Hope you had a great Thanksgiving Day, and are doing fine. Send me a note when you have time. We are thinking of you and your Mom.

Russ

threemileriver.org

Sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, suet or even broken up peanut, offer them, and they will come.  If you are lucky enough to have one, carotenoid-rich bright red berries from dogwood trees are also a favorite.  Diet plays a part of why they are red. So, why so red. You would believe that bright red would be a easy visible target  for hawks and owls.  However,  by responding to redness as a sign of a promising mate, females have encouraged the evolution of bright coloring in males. This process is called sexual selection. It turns out that male cardinals are probably bright and loud for the same reason: to advertise what good mates they’d make. Sexual selection is often powerful enough to produce features that are harmful to the individual’s survival. For example, extravagant and colorful tail feathers or fins are likely to attract predators as well as interested members of the opposite sex.   for more click here

Anyway, just sit back and relax and forget about all the science for a few minutes and watch and listen in your back yard.

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

Click on and image for nature at it’s colorful best

Louise: “How did you get here?”
Johnny: “Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.”

“You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes … Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing — On his darkest day he believes in spring.”

The rusty patched bumble bee has declined by 87 percent in the last 20 years.

Earlier Post (click here)

Many birds show aggression when they feel their breeding territories or feeding areas are violated by unwelcome intruders and hummingbirds are no exception. Below, a viscous attack leaves one dead, still clutching the twig it perched on.  The will fly high above them before diving nearly straight down right at the intruder.

The back deck lab is ready to go. The kids will look at various plants we grow in our back yard or in pots. Sometimes we need a break from bugs and such.

What happens when you kiss a deer and make a wish? You live happily ever after.

Still widespread and common, but surveys show declines in recent decades. In the mid 20th century, Dutch elm disease killed many of the American elms that had been favorite nesting trees for this species in the past.

Once used as living fish hooks.

There’s scarcely a bird in the world as unfairly maligned, deemed the world over as a dreadful seed due to its awkward proportions and reportedly ravenous appetite for bait fish.  But this discomfited family is of an ancient lineage, one of the oldest of all the birds and with similar ancestors reaching all the way back to the dinosaurs. Below, Plymouth Waterfront.