it's a robin. I have seen it. It is neurotic.
the consensus seems to be that the streetlights are messing with it.

No, obviously I wouldn't kill one, but this one sings ALL night EVERY night, except for maybe from 1-2:45 am. CLOSE. NONSTOP. Did the same thing last year too, for months. Nothing lulling about it, it's maddeningly repetitive.

I finally had the time to listed to the whole story. It's incredible, as are the individuals whose life stories somehow brought them to work with the cranes.   Thanks, Gayle!

Chris has decided the last egg is not hatching, so there are two owlets.
Plus occasional others:

amazing!!
very, very cool. thanks!!
reminds me of that marvelous spatuletail hummingbird snapping his tail! (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8338000/8338728.stm)

Animal Planet meets the Sex Pistols.
have you ever seen such a punk rock sneer?

Is that a squirrel for lunch?
[/quote]

doubt it -- it does look enormous but these are dinky little owls.

business as usual.

Chris says it was a red-bellied. close!

Doesn't she look like one of those things from the 60s, to keep the extra roll of toilet paper in?

They got lots of big names for this petition.

http://www.call2action.com/widget/w153/index.html

My friend Paul Clyne said a nuthatch is too small for this big bird. This, he says, is a long-billed bird carrying something, since, say, a Wilson's Plover might have a broad-tipped bill, but he's not about to be poking his head into an Austin owl box (ps when I grow up I want to be able to think like this). Clark's Nutcracker is what he guessed next, since "it's in the crow family after all, and they go poking their business into everything" - but it's a long shot for that one to be messing around in Austin TX. His final guess was a female Golden-Fronted Woodpecker.

OH, Anne...I am SO terribly sorry. Please accept my most heartfelt condolences......

dale

two visitors - one is a starling, probably.
Who's the other?

I found this on the main page:

Eggs Laid/Hatched/Failed/Pending: 4/2/1/1

So, yes. There are 2 owlets, 1 egg, and the one shown trying to hatch during the fire ant episode didn't make it.  Otherwise, no news. He tried hard for that second chick - I feel bad about that.

nice picture, Donna. I laughed my vent off.

Peregrines apparently don't even touch them.
Hard to believe anything gets accomplished under circumstances like that, but there ya go.

Here's a nice summary written by the very missed Linn Pierson, in an email a little over 4 years ago:

Yes, pefas are the original "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" when it comes to copulation. Which, btw, is the proper term. Mating is two birds that are bonding. When they are bonded, i.e., mated, the thing they do at nesting time is copulate.

No, they don't have penises. Only some of the swans and ducks do, because they mate on the water. The female pefa will always get her tail to the side, male jumps on her back, and the semen does reach her cloaca. When they were reintroducing and using imprinted birds, the falconers would wear a hat with a sort of trough which would catch the semen; the birds would jump on top of their heads and copulate with the hat. Above and beyond for the falconers...


RIP Linn and thanks for the birds and the bees...