again, out in the ocean, directly over two Concordia ships passing in the night. You flew north like a crow and saw me long before I spied you.

As we approached each other in the high sky, you blew me a kiss, which I instantly caught in my mouth. Your kiss came from the sweetest part of heaven and it healed my core illnesses, as its pure intentions cleansed & quaked deep my soul.

The Owl and the Money Clip

Here's a story from Jim Banholzer that involves owl medicine. He heard it from a friend, Tonia, after he helped her and her husband Robin, move into a new house near Bellevue.
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At their old Ketchum place, Robin and Tonia had lived together with their children and a single mother, an arrangement that worked out great in some aspects, but also was a bit cramped, which tends to get worse during harsh Idaho winters. Both families had traveled down a few times to look at the prospective larger house. All four kids loved it, as did Tonia and her single-mother friend. Robin wasn’t so sure though; after all, they had already moved earlier that same year. His hesitation was understandable, as the new house cost more and he is the main breadwinner.

With the pressure on to decide soon, one evening Robin vociferously announced that he was “going fishing.” He walked down to the Big Wood River to spend some time alone and to specifically reflect on their situation. As twilight progressed, an enormous great horned owl swooped down over the water and dropped something shiny. Robin carefully waded out to where the owl dropped the item and discovered it was an empty money clip. Examining it closer, he saw that the silver was emblazoned with his own initials!

Robin took the owl’s message as a powerful sign, which helped him, decide that his family would be better off if they made the big move. Coincidentally, a few months previous, at their old house I had dropped off some animal totem books, including one that focused on birds as messengers. On a whim, I marked one of the owl stories with a copy of my own owl story, using it as a bookmark. It's called The Midday Owl who Withdrew from the Bank.

What’s interesting about this story is that most people who hear it agree that they would have made the same decision, even though the owl had dropped an empty money clip. One friend even opined that it’s healthy to get out in nature when making such large life-changing decisions and that it was a nice enough to be given such a powerful bird-augury to help with the choice; as pennies from heaven will arrive in their own due time.

Tooting yor own horn to save the animals

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Tooting your own horn again to save animal lives

Thursday night, my friend Kim drove with me, over to Boise to see Jane Goodall speak. On the way over, we saw a police officer ticketing someone who had passed us earlier. I asked Kim to guess when the last time I received a traffic ticket was. Kim guessed Bellevue (a town notorious for speed traps) but I said no it was before that, all the way back in Virginia. After I finished a five-minute tale of Virginia traffic tickets, Kim asked me to guess when her last traffic ticket was. I didn’t have a good guess, so she started to say, “My last traffic ticket was…” and then right then a pheasant walking on the highway ahead, slowly started to cantor into our lane. We were going 65-70 and Kim immediately applied the brakes in a professional manner (as the man who was ticketed earlier was right behind us again at this point.) The pheasant couldn’t see us from his vantage point, nor could it hear the approach of Kim’s aerodynamic Jetta. I quickly told Kim to toot her horn. Kim did not honk the horn as she intensely focused on the bird now directly in our intended path. We probably slowed to about 20-25, but the pheasant still clocked us hard at the front edge of her black-cat Jetta. From her mirror, Kim could see that the bird was able to fly off after a few seconds, which surprised me knowing how hard we hit it. Surely, the bird must have been feeling some pain. Anyhow, my next reaction was to say, “You must have not read my letter about honking horns at birds, because it’s often effective to do so.” I lightened up soonafter that and told her she did an excellent job applying the brakes with “Speedy” behind us, etc.

This morning I looked up pheasant in Andrews’s totem book and saw that they have badger feathers.

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Jane Goodall’s Boise performance was a good one. Her opening joke about Johnny Weissmuller choosing that other Jane worked well. In addition, I liked the fact that she didn't try to hide the dark side of chimps. She reached another hilarity highpoint when she compared inpatient chimp behavior to that of some politicians. I was curious about what others in the crowd thought when she started to bring up Global Warming and things along those lines. Evidently, she lectures approximately 300 days a year. I was impressed to hear that. After she show, which was all talk and no visual cues, Teleprompters or even notes, she signed books into the wee hours. Kim bought three books, which Jane signed after a two hour wait and there was still an estimated 800 people patiently waiting in line. One of her Jane’s earliest books caught my eye, but I’m trying to hold back on compulsive book purchases.

The Birds are Open

Last night I called D. to tell her about my Red Wing blackbird sounding and about the 400 Bohemian waxwing’s rhapsody, breathed down upon me from the swirling heavens, right in front of Ciro’s Restaurant.

D too, had seen the birds open for business yesterday – some geese in an Oceanside marsh, where some cows gave each other the high sign, and then chased after the geese.

Very Farsidian

D wants to write a follow up book to Colm Kelleher’s Brain Trust -The hidden connection between Mad Cow and misdiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease. This incident, along with another when she got out of her car to take some photos of those captive cows above Shoshone–I think you know where I mean – Before being chased off by a shotgun-wielding rancher, could be contained in a chapter, giving readers more reasons to consider for ceasing to chomp on captive cows – that is that the cows do have individual personalities, even a sense of humor, once you get to know them.

And if we all didn’t have a slight touch of the Mad Human Disease, we would see this better – at least that’s what a little bird told me.

The birds are open / historical signs of spring

I heard a red-winged blackbird calling this morning, right before I headed into Shelly’s Deli. I’ve heard those spring-like prompts, in previous mid-Februarys and marked those refreshing dates down on old calendars. This got me interesting in thinking about other historical markers of spring, such as which day did the bike path first open and when did the excavator initially clear rockslides off Trail Creek road with his huge skip-grader.

In fact, Steve and I pursued this one soaring spring, actually contacting both the Recreation District and Idaho Transportation Department to see, if in fact, they kept pertinent opening day records. Both of their offices seemed to think that there was indeed some documentation; even it was only an informal log-chart scribbled into the excavator’s notebook; however, we were never able to track down this precise measurement of spring.

It would be interesting to hold those elusive opening day charts up on the wall together to compare their various parameters.

Late this afternoon, as I was clearing out the truck by the tall pines fronting Ciro’s restaurant, about 400 bohemian waxwings began orchestrating a magnificent performance of flight and song. They swooped and swallowed back & forth in the slight wind, mostly in unison, but complete with some energetic contrary birds. Another person arrived at the recycle receptacle and we watched in unity, several swirling swoops of the bohemian rhapsody. Soon this stuck us as newsworthy enough to call our town’s leading photojournalist Col. Kinderhook.

Even though it was deadline evening, the prestigious Colonel picked up immediately, in time for me to pass on another fleeting bird news tip. He asked if they were gaining high sustenance from fermented berries or apples again and I replied that they seemed to be taking in pine nut

The Colonel remarked about how some restless natives, have been giving him a hard time about cherry-picking bird photos from his own backyard feeder. I remarked that his photos are excellent and he should tell the naysayers that he has animal magnetism and that his totem is tweets.

And for the record, I would like to see him tag every first remarkable spring-bird with a date in his digital camera log.