Vent away! What a nasty trick! But on the bright side (IS there one?) - I need to trim one of our lilacs as it has got very tall and leggy, with blooms only at the top and out of reach. The website from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHA) says they can be pruned all at once... in which case you wait 3 yrs for more blossoms. OR - and this is what I plan to do - prune one-third each year for 3 years. While they say this should be done in autumn, perhaps something like this could work. Good ideas re insurance and pros, tho.

See if the insurance people will let you get a Lilac-Cam so you can catch the blighters!!

Slainte!
Bobbie

That is a major mean thing...hard to imagine why someone would have done that!  However, as Bobbie said, if you can do a nice job of cleaning it up, leaving some of the older wood for next year's blooms, it will eventually come back nicely.  We prune away about 1/4 to 1/3 of our lilac canes down to the ground (or within a foot) every year and they produce new canes that will make flowers in 3 years.  You probably already know all that if you're a lilac lover...

Anyway, I'm really sorry for your loss and understand how upset you must be.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. --
Biologists from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife are watching a pair of nesting bald eagles along the Ohio River.

It's the first documented eagle's nest in Jefferson County, but biologists are concerned this weekend's air show could affect the nesting process.

Jeane and I went to view the nest twice, maybe 10 days and then 14 days ago, roughly...it was amazing between the two visits how much harder it was to see the nest because the trees leafed out so much!  It's on an inaccessible island (managed by the corps of engineers), which is probably good to keep folks from disturbing the eagles.  You can only see it from the opposite shore, pretty far away.  Our scope gave us a nice view, but it's always really windy on the river, and we had trouble getting good pictures with the wind pounding the camera on the tripod, especially at 60x magnification.  But I've posted our best digiscoped shot.  The eagles took over an old Great Blue Heron nest, and just a few yards away are bunches of active GBH nests.  I'm a little afraid for the baby herons, with opportunistic eagles next door.   The eagles nest is pretty small and flimsy compared to most Bald Eagle's nests I've seen; it's a first year nest, and the speculation is that these may be young, inexperienced eagles.  I sure hope the crazy air show didn't bother them.  It sure bothered me to hear those military planes with ear-blasting noise flying over our house (we're in the flight path between the airport and downtown where the air show was).

[Quest Tour Basic Long Sleeve Tee (light)]

Did you all notice today's featured item from the RFC stores?

Quest Tour T-shirt!

Neat!

Hmmm... has anyone ordered t-shirts from Zazzle?  When I select another style, the description still says "Quest Tour Basic Long Sleeve Tee (light)".  If I add it to my cart, I see something like this:

Quest Tour Basic Long Sleeve Tee (light)
by rfalconcam
Ladies Petite T-Shirt, Lime

Just makes me a little nervous that I'm going to get the right style...

That's sad and it's pretty bad on land too.  The plastic bags are all over the ground, hanging on trees, shrubs, lining all the roadways.  We were on the 490 going to Rochester the other day and we couldn't believe all the garbage that we saw that people are throwing out of their vehicles.  Another issue I have are the unsightly deer carcasses that aren't picked up by highway teams anymore because of state money issues.  They're just rotting alongside the road. All really sad.  

Louisville started an interesting pilot program some months ago whereby if you see someone toss trash out of their car window, you can go to a city web site, if you remember the license plate, and pay attention to the car make/model, and color, and report them.  Then the city sends out a "warning" to the offender, and reminds them that littering is punishable with a hefty fine.  I think the system is automated, so costs the city very little money.  I don't think there's much actual enforcement of the litter ordinances, but I don't know.  At least it may be raising awareness, but that's not a bad thing.  At a minimum, it gives me a way to channel my frustration if I see someone toss something out of their car!

I have a much more aggressive and crazy friend who goes everywhere on his bicycle, and when he is stopped at a light and sees someone drop trash out of the car, he maneuvers his bike to them, picks up the trash and politely says something like "I think you dropped this."

I'm speechless. Phil Says.

That is a truly bizarre site.  Thanks, I guess?

Boy, you can get carried away from one thing to the next on the Internet. 

Jeane and I call that "going down the Rabbit Hole".

I've got to put in a word for the Grand Canyon.  When I looked out over the rim, it was as if the universe had come to an end and replaced by a painted backdrop.  I think the lack of normal perspective cues keep the eye from being able to come to grips with the thing.  It was the most amazing sight I have ever seen.

Paul

Great pictures, Paul!  Jeane and I rafted the Grand Canyon many moons ago, which involved flying into Page, Arizona, joining our raft tour company, floating down the river for a bunch of days as we got deeper and deeper into the canyon, watching the walls grow taller each day.  We slept on pads under the stars; no tent required...which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life; something I can't do in the humid, dewy East or the COLD mountains where we typically camp.  Also one of the most relaxing vacations, once I decompressed from civilization; nothing to do but float, hike, eat, sleep.  At the end of the trip a helicopter picks you up, takes you up out of the canyon to a tiny airport, then you fly to Las Vegas where you experience extreme re-entry shock!  The problem with this adventure is that apart from the helicopter flight, we only saw the canyon from inside it...I've never seen the canyon from the rim, so that's on the list of places to return to.

I have a dream of hiking in and out of the canyon, but haven't convinced myself that my almost-50 year old knees can handle a 5000 foot elevation drop/gain.

So, I second your "word for the Grand Canyon".

Patti

Like it or not, the herds and flocks must be thinned.  Over population and starvation are horrible options.  Coming from a family of hunters, I firmly believe that the hunters and outdoorsmen really care about the herds and want healthy ones.  Thining the herd is part of the process.

When we were in Yellowstone last year for our winter wolf-watching trip, our guide was talking about some of the wildlife management issues they have (not necessarily inside the park, but in the surrounding national forest land, where hunting is allowed).  She said that one of the differences is that natural predators of elk, for example, wolves, mountain lions, and bears will generally strengthen the herd by taking the old, the weak, the sick, the slow, etc., but that human hunters (not so much the folks hunting for food, but the trophy hunters going for the biggest antlered bucks), who have the advantage of technology, can take the biggest, healthiest animals, which is very bad for the herds. 

So...I just thought the issue was an interesting one, especially in areas where there are not natural predators and human hunting is almost required (for example, to control white-tailed deer populations)...how do you "thin" a herd without causing natural selection to work in the wrong direction?

Mercury is actually holding what appears to be a bag of gold?  Not sure what he's actually holding.   

I actually googled this today and found out that Mercury is the god of trade and commerce, and is often seen carrying a purse or money bag, so bag of gold was a good assessment!

  If Quest should get into a territorial dispute, would her transmitter harness be a hinderance to her?

I have absolutely no expertise on which to base this answer, but it seems like the harness could actually protect her body from puncture wounds.  Yes, it adds a bit of weight, but her muscles should have adapted to it long ago.

The experts have indicated in the past that the transmitter shouldn't interfere with copulation...

It was a hard job to vote, but I do LOVE that squirrel picture!  Thanks to Aafke for organizing the contest.

Patti

Another useful way to read the forum while keeping it threaded is to only look at unread posts:

http://rfalconcam.com/forum/index.php?action=unread

Control-clicking on each "new" icon will open each thread in a new browser tab. Scan the contents of each tab and close it to make the contents of the next tab visible. When you're done reading each tab, you are all caught up.

Shaky, I've been roughly using this method to navigate the forum, but it doesn't work quite this way for me.  Clicking the "new" tab opens the thread in the same browser tab, so I have to scan the contents then click "back" to get back to my list of unread posts, then "refresh" the list by clicking the link to see only unread posts.

I like your method better, though, so I think I'll make a practice of right-clicking the "New" button and explicitly opening the contents in a new tab.

I love the occasional (but rare, in the city) sighting of flocks of Sandhill Cranes who are flying overhead on their way north now.

Lots of singing going on in Louisville; everybody's staking out territories and advertising.

I maybe wrong but I think there are degrees of albino-ism. Total being everything including having pink eyes, and partials. Like there can just be a few feathers to almost all feathers etc.

Yup...here are a couple of articles; there are actually several different forms of pigmentation disorders, both of which can result in partial coloration.  I've also seen house sparrows in my yard with one completely white feather, or two completely white feathers, which I read may result from toxins (pesticides, for example) during feather development rather than a genetic origin.  My yard's completely organic, but I'm assuming some of the neighbors aren't so kind to the critters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucism

“Given its minute, two-penny weight [5 to 6 grams], how such an individual could survive the energy crunch on a cold, 16-hour-long winter night is an unimaginable marvel from our human perspective — it defies physics and physiology,� Mr. Heinrich wrote in his fascinating, beautifully written 2003 book, Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival.

The New England biologist devotes no less than three chapters of Winter World to the golden-crowned and never runs short of wonder for them: “When I'm in the warmth of my cabin and hear gusts of wind outside that moan through the woods and shake my cabin on a wintry night, I will continue to marvel at and wonder how the little featherpuffs are faring.

I'm actually in the middle of that book (Winter World)...read it all day on a plane ride from Salt Lake City home; it's really interesting!