Eat more cookies

*disclaimer - the following post contains some personal thoughts and experiences on feeding hummingbirds. For a more comprehensive explanation of some of the points raised in this post, I urge readers to check out hummingbirds.net.

Hummingbird season is upon us!

It’s been my experience that unless you have a pair of hummingbirds nesting in your neighborhood, you really aren’t likely to get a lot of hummingbird traffic at your feeders in May and June. But come July and August, these birds seem to appear out of thin air. When I went home for lunch today, I noticed at least 5 rubythroats in our little backyard. So this late summer season that some know as the “dog days” is a time I call hummingbird season.

If you’re interested in hummingbird feeding to provide some late summer bird activity around your home, then you should know that there’s a lot of nonsense out there related to how to go about feeding these little dynamos. Here’s some tried and true advice from someone who’s been succesfully attracting hummingbirds for a long time now. (more…)

I saw here that a specific gene has now been linked to left-handedness in humans. Coooool. We’re both lefties, and proud to be among the 10% of humans using their right brains.

But what does it really mean to be left-handed? I write and eat lefty, but throw with my right arm. I’m not ambidexterous - I just do different things with different limbs. Am I left-handed, or just a spas?

What about you? Are you a true leftie?

Check out this analysis of obesity by state over time in the US. Here in Oklahoma, we love it when other states are in worse shape than we are - especially when one of those states is Texas!*

*or as we like to call it, “Baja Oklahoma”

Spiraling despair.

Dementors are everywhere!

Will Harry triumph?

While I’m on the subject of movies, we got to see the exciting trailer for “10,000 BC” last night. Now this movie, due out next March, should be right up my alley - warring tribes, CGI prehistoric creatures, hot babes in ill-fitting hides. But I fear it may be a bust. Here’s why.

I noticed in the trailer - traveling before my eyes at light speed - things like metal weapons and soldiers riding animals. These Iron Age advancements strike me as anachronisms. So too the blending of Pleistocene fauna, e.g., mammoths, with something looking an awful lot like Diatryma, the ferocious and flightless avian predator of the Eocene. But I can look past things like this, it’s what they did to the mammoths that destroyed their credibility with me.

The mammoths in the trailer are clearly seen galloping like giant horses. Everyone knows that elephants don’t gallop, they pace, moving the legs on each side of the body forward or backward in unison. You can take a pacer and make it gallop (like a racing camel), but they don’t like it. I’ve never seen an elephant move this way -when they want to go fast they just pace faster, and they look like they’re speedwalking. By galloping their mammoths, the filmmakers for 10,000 BC took their expensive CGI skills and their otherwise beautiful mammoths and ruined them by making them do something that makes them look ridiculously fake.

Why didn’t these guys take 5 minutes to look at how real elephants move? If they had, I’d be a lot more excited about this movie . . .

Pottermania has gripped the nation! People are lining up to gush over the final book and the latest movie. Elsewhere, people are lambasting the Potter fans for latching on to “children’s books” while ignoring real literature.

Well I’m a fan, I have to admit it. I resisted for a while - I hate bandwagons - but eventually I sat down and read #1 (”Sorcerer’s Stone”, I believe) and guess what: It was fun. Harry is the reluctant, misfit underdog who must find his inner hero to defeat an evil and far more powerful opponent. Is that the most original storyline ever? No, but it works, and people have embraced this theme since at least the days of David and Goliath. So I kept reading, and I’ve enjoyed every one.

The Potter books work because they’re just great storytelling - does literature really need to be more? I’m in a new place, I’m discovering new things, I’m caring for people comprised of mere ink on paper. That is literature. These stories don’t have to be allegories for political and social commentary (although it could be argued that they are). They don’t have to change the world (although it could be argued that they have). They just have to be entertaining, and in doing so, transport the reader to another world, a world that is scary and weird, but I bet one that every Potter fan would like to visit.

The movies work too, but don’t bother to see them unless you’ve first read the books - you’ll be confused. And if you have read the books, don’t expect a verbatim adaptation - movie editors are much more ruthless than novel editors. But go, let yourself see some movie magic bring story magic to life. It’s fun!

We saw “Order of the Phoenix” last night, and I think it was the best of the movies thusfar. The action and the effects were first rate, and the mood was darker - appropriately so - and more mature than the earlier efforts. If you read and enjoy the books, you’ll love this movie.

As for “Deathly Hallows”, I’m about 1/3 through, and it’s great . . .

During the summer of flood here in the Southern Plains, some birds have remarkably survived some really trying conditions. In early July, following back-to-back floods that closed some Stillwater streets for days, we found a Killdeer on eggs. July is awfully late for nesting Killdeer in Oklahoma; perhaps this was a second brood. . .

She defiantly guarded the eggs as I approached for a couple of quick photos, sticking much tighter to the nest than these birds usually do. Maybe she was fed up with disruptions from the rain and had decided she would NOT TOLERATE any more monkey business around this clutch!

CNN just ran this story on wildlife conflicts with natural gas extraction in Wyoming. It’s worth a look.

America’s Interstate highways: concrete, noise, McDonald’s, Cracker Barrel, adult books, religious admonitions, grooved pavement, rumble strips, tolls, Coca-Cola, jerks who tailgate, morons who cruise too slowly in the left lane, cops who pounce from hidden vantage points . . . Surely the Interstate is no place for a respectable birder to enjoy peaceful, enlightening travel. We birders crave variety! We see the landscape changing as we roll along. We know when we’re entering the range of some “new” bird and we go on alert to see it. But the interstates are so monotonous, so homogenized, so beater as the ecologists like to say, that we really can’t expect more than turkey vultures, redtails, and pigeons on our interstate highways.

But luck favors the prepared, and if you make that extra effort to stay on high alert you can find some great birds -even on the interstates. We traveled a big figure 8 over the past couple of weeks, with most of the 4000 miles spent on interstates. Our route took us across Arkansas; north through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio; east across New York, Vermont, and New Hamphire; south through Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut; west across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and from the center of the figure 8 in Columbus, Ohio, we went west and south through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and finally home to Oklahoma. Counting a quick stop in Mississippi, we hit 17 states in all.

Here is our running trip list of bird species seen from the Interstates - or heard from rest stops along the way:

European Starling
Turkey Vulture
Red-tailed Hawk
American Crow
Cliff Swallow
Brown-headed Cowbird
Red-winged Blackbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
Broad-winged Hawk
Mourning Dove
Cattle Egret
Pine Warbler
Chipping Sparrow
Green Heron
Common Grackle
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Barn Swallow
Indigo Bunting
House Sparrow
Northern Mockingbird
Killdeer
Great Egret
Rock Pigeon
Blue Jay
Black Vulture
American Robin
Chimney Swift
Common Flicker
Cedar Waxwing
American Goldfinch
Red-eyed Vireo
Great Blue Heron
Ring-billed Gull
Cooper’s Hawk
Baltimore Oriole
Wild Turkey
Common Raven
Bald Eagle
Eastern Phoebe
Canada Goose
Great Black-backed Gull
Double-crested Cormorant
Pileated Woodpecker
Belted Kingfisher

That’s 45 species by my reckoning, and some were delightful surprises: The cuckoo that just made it across the road in Arkansas, the eagle soaring high over the New Hampshire Coast, the phoebe at the rest stop in Connecticut, the black-backed gull on the Tappan Zee bridge who had an even better view of the mighty Hudson than we had . . .

I know I learned to drive during the Stone Age when 55 was the top legal speed, but people really are driving too fast these days. Back in the 80s, I would cruise in the left lane at 65 mph, and only the craziest of crazies would try to zoom past me. I welcomed the new respect for speed that in the 90s increased highway speeds to the 60s. But after three days on interstates where some stretches were 70 mph and most were 65, I realized that even these limits apparently aren’t good enough anymore.

Because I’m a magnet for state police radar, I was really trying to not attract undue attention on the highways. If it was 70, I set the cruise to 73. If it was 65, I didn’t exceed 69. But after a while, it occurred to me that no matter how fast I was going, everyone else was blowing past me in the left lane doing what appeared to be 80.

So I got brave and tried it. When a hotshot zoomed past with an opening behind, I pulled out and let that sap get the tickets. But there weren’t any tickets, even though 80 was the minimum speed people were traveling in the left lane. Eighty-five was common, and there were quite a few 90s and above as well.

So what’s going on? Where are the cops? How come when I cruise along at 5-10 mph above the speed limit I invariably get nabbed, yet these folks were doing 15-20 higher with impunity? Do they just not care? Do they all have fuzz-busters?

If you know, please comment, ‘cause I’d love to find a way to beat this system of speed limits.

If you ask me (and by stopping in here, you did), free flowing traffic at high speed is much safer than congested traffic at lower speeds, and lower speeds are the primary cause of (you guessed it) congestion. Plus, everytime I glance down to check my speed (something I probably do every 30 seconds), I take my eye off the road. I’m a much safer driver if I can just go the speed I feel is appropriate and not worry about getting pulled over.

So is 80 really the new 65? If so, can you help me figure out when and how I can get away with that??