well, shoot, Eagle-eye Ei, you've already gotten the sine-qua-non captures for the season, we might as well close up shop right now!  Hilarious!

Looking at the second to the last photo, am I the only one who imagines a thermometer flanked by two starlings to be a promising coat of arms? Paul

'pends on for whom. I'm considering a computer mouse framed in dodos.
sounds like the birth of a great genre: item of technology flanked by something that flies.

btw Chris writes that it was he who cleared the big stuff (of starling provenance) away from the cam.
Thank you, Chris.

the formal "welcome to my owlbox" ceremony

It wouldn't be so funny if they didn't walk like they had full diapers.

Chris has officially kicked off the 2011 season...Mme. O has been spending the day in the box, so eggs are on the way. The view is a bit obscured by debris the starlings have hauled in - that happened last year as well; eventually the stuff got moved back from the cam.

http://gargravarr.cc.utexas.edu/owl/

in related news, my sister and her family have been having a hard time sleeping because of two swooping hoooooligans in their back yard WHO have been very interested in WHO. Who cooks for them, who, who, who. Here's WHO, observed this morning in an abandoned redtail nest.

A toast to Scratch, the bravest falcon-watching chicken ever to grace the banks of the Genesee River.
Fly high, Scratch.

Oh, gosh...just saw this. Linda, Craig - I'm SO sorry...I loved that hen.
I have her picture and feather on the front door of my apt!

http://tinyurl.com/47rf3sw

There has been visual confirmation of owls!
(The actual cam site isn't up yet - Chris posted just one picture of an owl in there)

I saw them this New Year's Eve. Only 10% of that freetail bat colony winters in Austin - the rest were in Mexico, but 10% of one gazillion is still a seemingly endless wave of bats that emerge from under that bridge to hunt. It's terrific. Also notable are signs on the bridge that warn visitors to, um, maybe, step back a bit when the bats emerge, because they, um, haven't had a chance to use the batroom (actually they are straight-faced, no-pun signs).

[Poor bees, who are already experiencing devastating losses across the country. There are many beekeepers in my area who are more than willing to remove and relocate successful hives that have settled in the wrong place. It seems anti-nature to protect one troubled species by killing another, like some purple martin landlords who will shoot a bluebird to protect their martin colonies, or shoot wolves to protect other wild creatures or domesticated animals. Dot in PA]

Poor bees, who are already experiencing devastating losses across the country. There are many beekeepers in my area who are more than willing to remove and relocate successful hives that have settled in the wrong place. It seems anti-nature to protect one troubled species by killing another, like some purple martin landlords who will shoot a bluebird to protect their martin colonies, or shoot wolves to protect other wild creatures or domesticated animals. Dot in PA

[/color]

What Chris said was:
"I wasn't happy about it, either, but I was out of time. As to colony collapse disorder, apparently the Apiarists aren’t so concerned about it that they are anxious to collect wild hives - where it was once the norm for beekeepers to do that for free, principally as a public relations gesture, they now charge for such services. Which suggests that they have no real need for wild hives. That might be because the wild hives could already be carrying the mites, or other diseases, from which the beekeepers are trying to protect their own hives."

In any case, we can assume that if this happens again, he will get on it in a timely fashion...I wonder if those beekeepers near you, Dot, who are still willing to capture and haul off colonies for free, will travel to Austin TX  By the way, one of my two beekeeper friends told me in detail a couple of years ago how a swarm is hauled off to another location. It's pretty amazing.  

Yeah, I hear you -- he wasn't comfortable with it either, and wrote at length about not having anything against bees, Africanized or otherwise, although after building and maintaining the box for so many years he opted for the owls. He does write that now that he understands how it plays out, in the future, if it happens again, he promises to try to have an invading swarm moved "more or less immediately" rather than waiting it out.

it's very sad that he didn't contact a bee keeper sooner to remove the bees rather than kill them. Just my opinion...

he discusses that in one of the earlier posts on the topic. He's always very torn about evicting winter tenants to make room for the owls, and all the more so this time...he wasn't too happy about the whole affair...and yeah, it doesn't sound to me as if he likes honey much - I'd have mourned its loss too.

Some of you may know that after Chris' owls (Austin TX) fledged last spring, bees moved in. He is now in the process of trying to get the wax, honey, dead bees, etc. out before it's utterly too late to hope for owls. Unclear if it'll work, but today Chris posted cool pictures of the huge honeycombs in the box and the cleaning process; previous days' posts give more of the story. 
http://chriswjohnson.blogspot.com/

Don't remember anyone posting this.
It's at the Met - "Boy with Falcon" by Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91).

Ralph is quite attractive. do they know that it is in fact a male bird? I am clueless re: sexual dimorphism in pelicans (sounds like the title of a Mamet play) and I was just thinking that times are hard and jobs are few and far between. Maybe s/he went up to Nova Scotia to try to get a job, thus the strip club destination.