Chickadon'ts

     Often a naturalist or even at time a full-blown scientist will observe some critter's behavior
immediately apply it to every member of a species, as if there are no individuals. Not all animals or birds act like all other members of their species.
     Case in point: A few years ago I read something about chickadees in which the author said when around a feeder, one bird will dominate, chasing others off the feeder until he leaves and they can come get their share. The way he wrote it seemed to say all chickadees do this. Take a look at that picture. Four of them visible on the feeder at one time. I have seen that more often than not. For sure sometimes one bird will chase another off  but just as often more than one will be there at the same time.
     There may be another aspect of what seems to be dominant behavior, like when one bird flies in and another takes off. I have seen this in gulls around harbors. One gull stands atop a piling. A second gull approaches for a landing and the first gull takes off. Rather than dominant/submissive behavior, this is probably a simple function in physics. The gull flying in has the weight and momentum to knock the first gull off the piling, so the first gull takes off, knowing full well he can't withstand a collision on such tiny platform. I've seen chickadees and other birds for that matter do the same thing.
    On a step outdoors today I noticed the feeder was getting low. I had packed in 25 pounds of sunflower seeds for just that purpose. Later I went out and noticed there weren't any chickadees in sight so I figured it was a perfect time to take the feeder in and fill it, which I did.
     When I brought it back out there still wewe no birds in sight. I said out loud, "Here you go guys, meat." It's only five steps from the feeder to the door but before I got there a whole cloud of chickadees had descended from somewhere to the feeder. Chickadee telegraph?  

Christmas Eve 2017

The Little Drummer Boy with the drums out front
Stars twinkling in a clear night sky, we pass by a crescent moon, gold, and low on the western horizon, sitting here thinking maybe northern lights later. Christmas Eve in the Alaska Bush. Prime roast thawing on the counter. Cookies down the hill where I had to leave them along with other supplies. So it goes. My favorite music playing, including a new version of Little Drummer Boy featuring the drums. A glass of chilled wine, thinking of past Christmases here like the year I had to line my trail with votive candles in brown paper bags to convince my young son it was a landing strip so Santa could find us. Mormons singng the First Noel now. About to make one of those Jello no-bake cheesecakes for dessert tomorrow. Peter, Paul and Mary followed by Trans Siberian Railway, O come let us adore him. Searching for a recipe for yorkshire pudding. Music fills the emptiness, peace in the deep woods. God bless us, every one. And then Peter Paul and Mary again, O come emmanuel. Stilll to come the Mormons and a marvelous soprano singing Oh Holy Night. I always cry. Time now to refill the glass in oh so many ways. And to all a good night.

May the forest be with you

Do you wonder why I would start a blog post with a five-year old video of a flash mob? With good reason is all I can say.
You see, maybe nobody else has wondered or at least said anything but I have. It's about the lack of content for the past couple of months and it has been bothering me. If you have this terminal disease and all of a sudden your mind goes blank, you wonder, is this it? Is this the moment Hemingway came to before he picked up that shotgun? Is this the day you don't have another fresh idea left in you? Before you go through anger, bargaining, denial, depression,  acceptance, you look around a little to see if there might be another reason.
Well for most of the year, one reason has been flitting around in my simple brain. I've spoken with others about of it and an awful lot of people have this low-level feeling of what I could only call malaise. A slight depression that colors everything else we do. To my mind any thinking person must be feeling it at least a little. The problem that is coloring everything is the damage being done to our country by a criminal idiot in the White House and robber barons in Congress. Each day's news brings another outrage as the gang does everything it can to dismantle our republic.
For  me about the first thing I do every morning is cruise through the news sites on the Internet and they are so filled with what those criminals are doing it depresses and angers me and then that's how I go out to meet the day.
If I am not seeing what they have done, I am seeing what the people I agree with say about it all. At times I've been tempted to add my two cents but from this distance that seems like a tilt at a windmill. So much is said it's difficult to find some original insight to offer, so I don't write about it much.
Today a second effect of that came up when I saw that video open as a memory on my facebook page. I posted it four years ago and while I was sharing it today it hit me that I haven't seen one of those online in a long time. I loved those seemingly spontaneous flash mobs that were popular a few years ago. And as I thought about it I realized there is so much Trump stuff online there is little room on my news feed or in my mind for anything else. The thing consumes so much space  humor, music,

One of those late nights with wine, a credit card and the Internet. Neil DeGrasse

Tyson was hyping these t-shirts to benefit something I agreed with at the time. 

Fits the situation, don't 

you think?

creative thought, fun gets crowded out from the mind and from the Internet which has often suggested an excuse to write and therein may be the reason for so few posts in the past couple of months. And it not only consumes a big part of the consciousness, it also creates that mild depressions that also dim the creative light sometimes. So there you have it.
Well, I am all packed again, waiting for snow for my winter at the East Pole. My intention is when I get there to close off a lot of the political intrusion and with a little time perhaps my mind will open again and the muse will emerge from the political fog to inspire once more. If that doesn't work I will always have the "forest."

And for the fun of it in case anybody has missed them, one more flash mob, fit for the season:

It's Maginot all over again

   
The Trumpeshere is picking spots along the West Coast to place missile sites as a defense against
a potential missile attack now that North Korea has demonstrated a missile capable of hitting           
Washington, D.C. Great plan except for one thing. The old saw that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Lining up defense along a single line has been tried before. It didn't work very well.
     Prior to World War II the French built a line of permanent immobile concrete artillery installations along their borders with Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Germany to protect themselves in case Germany got ideas of world domination again. It was named for Andre Maginot, the French minister of war at the time. The plan left the way open along the Belgian border imagining a counter attack through Belgium into Germany if necessary. Much to the surprise of the French, as World War II developed, the Germans drove their tanks through Belgium around west end of the line and almost unopposed all the way to Paris. Unable to target the advancing German blitzkrieg, the fixed guns of the Maginot Line never fired a shot, they were useless. The rest is history. The rust along the Maginot line also is history.
     So, now it seems the U.S. wants to build a line of missile defense installations along the West Coast given that coast is closest to the potential invader, North Korea. But the world has changed since the 1930s and a single line of defense against a potential attacker doesn't really mean much. This plan came up along with the news that the North Koreans have successfully fired a rocket capable of hitting Washington, D.C. So by all means let's build a wall between us and them. Sound familiar?
    Well, here's a little problem I haven't seen anyone address yet. Who says they will fire the missile from west to east? Modern warfare doesn't have fronts any more. An attack can come from anywhere, so the thinking needs to be broader. We can only hope that's the case because …
   The distance from west to east from North Korea to the U.S. capital was listed as 6,800 miles but experts estimated the missile is capable of striking targets as far away as 8,000 miles. Now, I tried to figure the distance, say, firing one to the west from North Korea, over Russia, Europe and the Atlantic. I would suspect if the missile can cover 8,000 miles it can somehow be engineered to make the rest of the distance to reach the American East Coast. It's probably shorter to send one over the North Pole. So if we have this line of defense for missiles coming from the west can those missiles also intercept something coming from the north or the east or are we going to build a line that can be gone around from several directions?
Now, doesn't a bunch of missile sites in California still make us all feel safer?
     Maybe the Trumpeters ought to take another look at diplomacy. Please?
The Maginot Line
US moves to beef up West Coast Defenses

Here's a little song the Kingston Trio did in the early 60s. It's called the Ballad of John Foster Dulles (the secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration who was the United States' chief cold warrior.)