Please help me name this insect! Every morning when I go out to pick what tomatoes the squirrels have deigned to leave me, I come in with very tiny pale green flying (I think) insects on me. They are really, really tiny, pale green, and BITE. I'm sure they come from the tomato plants. Any ideas? dale

If you have read Flann O'Brien's comic novel At Swim-Two-Birds, you will know that it is SWEENEY who has killed, and who is cursed to sit, wet and hungry, in a tree; O'Brien took the idea from Mad King Sweeney, a legendary king of Ulster (Ireland) in an ancient poem. For killing a psalmist, Sweeney is cursed: his weapons drop and he begins to levitate like a bird. From that point on, he leaps from spot to spot like a bird. Also like a bird, he can never trust humans and flees from place to place, living naked and hungry. (from Wikipedia) "Many poets have invoked Sweeney—most notably T. S. Eliot and Seamus Heaney...Another version from the Irish text [by Trevor Joyce] is titled The Poems of Sweeny, Peregrine."
So there, Sweeney is a Peregrine.
More than you wanted to know?
So what was in Isaura's tree?

I've never seen a little bitty snake like that, but I'd really, really like to.

cool bats, Mirta. cool bats.

those raptor sound recordings are used in a bunch of locations around Chicago, most notably at a public transportation station a block and a half from me. They have been using it for many years. Pigeons like to sit around the box. I cannot fathom how business owners in that block tolerate it. It is quite loud.

Jim, very very best belated birthday blessings to my old late-night Kodak board pal!!
Those were the days, huh. No silliness too silly.
Wishing you a great year.
dale

Patti, I'm a more primitive and impatient chef. Granted, I'm usually POd at squirrels when making them. I just slice them thinly and fry them on oil, with salt and pepper, sometimes powdered chipotle pepper rather than black. When both sides are browned, I add a bit of water and cover them to steam. They're amazing, and, as I said, remarkably like eggplant. Maybe it's the very low-acid Mr. Stripey tomato, but prepared like that, they are not in the least sour!  But I love corn meal in general, and bet that if I were less enraged during the process of cooking, I'd use that as well.

great song Paul!

but I didn't give up!  what's happening here is that when a squirrel gnaws part of a Mr. Stripey, I fry up the rest. I'm also proactively picking the big ones green and developing a real taste for it. They're frying up like eggplant, to which they are related but you'd never know under non-wartime conditions. Tobacco and deadly nightshade and potatoes are also related...I'm wondering if I can perform any more alchemy. I might try if I don't die of squirrel cooties (yes, I cut off the squirrelled bits, yes, I wash them, and yes I fry them well).

think i can get one of the local kestrels or coopers hawks to guard my heritage tomato plant, Mr. Stripey, against squirrels?

I'd camp out to watch that.

Terrific pictures and great film! Thanks!

Yesterday I was down at the Indiana Dunes State Park and in the nature center they have a LOT of stuffed owls and every sort of raptor and some waterfowl. The naturalist told me that over many years, birds that have been found dead or killed by cars, etc. have been preserved by a friends of the dunes park group. GHOs, I noticed, have feathers on their feet, rather short soft ones (not the long feathers snowies have on their toes). The nature center also has a back window onto their feeders. The dunes is a very well-known birding area, and there was a terrific little selection of birds at the feeders when I was there, including a family of towhees, ruby-throated hummers, nuthatches, and goldfinches. There were also baby squirrels hanging around ("you can have those," the naturalist muttered). On a counter was a little bowl with water and a whole bunch of just-hatched snapping turtles. People doing work in the sand had found the eggs and brought them in. They'll keep the babies a couple of weeks and then release them. I got to play with them. They have incredibly long tails.

she may have been peeved at you, Patti, or she may have been checking you out. I've had the experience (in the Indiana Dunes) of a hummer hovering right in my face, then vaporizing. Who ever knows. Except one time, at the Desert Museum near Tucson, a hummingbird kept coming back to harvest more and more fluff off of my hoodie for her nest; that time the intention was clear. I was a crop.

ten feeds a day! yikes.
I've been in moods like that.
the NZ rainforests are the coolest place. My best memory of NZ is hiking a full day alone through one, listening to tui calls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nugCXRZ22oE&feature=related
for hours and hours. I almost forgot I had 35 pounds on my back!

   is this one belching?

That's it, Ei. Good thinking. Shrank it down more and it worked.

same problem as jeanne is having. twice (in the profile editing thingie) I selected a picture to upload, saved changes, nothing appeared (maybe nothing was even uploaded - didn't take any time). I'm cool about it but the barn owl with me on that photo is getting POd.